Carolyn Stern, Author at EI Experience

Virtual Onboarding: How to Reduce Employee Turnover Early On

by Carolyn Stern | Aug 12, 2021 | Hiring and Recruiting, Management Skills

HR leaders understand how stressful it can be to attract and hire new employees, especially when they’re assessing whether or not the prospect will be a long-term employee. We know how tempting it is to jump the gun and consider a hire “successful” once you offer the job to a promising candidate, but not so quick—you still have to undertake one of the most critical tasks of hiring a new employee: onboarding.

Onboarding is a company’s chance to welcome new members of staff and orient them to the corporate culture as smoothly as possible. Not only does it mark the beginning of their skills development within a company, but their onboarding program begins to shape their perception of the company. If their onboarding process is rushed, ineffective, or non-existent, new hires who don’t feel appreciated by their managers will be less likely to recognize the value in their job and stay for the long haul.

A Digital Take on Onboarding

From the moment the world was shaken by a global pandemic, companies have changed the way they’ve run their day-to-day operations. For better or for worse, employees who’ve been used to working all day in an office were soon thrown into the land of remote work. Whether the distractions at home made it hard to stay focused on your tasks, or the comfortability of working in your sweatpants made remote work tolerable, long-term employees have finally settled into their new normal. Yet for the past year and a half, employers have been so focused on adjusting their businesses to the chaos of COVID-19, that they neglected the importance of onboarding new employees in the era of a virtual workforce.

As the War For Talent intensifies, it would be a mistake not to make every effort to retain talented employees. Fortunately, the Society for Human Resource Management reported that 69% of employees who’ve had a positive onboarding experience are more likely to stay with their company for at least three years. Read on as we uncover four ways to improve your virtual onboarding process and reduce employee turnover early on.

What We'll Cover:

Provide Them a Mentor
Build Employee Experience by Encouraging Team Engagement
Showcase Your Learning Culture & Values
Communicate with Impact
Free Emotional Intelligence Quiz

1. Provide Them a Mentor

The right mentor can change an employee’s life. To help new virtual employees feel like a member of the team and put them on route to becoming a cornerstone of the company, give them a mentor to help them navigate their first few weeks and even beyond. Mentors aren’t there to tell a new employee what to do, but rather help launch them on the right path and avoid making costly and time-consuming mistakes. It could take several years for a new employee to advance higher up the company’s corporate ladder, but a mentor can expedite their journey and shorten the learning curve. To learn more about the impact of mentorship in the workplace on your employee’s professional development, productivity, and engagement, read our latest blogs on mentorships.

2. Build Employee Experience by Encouraging Team Engagement

In a remote work environment, engagement and social contact tend to dwindle down, replaced by interactions that feel more transactional. HR executives inform us that when there is a lack of genuine connection, some workers feel as if they could work for any organization. This rings true, especially for new employees. To deliver a successful onboarding process and establish a great employee experience from the beginning, new recruits should not only get to know the organization they’re working for but also get to know the people and faces on their teams. To keep new employees engaged from the onset of their time with your company, virtual onboarding should be interactive. Use innovative digital methods to connect with the team such as implementing polls, starting a group chat, using breakout groups on Zoom, hosting virtual lunches, and creating communities on social media platforms to build relationships.

3. Showcase Your Company’s Learning Culture and Values

According to a LinkedIn poll of over 3,000 U.S. professionals, 70% indicated they would leave a top corporation if the culture was inadequate. On top of that, 71% indicated they would take a pay cut to work for an organization that reflects their values and is committed to a vision they believe in. With most employees today feeling disconnected and unaligned with their organizational culture, it’s as crucial as ever to instill a sense of belonging in new hires and emphasize a strong culture to reduce employee turnover. In particular, this means emphasizing the company’s mission and values throughout the onboarding process. Saying it is one thing, but it’s important that you show onboarding virtual team members how your company lives up to the missions and values each day.

Despite working in a different physical environment, new employees need to be seamlessly immersed into the company’s culture in order to cultivate their sense of belonging to the organization at an early stage. To foster strong company culture, your company must encourage mutually beneficial connections between employees, which sets the tone for your organization’s success.

