What is a silo in the workplace

A silo occurs when a team’s communication and collaboration become isolated from other departments. This can result in missed updates, reduced knowledge sharing and a reluctance to engage in cross-functional collaboration, ultimately creating barriers in the workplace.

Organisational silos can arise from different conditions. Here are some common types:

• Location silo: these silos can arise when teams are separated based on physical location, such as in different office locations. This can lead to proximity bias, where employees prefer collaborating with colleagues who are physically closer rather than engaging with remote or off-site teams.
• Schedule silo: information silos can arise when a business’s teams work on different shifts. For example, a healthcare team working on a day shift may not communicate updates to a team working on the night shift. 
• Rank/level silo: when teams work on different levels without communicating, it can lead to task duplication and create communication issues that can cause unnecessary delays and costs.
• Departmental silo: when departments become focused on their own goals rather than those of the business as a whole, this can cause departmental silos. This can lead to a lack of communication and collaboration between different departments.

Breaking down silos: why it is important

Silos are not inherently negative for businesses. In some cases, they can help teams refine their expertise, stay focused on departmental goals and strengthen team cohesion. Essentially, silos can help individuals and their teams concentrate on the details, rather than the bigger picture.

Silos may lead to a lack of focus

When teams operate in isolation, they may lose sight of how their departmental goals contribute to the company’s overall objectives. Without alignment, businesses risk fragmented efforts that don’t effectively support long-term strategies.

Silos can cause inefficiency

A lack of cross-functional collaboration can cause teams to become inefficient. Insufficient communication between teams can lead to additional issues like duplicate work and communication bottlenecks, delaying projects because a team is waiting for information from others.

These inefficiencies can impact both employees and customers, affecting overall productivity and business performance.

Next, let’s explore how silos influence both groups.

How silos affect employees

When employees feel disconnected from the company’s overall vision, their motivation and engagement may decline. Silos can also lead to unhealthy competition between teams, creating departmental factions rather than fostering a collaborative work environment. Over time, this can contribute to a toxic workplace, where teams prioritise their own objectives over broader business success.

How silos affect customers

Silos at work can have a detrimental impact on customers, too. Information silos can lead to inconsistent messaging, where customers receive conflicting information from different departments, resulting in delays and inefficiencies in problem resolution.

For example, if marketing and sales teams do not communicate effectively on strategies, campaigns and goals, it can create project delays and lead to campaigns that fail to resonate with customers.

How to prevent silos

Preventing silos requires the right strategies and a proactive approach. In the next section, we’ll explore an example of how cross-functional collaboration can help break down silos. We’ll then look at ways to reduce internal competition between teams and improve communication across departments.

Examples of how cross-functional collaboration prevents silos

Cross-functional collaboration can prevent silos, as it involves encouraging teams to share knowledge with other departments. Knowledge sharing can improve the efficiency of project workflows. Let us look at an example to better understand how cross-functional collaborations prevent silos. 

Imagine a marketing team is putting together a new campaign for the launch of a new laptop. They may collaborate with the design team to create a visually impactful campaign. The design team provides them with graphics like logos, fonts and other corporate style assets and informs the marketing team on how to present these assets. 

By asking the product development team for information about the laptop’s key specifications, the marketing team also learns which competitive features to advertise to customers. As a result of this cross collaboration, the marketing team can confidently advertise the new product to customers, using a well-informed and eye-catching campaign. 

The Nadler-Tudman congruence model identifies cross-collaboration opportunities

The Nadler-Tudman congruence model can help identify silos and opportunities for cross-collaboration. Part of it involves considering the steps needed to complete a task, where they can be optimised and potential challenges. The model also asks employers to establish which employee is responsible for each task and whether their skills are suitable for completing each step. 

This can reduce silos because it helps to identify where teams can collaborate in order to effectively finish a task. These are known as ‘interdependencies’. This model highlights how silos can emerge when it is not clear when departments or employees must collaborate in order to achieve a step.

Reducing internal competition between teams

Reducing internal competition between teams can help reduce communication silos in particular. The first step involves understanding the signs of healthy versus unhealthy competition. Signs of unhealthy competition may include:

• Gossip spreading about employees
• Negative body language and behaviours towards a specific employee
• A lack of trust between different employees or teams
• Stealing ideas from other employees
• Withholding important information from other members of a team

On the other hand, healthy competition includes:

• Working to achieve performance-based rewards or incentives
• Participating in company team sports, such as football matches between different departments
• Taking part in learning and development quizzes and challenges
• Pitching ideas to a team and providing constructive feedback on others’ contributions

By reducing unhealthy competition while encouraging healthy competition, businesses can create cross-departmental bonding opportunities. This can also be fostered through after-work social events or training days. 

Indeed’s guide on belonging at work illustrates how encouraging non-exclusionary social opportunities can be a good way of helping people feel more connected at work. A sense of belonging can also be encouraged through employee resource groups (ERGs), interest groups through which employees can share ideas and resources.  

Improving communications between teams based in different geographical locations

Below are some effective ways to improve internal communications in order to reduce communication silos.

• Setting communication standards: by setting communication standards among employees, businesses can keep these processes consistent across all teams. Silos can emerge when a department creates its own communication workflows, causing fragmentation. Developing a well-defined internal communication standards policy may prevent this from happening.
• Refine your approach to managing virtual teams: virtual team leaders can implement structured communication schedules, including regular team meetings, one-to-one meetings and mentoring sessions. While departmental video calls are common, inviting employees from other teams can provide fresh perspectives and spark valuable cross-departmental discussions.
• Use shared project management tools to manage tasks: by using one centralised platform for projects, different departments can track the progress of a project. Some tools come with cross-tagging features, enabling employees to see tasks within the context of their own workflow. Project management tools can also be used to set and define goals according to objectives and key results (OKRs). These OKRs can also be made visible not only to the teams responsible for achieving them but other departments too.

Helping keep employees focused on business vision

Reinforcing a business’s vision can help employees stay engaged, motivated and aligned with business objectives. Our guide to writing company mission statements highlights how a good statement outlines a company’s values when achieving short- and long-term goals. Mission statements can give employees a sense of purpose that goes beyond their day-to-day responsibilities. 

It is worth considering a framework to use when managing business strategy. The OGSM framework can help employers communicate their overall vision to employees more clearly. It also involves transparency around the progression of business goals, helping employees to feel more engaged and involved.

Silos at work can emerge when teams stop communicating with each other. This can happen for multiple reasons, such as interpersonal conflict or proximity bias. By encouraging cross-collaboration and a shared vision, leaders can work towards breaking silos at work. Different approaches such as the Nadler-Tudman congruence model can help teams to achieve this.