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Internal Communication: The Multi-Site Company Challenge (2/7) – Encouraging Cross-Functional Communication
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Ethnologists have long established that in human groups, individuals tend to live within closed circles — interacting mainly with those they already know: family and close friends — while limiting contact with people outside that circle. Cross-functional communication between circles is probably not in our nature; it has to be cultivated.
This article is excerpted from our Ebook: Internal Communication — The 7 Challenges of Multi-Site Companies >>> Download the full ebook (FREE)
Encouraging Cross-Pollination
The same dynamic plays out within companies: employees tend to interact more freely within their own team than with colleagues from other entities they know less well. Yet, as everyone knows, it's often through informal interactions and informal communication across the organization that new value-creating synergies emerge. Day to day, these informal exchanges enable employees to:
- share lessons learned
- pool best practices
- collaborate on joint bids
- make introductions to help resolve a client issue
Restoring Cross-Functional Communication
During the 2000s, the drive for new synergies sparked widespread interest in greater cross-functionality, enabling companies to unlock new growth levers. The following decade pushed organizations even further. Today, we can say we're living in a golden age of communities: the primary engine of cross-functional collaboration.
Indeed, since 2010, communities have proliferated — in both personal and professional spheres.
Read also: Internal Communication: Interactivity or Nothing
Building on Communities
Communities are now everywhere. They allow each member to identify with a social group that shares their values — one they can feel part of and belong to. Today, communities can be found in two main spheres:
- in the personal sphere, they tend to center around a shared interest, cause, or belief
- in the professional sphere, they bring together people from the same organization based on location, function (marketing, HR, finance, facilities…), projects (cross-functional project teams), seniority level, and areas of interest.
This community logic was cemented with the rise of enterprise social networks (ESNs), around which communities are organized. This is the case, for example, at the Caisse Primaire d'Assurance Maladie du Bas-Rhin and within the Traiteurs de France network, both of which leveraged their ESNs to unite their employees in a rich variety of communities (see our client case studies).
Read also: [Practical Guide] 10 Client Initiatives to Improve Internal Communication
Bypassing Gatekeepers
In traditional organizations, communication is managed through a set of conventional (in the literal sense) and unwritten rules built around the logic of "gatekeepers." This structure channels information mostly along hierarchical lines, flowing top-down and in a cascading fashion.
By reducing the number of relay points through which information flows (N, N+1, N+2…), multi-directional communication (made possible notably by the enterprise social network) saves time for everyone.
Observable results:
- smoother information flow,
- greater efficiency in collaborative project work,
- faster responsiveness in problem-solving
- and greater trust among the employees involved in these exchanges.
By making communication more cross-functional, more informal, and less constrained by hierarchical rules, the multi-site organization gradually develops a culture that enriches it through the sharing of:
- lessons learned,
- best practices,
- expertise for joint bids or client problem-solving,
- and quality connections and trust among employees.
Read the next article: Internal Communication: The Multi-Site Company Challenge (3/7) – Showcasing Internal Successes
Read the previous article: Internal Communication: The Multi-Site Company Challenge (1/7) – Breaking Employee Anonymity
Also discover: best internal communication software.
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Access the Ebook
This article is excerpted from our Ebook « The 7 Challenges of Internal Communication in a Multi-Site Context« . In it, you'll discover: the key challenges facing internal communication in a multi-site organization, along with practical advice and best practices to address them.
