"Are You a CEO, Director, or Founder interested in a Feature Interview?"
All Interviews are 100% FREE of Charge
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Most businesses have some form of dedicated IT management department. Labour Force SurveyThe ratio of general IT staff to non-technical staff is usually around 4% of the total staff.
These IT personnel and departments often need to communicate with other staff across the company. From basic day-to-day tasks to long-term collaboration, meeting deadlines, and maintaining security, it’s important that the relationship between IT and non-technical employees isn’t just present, it’s effective.
If you’re noticing poor quality IT cross-department collaboration, here are four ways to improve communication and build better professional relationships between your technical and non-technical teams.
1. Establish and foster healthy communication
Communication cannot be ignored in any business environment. As employees become more geographically dispersed by distance and time zones, it becomes important to maintain communication not only across teams but also across departments. This is of paramount importance, especially in an isolated field like IT.
One way to enhance communication is regular meetings between teams. Many companies hold regular meetings where everyone comes together to hear company-wide updates and for overall alignment. Company-wide meetings might seem like a huge and intimidating task that drains resources, but don’t worry – there are multiple ways to implement this concept efficiently.
for example, Zappos holds its famous all-hands meetings three times a year, and spacing out such large collaborative moments makes them special.
If meetings are a problem for you, you can go the other way: with pre-recorded messages. But if you choose this option, be aware that simple video messaging can be just as confusing and lengthy as a meeting. Instead, look for tools that help you send purposeful, value-centered messages.
For example, marketing platform Drift uses its communications tool Zight to: Internal communicationThe company used screen recorder technology to send annotated knowledge-based videos to employees, which organized and reinforced the purpose of each message, making them easier to refer to later without having to watch the entire thing again.
The takeaway? Invest in some form of healthy interdepartmental communication that fits into your workflow.
Related: Effective communication is essential in today’s diverse workforce. Here’s how to make sure your message is clear.
2. Avoid jargon
Removing jargon and technical terms from basic interdepartmental communications starts at the top: IT leaders must demonstrate how to eliminate arcane language when speaking, recording, typing, or otherwise interacting with their colleagues.
This isn’t just because it’s effective to lead by example — workplace jargon is often most firmly established at the top of a company. My Perfect Resume It found that 33% of those surveyed believe that senior managers are most likely to use jargon excessively in the workplace.
To make matters worse, a third of those questioned also used jargon they didn’t understand. Use jargon-free language. This keeps communication transparent and prevents peer pressure or embarrassment from undermining effective understanding between IT and other teams.
Related: Why you should never use jargon in the workplace
3. Fill knowledge gaps with cross-functional training
Specialization and niche knowledge are what define an IT team. Technicians’ value lies in their ability to bridge the gap between humans and machines. However, this expertise won’t be as effective if the communication gap between IT staff and others becomes too wide.
One way to ensure that all employees are on the same playing field is to implement cross-functional training, the process of educating employees from different departments in areas that complement their own areas of expertise. It values ​​shared knowledge and helps teams respect and understand their roles in the broader context of how the business operates.
Google The company has mastered the art of cross-departmental training. On the one hand, the company used Whisper Courses, a series of micro-lessons in the form of emails, to teach small teamwork lessons. Additionally, the search engine giant encourages employees to train each other, which shares knowledge in a peer-to-peer manner and maintains a culture of learning.
The takeaway here is that you don’t have to follow a formula for inter-departmental training — find what works for your environment and invest in it.
4. Cultivate an inclusive culture
Inclusion is a common goal for workplace culture. It focuses on making all employees feel welcome. It embraces gender, age and other demographic differences and aims to incorporate the strengths of each individual and team into the company’s operations.
It’s a powerful way to keep IT and non-technical staff connected and respectful of each other’s contributions. By putting empathy and respect at the core of how your company operates, you can keep those vital communication channels open and healthy.
No other company has demonstrated such truly effective inclusiveness in its business operations. PixarThe media company is known for its ability to generate quality ideas while at the same time making everyone feel welcome and included in the conversation.
The company’s “Notes Days” are a great example of this: these are days when the entire company takes a break from work and comes together for collective brainstorming sessions, which have resulted in some of the best cross-departmental collaboration in modern history.
If you want to connect your technical and non-technical teams, make sure everyone feels included.
Related: How to build an inclusive culture that permeates every level of your organization
Breaking down the barriers between IT and other professional worlds
IT departments have become an integral part of most modern businesses. But they can’t function in isolation. Poor communication can lead to confused expectations, missed deadlines, and even compromised safety and security.
It’s essential that leaders work to align IT and non-technical teams so that everyone is in the know, up to date, and working together to achieve the same business goals.
"Elevate Your Brand with an Exclusive Feature Interview!"