1. SAMPLE Drive Engagement Through Interdepartmental Collaboration
Transition from a non-collaborative environment to one that drives innovation and results across departments.
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2. Introduction
Collaboration directly impacts the bottom line. Not working collaboratively costs the organization money, whereas a collaborative work environment results in the tangible benefits of increased profits and productivity.
This Research Is Designed For:
This Research Will Help You:
The Head of HR who is accountable for improving interdepartmental collaboration, engagement, and morale.
Business executives who want to shift their organization from being non-collaborative to a collaborative environment.
Determine the underlying causes of poor levels of interdepartmental collaboration in your organization.
Put together an action plan to address the issues and improve collaboration.
Improve engagement surveys by increasing collaboration, transparency, and trust.
Boost employee morale and productivity.
Evaluate the outcome of your initiatives to determine their success and impact on the organization.
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3. Executive Summary SAMPLE The Situation
Organizations of all sizes are struggling with interdepartmental collaboration which is a core engagement driver. Improve engagement surveys by increasing collaboration, transparency, and trust.
Interdepartmental collaboration has a number of benefits for the organization including increasing innovation, engagement, and productivity.
Non-collaborative behaviors can impede the organization’s ability to accomplish business goals, lower morale levels, and create unhealthy competitive work environments.
The Challenge
There are a number of drivers that are related to collaboration and directly impact the level of success your collaborative projects are achieving. These include your organizational values, organizational structure, leadership, communication, performance management, and compensation practices.
It is necessary that your culture, behaviors, and practices are aligned with and support your goals of collaboration in order to create a work environment that fosters interdepartmental collaboration.
The Solution – McLean & Company Recommends
Use McLean & Company’s Collaboration Assessment Tool to determine the collaboration pain points in your organization and prioritize your efforts on the collaboration drivers that need the most attention.
Create a collaborative culture by ensuring that your values and organizational structure align with your collaborative goals.
Foster collaborative behaviors by working with your leaders to get them on board with the initiative and develop a trusting environment. Ensure that your communication practices are unobstructed and that there is transparent sharing of information.
Encourage and reward the correct behaviours by reviewing and aligning performance management and compensation practices to your collaborative goals.
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4. Guided Implementation
McLean & Company offers various levels of support to best suit your needs
Guided Implementation
“Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”
DIY Toolkit
“Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”
Workshop
“We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”
Consulting
“Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”
Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options
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5. Interdepartmental Collaborative Culture
In order to drive collaboration, it is necessary to align your culture, behaviors, and practices towards this goal
Use McLean & Company’s collaboration framework to create an interdepartmental collaborative culture in your organization.
Interdepartmental Collaborative Culture
Organizational values
Organizational structure
Performance management
Compensation structures
Leadership
Communication
Culture
Behaviors
Practices
The following section will help you identify which of these areas are pain points for your organization and are causing poor levels of collaboration to persist. The blueprint will also assist you in identifying some action items that you can undertake to improve interdepartmental collaboration. Watch out for the icons above to help guide you through this deck.
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6. Sample Slides
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7. Teamwork and collaboration are often used interchangeably to describe people working together, but are not the same thing
In the business world today, both collaboration and teamwork are positive activities – it is important to recognize the difference between the two.
Teamwork
Collaboration
McLean & Company defines teamwork as:
Works with others to achieve shared goals while taking responsibility for individual actions in order to achieve consistent results.
McLean & Company defines collaboration as:
Two or more people working towards a goal, who may have conflicting interests and in most cases do not work in the same team or department.
Teamwork is something we learned at a very young age, especially if we were involved with a sports team or an association.
Teams in organizations are made of individuals chosen by the manager and they are working toward a common goal and usually have a defined leader.
Teamwork tends to be focused on specific goals with a shorter timeframe.
Collaborative groups rarely have a leader to solve differences, unlike teams who have a leader or manager to assist when conflict rises.
Collaboration often involves broader organization- wide objectives with longer timeframes. It can also include the sharing of information and resources without an immediate or clearly defined goal.
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8. Strong interdepartmental collaboration also has the potential to improve engagement, morale, and productivity
Engagement Survey respondents who indicated that their environment was highly collaborative were almost three times more likely to be engaged than respondents with moderate levels of collaboration, and approximately six times more likely to be engaged than low collaboration respondents.
Benefits of interdepartmental collaboration include:
Higher employee engagement and morale. A transparent and collaborative work environment leads to higher job satisfaction.
Improved levels of productivity. Departments that have systems for clear communication and expectations are able to efficiently work together to complete projects and achieve business goals.
Greater process efficiency as departments are more likely to share best practices.
Source: McLean & Company; N=14,187
79% of Engagement Survey respondents who were classified as being highly collaborative were also classified as being highly productive.
Conversely, only 61% and 57% of respondents who indicated they had moderate and low collaboration were classified as
highly productive, respectively.
All of these benefits of collaboration directly impact the bottom line.
When done right, collaboration should result in cost savings for the organization.
Source: McLean & Company; N=13,733
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9. McLean & Company Helps HR Professionals To:
Empower management to apply HR best practices
Develop effective talent acquisition & retention strategies
Build a high performance culture
Maintain a progressive set of HR policies & procedures
Demonstrate the business impact of HR
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