4. Communicate With Impact

Whether working on-site or remote, employees are currently facing a “crisis of connection.” In fact, only 40% of employees experience a feeling of belonging at their company, according to a Gartner study. The situation is much worse for new hires, with only 32% of those employed in the last year reporting a sense of belonging to their workplace. In a virtual onboarding environment, there’s no such thing as over-communicating with new recruits. However, it’s important to remember that most people only remember a small proportion of what is said to them, but with impactful communication, you’ll be more likely to leave a lasting impression on your new hires. The secret to communicating with impact? Tuning into your emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and regulate your own emotions while simultaneously being aware of and considering the sentiments of others. When you increase your emotional intelligence, you get to know your employees as humans first. Then, once you learn how to communicate with impact, you plant the seeds of trust and employee satisfaction in your new employees.

Not sure where you stand in terms of your emotional intelligence? Try our free 15-question quiz to measure your level of emotional intelligence:

How High is my EI?

Onboarding has always been a core factor of HR success. If you do it right, outstanding employees will stick around and become significant contributors to your company’s overall success. If you onboard ineffectively, talented workers will walk out the door, taking your expertise and time with them. With nearly twice as many employees working from home as in the office, most HR professionals are finding it difficult to onboard, train, and integrate new hires digitally. However, by using the virtual onboarding best practices we’ve provided above, you’ll elevate your onboarding process to help ensure your new employees won’t leave you high and dry.

If you need help mastering your virtual onboarding and the new hire experience, book a call with us here; we’d love to listen and provide support in any way we can.

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How to Attract and Retain Young Talent

by Carolyn Stern | Jul 28, 2021 | Hiring and Recruiting

You’ve been advertising a position at your company for months but haven’t been able to find the perfect person for the job. Interviews, recruitment, advertising, and scouting take a lot of time and energy, but you continue to persevere through the fatigue until you’ve found the right individual for the job. At last, you meet the ultimate applicant! During the interview, they ask thoughtful and critical-thinking questions about your organization, appear motivated about the position, and are fully qualified and highly skilled. A huge weight has been lifted off your shoulders…but when you contact the applicant to inform them of your decision to hire them, they refuse your job offer. They don’t believe the company is a “suitable fit” for them. At this point, you’ve lost a valuable candidate, and you’re forced to either start back at square one and continue the hunt or hesitantly offer the job to the second choice prospect. Cue the weight on your shoulders.

The War For Talent

Almost 28.6 million baby boomers—those born between 1946 and 1964—retired in the third quarter of 2020. However, there are simply not enough post-baby-boom employees to fill the gap of baby-boom retirements in the U.S. and Europe. In 2019, 83% of HR professionals claimed they were persistently struggling to recruit suitable job candidates. Companies are battling against each other in the War for Talent in the hopes of recruiting qualified young workers for their organizations. But we’re here to help your company attract young talent and retain young employees in the long run.

How to Attract and Retain Young Talent

Offer Employee Development

High-achieving young workers naturally desire training, mentoring, and coaching. Yet, many of them are not gaining the professional development opportunities they crave from their companies, which drives early exits and high turnover rates. Not only will you lose valuable expertise and knowledge, but you must endure the expensive cost of replacing employees. By describing possible development opportunities and showing genuine interest in their intellectual development and future, young employees will feel appreciated and more loyal to the company, which is a big step in retaining valuable talent. Additionally, providing training to help develop and grow your young workers will ensure you are cultivating a competitive workforce.

To appeal to hungry and talented young prospects, consider the following to encourage continuous employee development:

Hard and Soft Skills Building Programs
Emotional Intelligence Training
Leadership Development Programs
Mentorship and Coaching

Engage the Young WorkforcE

Leaders have always struggled to engage their workforce, but there’s more at stake when it comes to engaging young employees. For instance, Millennials are the least engaged generation in the workplace, with only three in 10 who are emotionally and behaviorally attached to their job and company. And this isn’t helping your company’s financial position—Gallup reports that it costs the U.S. economy $30.5 billion each year due to Millennial turnover costs. When building genuine connections and developing meaningful engagement, leaders must first identify the gaps that prevent them from engaging their teams. Then, leaders must use emotional intelligence to bridge these gaps and build a psychologically safe work environment where employees feel their opinion counts, their voice is heard, and they are a part of something larger than themselves. Leaders must recognize that engagement is built on trust, and once you engage your young workforce, you’ll get loyalty, productivity, and retainment in return.

