Team collaboration is one of the key success factors to any organisation. However, it can also be one of the greatest challenge for some.

Although there are more and more software and technology launched to facilitate more efficient operations, 40% of the companies have also reported the lack of communication and internal support from one another which hamper the business growth.

In this post, you will find ways to spot these organisational silos before they emerge into bigger problems and take preventive actions.

Signs or symptoms that you may have organizational silos:

• Conflicting goals

When teams of an organization fail to see the value of working together, silos start to develop. Isolated individuals or groups tend to have the ‘us vs them’ mentality where they see others as a competition and thus, unwilling to share information due to the fear of losing out. When left untended, this would eventually lead to even bigger misalignment between an individual’s goals and priorities to the company’s overall.

• High communication barriers

Silos tend to be arrogant and selfish. For this reason, a siloed team has the tendency to collect as many information with very little intention of disseminating it across, causing a lot of communication barriers that slows down operation.

• Poor customer service

One easy way to spot the existence of corporate silos is by measuring your customer satisfaction level. Great customer experience normally leads to higher satisfaction. Although there are many factors that may contribute to a lower satisfaction level, a broken customer experience is definitely one.

Your customers would normally recognize problems within your organization way before you do as it is clearly shown in the service delivered. When there are miscommunications and lack of collaboration, it will result in customer discontentment and frustrations. Take for example, a customer having to reiterate the same information twice or have repeated conversation because the different teams responsible are not communicating – which results in redundancy and lower overall operation efficiency.

• Redundant work and resources

Another common sign that may contribute to organizational silo and poor customer experience is the duplicated labour. It hampers efficiency, causes loss of productivity and even loss of potential or repeated sales. This typically arises from the lack of proper communication in between different groups or departments. When there is no communication, collaboration can’t take place as no one knows which tasks are being completed and which are not. As a result, different teams ended up doing the same project and produce different sets of data which creates further confusion.

• Disengagement of work

An isolated workplace will cause employees to feel disconnected which affects their productivity and quality of work. A sense of belonging and social interaction are important factors that keep an individual motivated in doing what they are doing. Therefore, when a worker is detached from the group, they tend to feel unhappy and negative towards their work. And when you don’t spot this fast enough, this negativity may spread across the entire organization.

Silos are destructive and unhelpful in keeping a healthy business operation. Thus, prevention is always better than cure. For that reason, it important for you as a manager or team player to break down communication hurdles and promote collaboration with one another. You should always take precautionary actions to keep silos at bay. One easy way to do that is by implementing the right system that supports teamwork – JustCloud CRM is a good example that you can consider implementing to help you in preventing the emergence of silos.