Feeling isolated from coworkers can not only be damaging to mental health as you’re starved of social connection, but it can also severely impair your ability to collaborate effectively.

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Even in a borderless remote work environment that supports employees working together from around the world, barriers still exist and coworkers can often feel as if they’re working in silos - cut off from their teams.

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To avoid the phenomenon of siloing in a remote work setting and promote engaging collaboration, you need to tear down the virtual walls.

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In this guide, you’ll discover how to prevent siloing in the workplace. In addition, find out how Insightful's time mapping tools can help. 

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Promoting Cross-Functional Collaboration

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To tackle silos in a remote work environment, you need to focus on creating a company culture that prioritizes cross-functional collaboration. 

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When it’s the norm to share information and work in sync with other departments, it’s much easier to create a connected work environment where every individual has a network of peers they can reach out to and communicate with.

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Established a Shared Vision

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Without clear direction, it’s difficult for employees to feel as if they’re part of something bigger than themselves.

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On the flip side, if you have a clearly-defined shared vision for what you want to achieve in the world and how you can positively impact your customers’ lives, it provides a much more compelling reason for employees to show up to work every day and feel as if they’re contributing to something meaningful.

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Feeling a sense of meaning or purpose at work is not only paramount for employee engagement and productivity levels, but it also helps eradicate the notion that everyone is out for themselves. Work silos are in part real and in part a figment of our imagination.

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A sense of shared purpose can transcend silos and help employees feel more connected to one another, even if their reality suggests they’re isolated in their efforts. With productivity reports and real performance data from time tracker work tools, you can show employees the impact of their actions at work.

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Create Cross-Functional Teams

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Like a network of neurons, when coworkers from different departments fire together, they wire together. The more you can encourage cross-functional collaboration, the more likely it is that you’ll create a harmonious work environment that works as a single unit rather than a series of individuals.

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To build cross-functional teams, here are some key factors to consider:

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1.  Strategic goals - Before you can have a network of cross-functional teams, you need a vision of what you aim to accomplish as a company. Effective overarching strategic goals can help teams align what they do with the company’s mission, and this can filter down through leadership to individual team members. Use an app that tracks hours worked to demonstrate progress towards goals with features such as employee screenshot monitoring.

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2.  Shared milestones - When working on projects, think about shared milestones that require cooperation. For example, on a website creation project, have both the designers and copywriters work together on the homepage and submit their work at the same time. That way you’re more likely to have a more integrated end result rather than visuals and copy that don’t complement one another.

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3.  Regular idea-sharing - Encourage regular idea-sharing sessions that bring together people from different departments. For example, having a website designer sit in on an asset creation session can lead to innovative ideation and encourage new ways of thinking.

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Encourage Peer-to-Peer Interaction

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Within the network you create, it’s important that employees have a way of both sharing knowledge and learning from their peers.

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Establishing peer-to-peer mentorship and coaching initiatives can be an excellent way to breed cross-functional accountability and increase employee engagement. It doesn’t have to be one-way teaching from veteran employees, but rather cooperation between two peers who can share ideas and learn from one another.

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Not only does this promote deeper social connections within the company, but it can also lead to breakthroughs as employees understand other perspectives they might not have considered. Pairing a web developer with a project manager for example could lead to interesting insights that could benefit both parties.

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These peer-to-peer interactions can be optional and can take place once or twice a month so as not to seem like an overwhelming commitment. Many employees will see these sessions as a great opportunity to leave their work silos and deepen their connections with their colleagues.

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Use a pc monitoring app or review monitoring software to build a foundation of transparency within the company in which each employee understands exactly how much they contribute. When you monitor a computer at work and share the time data with your employee, you can help them recognize their own productivity trends.

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3 Practical Steps for Workplace Collaboration

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As for day-to-day workflows and the practicalities of communication and information sharing in a remote work environment, there are several things you can do to make it easier for your workforce.

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1. Develop Streamlined Communication

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One of the easiest ways to boost workplace collaboration is to focus on communication methods.

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If your teams are relying on outdated communication systems for relaying important information, it’s more likely that they’ll remain in their silos as information slowly filters through from coworkers.

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That’s why you need a dynamic form of communication that allows team members to categorize relevant project information, share messages instantly, and label or comment on tasks to inform team members of the next steps.

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A tool like Slack offers a variety of team communication hacks you can use to promote effective cross-functional communication. By organizing information in separate channels, you can have team-based, project-based, and other forms of targeted communication.

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2. Enable Easy File Sharing

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As well as needing to communicate quickly and effectively, your teams also need the tools to share files and documents easily.

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When dealing with a huge amount of information, as is often the case in a modern company, it helps to have knowledge bases or cloud-based data storage that’s accessible with granted user permission.

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If your teams can effortlessly edit documents and assets together in real-time and share files back and forth as and when they need to, it eliminates a lot of idle time and allows for a feeling of real collaboration.

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Break down silos by using tools like Dropbox and Google Docs, which support seamless file sharing and live editing.

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3. Promote Feedback Sharing

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Whichever changes you decide to implement to eliminate virtual silos, you need a reliable system for collecting feedback from employees.

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However well systems seem to be working, you often won’t understand the full story until you hear from employees themselves. Plus, when employees feel as if their feedback is taken into account, it can help them feel as if they’re in a healthy work culture that treats them as one large team rather than individual employees locked away in silos.

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Ask your employees through surveys to rate the current apps and systems they use, and gather responses around how they feel about their current ability to collaborate with others.

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You can use these responses, along with time data and metrics to measure employee performance you take from your employee system monitoring software to build a clear picture of your company’s current company culture, and what the employees within it make of it.