Promote a Strong Organizational Culture

Almost 50% of Gen Z respondents revealed they would be reluctant to take a full-time job that matched their skills but not their values. Young generations prioritize values, especially when looking for a job. A strong corporate culture can operate as a magnet, attracting skilled individuals and giving you an edge over competitors when hiring the best talent. To determine if your organization already has a thriving corporate culture, particularly one that is driven by emotional intelligence, ask yourself the following yes/no questions:

Are there several strong interpersonal relationships within your organization?
Do your workers have a sense of self-fulfillment?
Is everyone in the company conscious of their own emotions and the emotions of others around them?
Does the senior management team manage stress well?
Is there a practice of open communication between employees and their superiors?

If you answered “No” to at least 3 of the questions, it’s time to start building a solid corporate culture in your company—and it starts with emotional intelligence.

Use Emotional Intelligence to Recruit the Right People

An employee’s mentality, work ethic, communication, problem-solving, and stress-management skills are typically unknown to a leader until they begin their new job. So, how can you tell if the person you’re interviewing for a job has these crucial skills?

Although resumes provide us with a glimpse into prospective employees, forward-thinking organizations know that what is critical for success is not written on carefully curated resumes.

As a leadership and emotional intelligence training company that focuses on recruitment, evaluation, and developing employees, we understand the difficulties of combating a high turnover rate and the stress of attracting and retaining new prospects that will stay with your company. In fact, Gallup reports that it costs the U.S. economy a trillion dollars every year due to voluntary turnover.

The success of an organization relies on hiring candidates who are or have the potential to be exceptional leaders. People with strong leadership skills are found to have high levels of EI, making it an essential element for business leaders, managers, and entrepreneurs. HR professionals insist that while a high IQ might get someone hired, a high EQ will get them promoted! Rather than waiting to see if your candidates have a high EQ, why not test for it in the interview. By utilizing emotional intelligence interview questions, you can ask the candidates situational questions, which will cut to the heart and quickly reveal their competency level for whichever EQ skills you are looking for. If you need some inspiration, download our free emotional intelligence interview questions to help you on your search.

If you need help hiring, attracting, and retaining young talent, book a call with us here; we’d love to listen and provide support in any way we can.

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The Benefits of Hiring Young Talent

by Carolyn Stern | Jul 14, 2021 | Corporate Culture, Emotional Intelligence, Hiring and Recruiting

Do you remember your first job after graduating college? For many of us, this question takes us on a trip down memory lane. They were the starting point of our careers; a job that didn’t entail much experience and responsibility, and were seen as solely the launch to a long-lasting professional journey. Fast forward to today, entry-level jobs aren’t what they used to be. From 1980 to 2015, occupations requiring a higher level of job preparation—education, experience, and job training—grew by 68%. On top of requiring a four-year degree and a set of hard skills, employers are now requiring young employees to have advanced soft skills. In today’s age, corporate ladders have shrunk, career paths are accelerated, and entry-level employees typically leave their company only after a couple of years of beginning. Times have changed, and companies are demanding skilled and equipped young employees more than ever before. But how can hiring young talent benefit your company?.

The Quest for This Top Talent

One of the main concerns for CEOs today is acquiring top talent. As Baby Boomers leave the workforce and our digital landscape demands more complex skills, this concern will continue to be the case and companies will look to younger generations to meet their expectations. However, when it comes to comparing the EQ competencies between generations, Generations Y and Z are less equipped to master independence, problem-solving, and stress tolerance than Generation X and Baby Boomers.

The right young employees for your company are hard to come across, and choosing the wrong young employees can lead to a hit on productivity and innovation and a higher turnover rate. To avoid the stress it can cause your company, bottom-line, and your HR department who have to deal with employee retention, it is necessary that you attract and hire the young talent that will allow your organization to be competitive and innovative within your industry.

The Benefits of Hiring Young Talent

Young Talent is Vital For Long-Term Success

For a company to build an agile organization in the long run, managers must invest in the right people who are passionate about your cause and vision and will continue to evolve every day to learn and improve. Luckily, bright and driven young employees naturally desire training, mentoring, and coaching. They strive to improve their skills. They find value in becoming more versatile in a company. They treasure employee development, and they’ll find a company that will provide it for them.

Fresh Perspective in a Digital Age

Younger generations have grown up in a digitally advanced world. Their inherent aptitude for technology, as well as their ability to swiftly grasp new systems, distinguishes them from other generations of workers. Retaining young employees has a favorable and significant influence on the business’s adoption and use of new software applications. On top of having a natural affinity for technology, young workers also bring new viewpoints to your company. Their eagerness to learn, gain experience, and put their talents to use is beneficial for team performance, group dynamics, and productivity.

CUrate a Power Team

Most of us have heard the phrase “teamwork makes the dream work,” but a key factor in building an effective team is recruiting the right people. No matter how cohesive your team is, your organization will suffer if your team members aren’t able to adapt to new systems, develop, and grow in their tasks. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed young employees give your business the chance to curate a workforce filled with people who are particularly trained to match your company’s demands. For most of their life so far, young individuals have only been used to one thing: learning. They will be accustomed to a learning mentality that will make it easier for them to digest training and new concepts, especially if they are fresh out of school.

Culture Development

When looking for a job, younger generations are known for prioritizing company culture over all other considerations. In fact, millennials would take a $7,600 salary cut if it meant they worked at a job that provided a strong corporate culture. An organization’s workplace culture tends to be an overlooked and underestimated element, but it affects all parts of the company from productivity to your bottom line. Young employees, who recognize the significance of company culture, contribute to the development of a high-functioning team. Their new energy and perspective in addition to their dedication to improving a healthy culture will ensure that your organization is fostering a healthy and attractive work environment. Not only will this build team morale and cohesion, but a strong corporate culture can build loyalty in your young employees and help retain them in the long term.

Are You Prepared to Lead the Next Generation of Workers?

There’s no doubt that hiring young workers for your company is the key to being successful in the long run. After all, they are the workforce of the future. However, a recent study has found that the number one pressing challenge for employers is “attracting top young talent” and the second obstacle is “motivating them.” Now more than ever, it’s becoming more difficult to find the young shining gems for your organization, and we totally get it. Given that 61% of Gen Z employees reported that they would leave a job in two years if given the option, it’s no surprise that businesses are facing these issues. But the solution to curving these challenges lies in tuning into what young employees truly value and strategically attracting them. On top of that, your company must devise a well-thought-out plan to retain the right young talent—otherwise, you’ll have to go through the burden of advertising, recruiting, scouting, and interviewing all over again. But are you ready to fight in the War For Talent?

If you need help hiring, attracting, and retaining young talent, book a call with us here; we’d love to listen and provide support in any way we can.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin to keep up with our latest blogs!

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Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

by Carolyn Stern | Jun 30, 2021 | Teamwork

You work for a company day in, day out. You have your own specific role and responsibilities, and you’re in charge of finishing your daily tasks. You also know that your colleagues are in charge of their own responsibilities, but you rarely (if ever) cross into their territory because you believe their priorities and methods are unrelated to yours.

Suddenly, you find yourself swallowed by work. Whether it’s because of external pressure, like a global pandemic, or from internal pressures, such as increasing demands from your boss, it’s becoming more difficult to finish your daily tasks, and soon enough, you find yourself on a sinking ship with no lifeboat. Eventually, you are overworked, stressed out, and feel that you may need to start looking for a new job. What happens then? From our experience, we’ve seen this happen too often to our clients: employees are burnt out and underperform, HR departments must tackle poor employee experience, and companies struggle retaining their workers. In fact, according to a LinkedIn study, employees are 92% more likely to look at a job post when they face work-related stress and 45% more likely to apply for a new job when they feel that they don’t receive support from upper management.

How can this all be avoided? The answer: Teamwork.

Groups vs Teams

In order to visualize what a team is, we have to understand the difference between a group and a coherent team. First, think of a public transit bus. A public bus is packed with people, but riders barely communicate with each other and get off at their distinct stop. Each rider has their own distinct individual needs, unconcerned about others’ purposes. Occasionally, some riders will engage in conversation and establish a passing connection or friendship, but these people are simply a group of people.

Now think of a spirited bus ride taking a team of players to their game. On this bus, the riders get on and off at the same time. The players have uniform values and a mission to accomplish, with roles and goals that are interrelated. They regularly coordinate and communicate individual efforts to achieve a common goal, and they work together to keep each other motivated. They provide each other authentic and ongoing feedback, and they value collective improvement over individual development. Contrary to the public bus, the players on this bus work as a team.

How Does Teamwork Make the Dream Work?

Our last blog post revealed the biggest obstacle that a company can face: silos. We discussed the dangers to your business and the problems organizational barriers cause when your employees aren’t working in close collaboration or as a team, and we even shared the first step of breaking down silos and eradicating the problems they impose on your organization.

We’ve all heard the saying “teamwork makes the dream work.” But let’s break down this line by uncovering the power of teamwork and the benefits it can bring to your organization and bottom-line.

Higher Productivity

Different people approach problem-solving in their own distinct ways. In a team, employees with varied skills and expertise across various departments join forces to perform quality work within a shorter time than any lone worker or department could do. With effective communication and collaboration with multidisciplinary teams, teamwork is a more efficient method of making sure each individual works on the portion that is most aligned with their skills. When operating as a team, you receive the best of what everyone has to give. In turn, you have employees who are less likely to be overburdened by their workload or the level of quality demanded to them, knowing that teamwork breaks down complex activities into smaller, more manageable portions, allowing them to be completed more quickly.

Team Cohesion

For a firm to succeed, cohesiveness is critical. Without teamwork, individuals are more inclined to put their personal gains before the company’s interests. Your business, bottom-line, and corporate culture will suffer as a result of everyone working toward slightly different goals.

By focusing on establishing a well-oiled, cohesive group of employees, you lead the way towards the company’s success. However, it’s important to realize that cohesion does not instantly happen overnight. Your team has to first communicate with impact in order to foster creativity, dedication, and innovation. Only then can diverse minds work together to build on each other’s ideas, generate solutions, and produce fresh ideas that aid in innovation.

Less Managerial Intervention

When employees possess a team mentality, they work harmoniously together to achieve the same end-goal. They win as a team and they lose as a team, so they notice and rely on the quality of one another’s work. If one employee’s performance is insufficient, other team members will have the incentive to step in and offer their expertise and a fresh pair of eyes to assist them. Effective teams can control their own performance and improve alongside their team members without the need for constant management intervention.

When individual workers function as part of a team, there’s a pervasive sense of accountability and self-monitoring that isn’t present when working in silos. Due to a team’s self-correcting behaviour, management does not have to interfere as frequently, and instead, organizations can leverage the power of team support.

Strong Company Culture

A well-functioning team will develop a sense of solidarity, devotion, and synergy that defines the corporate culture. Working in a positive atmosphere improves team morale and employee experience and fulfillment, as well as generating a sense of belonging to something bigger than the employee themselves. When team members hold a shared mindset and purpose, a company can transform into a collaborative community in which everyone contributes to the greater good of the organization.

A strong company culture not only sets a clear image of your company’s brand and workforce, but it ensures that you’re retaining the right people. Employees are more inclined to stay with a company if they feel like they belong to it, implying reduced turnover and fewer new hires to onboard. A healthy company culture recruits, but more importantly, retains valuable talent.

What Are You Waiting For?

All successful businesses are built on the basis of high-performing teams, and knowing how to work effectively together is essential. When members of a team feel linked to one another, their emotional investment in the group grows, as does their dedication to success with their high-functioning team. To foster a genuine sense of community among your employees in order to achieve passionate and effective teams, an organization must build an emotionally intelligent team. By prioritizing emotional intelligence in the workplace, your employees will be able to use the information provided by emotions to act appropriately in the face of daily challenges. Not only will there be more open and honest conversations, but your organization can transform from a group to a team. If you’re ready to take the first step in building trust and developing intimate authentic connections, click here for a free emotional intelligence team activity.

If you need help successfully leading high-performing teams, book a call with us here; we’d love to listen and provide support in any way we can.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn to keep up with our latest posts!

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The Biggest Obstacle in your Business: Silos

by Carolyn Stern | Jun 16, 2021 | Corporate Culture, Work Environment

The saying “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” holds true in almost all cases. When we think about team cohesion, we know that multiple forces working together are likely to succeed. In recent years however, organizations have lost touch on this concept. At first glance, it makes sense: each department has their own responsibilities and objectives within a company, so it’s only reasonable for divisions to operate separately. Marketing is responsible for a different set of tasks than Production, while Production has their own responsibilities from Public Relations, and so on.

A common misconception is that when one division runs smoothly, it is a clear benefit to the company as a whole. However, improving each department does not improve the whole. By only focusing on how one department runs, we miss the intersection between different units, which is where the true value lies. In the beginning, a company can get away with improving one part of their company at a time. But when employees in one department fail to effectively communicate with those in other departments, red flags start waving.

Then we see this happen: different departments fail to cooperate, same tasks are done more than once, and each department maintains an “Us vs Them” mentality, succeeding within their own division regardless of the effect on the overall company. Ultimately, it’s up to the HR department to take over accountability and address issues, gaps, and productivity issues; the brunt of all the issues. In other words, when interdepartmental problems go unchecked, the entire organization suffers as a result.

Welcome to the biggest obstacle in your business: Silos.

In this blog, we’ll reveal how critical it is to eliminate the destructive power of silos that are impacting the success of your team.

What are Silos?

Organizational silos occur when employees are separated, often characterised by the department they work in. Silos aren’t necessarily a negative thing and are unavoidable in some cases. With departments having their own area of specialties and set of duties, full transparency is not always needed. However, some might interpret organizational silos as solely a structural problem rather than an emotional one.

When separate teams refuse to relay vital information, not only is a communication barrier at work formed, but also an emotional barrier. Companies are in hot water once they allow silos to grow to the point where departments are focused on their tasks, with little regard or care for the needs of other teams. Not to mention that employees who are hesitant to share knowledge or collaborate across the board have “tunnel vision” which creates a toxic company culture.

Organizational silos have the power to wreak havoc on an organization, and they can be extremely difficult to break down once established.

Why Should I Care About Silos?

As a leadership and emotional intelligence training company, our clients face a multitude of issues within their organization. One that appears to create more problems than anything else is teams working toward separate goals and ineffectively communicating.

In a recent McKinsey poll of global executives, siloed thinking and behavior were ranked the number one obstacle to a healthy digital culture. This survey underlines the difficulty of developing engagement and connection in a siloed digital workplace. Yet, with the post-pandemic era coming around the corner, this pain point will only be magnified, with some employees planning to work in an office while others are staying at home to work. Soon, the next normal will demand leaders to juggle a hybrid model of workforce both online and on-site. Companies that work in silos are likely to fail at building an agile organization, which will only slow them down further. In our experience, it is critical to recognize the dangers of silos on the overall health of your organization now, so that you can take the next steps of breaking them down.

The Consequences of Silos

Communication Barriers

Efficient organizations thrive off of effective communication within and between their departments. While information may flow efficiently throughout a department, organizational silos prevent the transfer of this information between departments. With silos, a company that was once a well-oiled machine faces a disconnect in communication. We’re familiar with the effects of miscommunication: poor decisions are made based on limited information, distrust builds between departments and management, departments selectively share information, and sooner or later, your company is struggling to move in the same direction.

Productivity Problems

Silos have the ability to severely reduce performance and production levels. For example, if your employees are not aware of the vital or relevant information, and even worse, they spend time finding it themselves and doing redundant tasks, their productivity is needlessly low. There is no need to go into detail about what happens when productivity takes a hit — employees aren’t performing optimally, managers are displeased, and the HR department is stressed.

Silos reduce performance and production levels

Low Morale

One of the main consequences of silos are the issues it creates for company cohesion and employee engagement. Silos can build up distrust and conflict between teams, erode faith in the company’s values and leadership, and demotivate employees from working in the best interest of the organization. Over the past year, we’ve already seen employers struggle to maintain workplace morale within their virtual workforce. With employee engagement at an all-time low, learning to bridge the gap between silos is essential to long-term longevity and building trust, enhancing employee morale, and improving employee experience.

Lack of Innovation

Innovation is rooted in data and discussion. Teams that actively discuss insightful findings together and collaborate as a whole foster creativity. When teams aren’t encouraged to exchange ideas and bounce off one another, innovation is stifled and the company isn’t at the forefront of advancements. When different departments share ideas and bring new concepts to the table, trust and resilience is planted in a company. An organization that breaks down silos is far more likely to be an innovative one.

The First step to Breaking Down Organizational Silos

Before anything else, we must remember that we are human. As much as we like to believe that we are most productive in our own isolated silos, humans are social beings. In fact, a company with effective cross-functional collaboration and communication typically outperform siloed organizations by up to 40%. This is no surprise as employees lose the ability to share knowledge and cross-pollinate ideas when they’re emotionally segregated.

The first step to breaking down silos is learning how to communicate with impact. The key to impactful communication? Emotional intelligence. In order to build trust, improve employee satisfaction, build morale and facilitate real-talk conversations, an organization must leverage emotional intelligence to ensure that the company collaborates effectively and maintains a cohesive mission that runs deep within an organization.

Not sure where you stand in terms of your emotional intelligence? Try our free 15-question quiz to measure your level of emotional intelligence:

How High is my EI?

Breaking down silos at work is not an easy job. However, ignoring the problems and obstacles that silos impose on your organization would be more destructive to your employees and the sustainability of your business. In the long run, there’s nothing stronger than a unified team that communicates with impact and has a common goal.

If you need help breaking down silos in your organization to foster productivity and achieve more, book a call with us here; we’d love to listen and provide support in any way we can.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn to keep up with our latest blogs!