Marketing hears about a product change late. Customer support reports the same problem again, but the details never reach the team that can fix it. One specialist remains the only bridge between two departments. Each team may still be doing its own job well.
These gaps are often called organizational silos. It is tempting to blame them on people's reluctance to collaborate, but the cause is often the design of processes, goals, and decision rights. Sparse communication is not automatically a problem either: specialist teams do not need equally strong ties to every part of the company.
Organizational network analysis (ONA) can show where cross-team ties are weak or depend on one person. That network pattern then needs to be checked against the work itself: handoffs, decisions, customer cases, and employees' experience.
What are organizational silos?
An organizational silo forms when a team, function, or location works mainly within its own group and exchanges too little information, knowledge, or support with people required for a shared result. The boundary may sit between departments, management levels, professional specialties, or project teams.
A boundary is useful while it supports specialization and keeps decisions close to the work. It becomes a risk when a process depends on exchange across that boundary but no reliable relationship or handoff exists.
An org chart shows reporting lines and assigned responsibilities, not every working relationship. Two adjacent functions may barely interact while employees in distant parts of the company solve problems together every week. ONA adds a map of those actual ties to the formal structure.
Why organizational silos form
Silos rarely have a single cause. Several ordinary conditions tend to reinforce one another:
- Different goals and measures. Each team can hit its targets while the end-to-end process slows down at the handoff.
- Specialized knowledge. Expertise grows inside a function, but no routine carries it to the teams that need it.
- Unclear ownership. When no one owns a cross-team process, important updates fall between roles.
- Workload and time pressure. People turn to familiar contacts and urgent tasks; maintaining new cross-team ties sits outside the work.
- Growth and reorganization. New locations, hybrid work, and structural changes interrupt relationships that used to carry context.
- A single intermediary. If one person connects two groups, communication stops when that person is overloaded or unavailable.
Reagans and McEvily found that both social cohesion and network range eased knowledge transfer. Ties inside a group can support trust, while a broader range of contacts helps knowledge cross team boundaries. The practical aim is therefore not maximum network density. It is the set of connections a particular process needs.
When a gap between teams matters
A low volume of cross-department messages proves little. Look first for a consequence in the work.
Handoffs keep losing context
The receiving team lacks what it needs to continue. People ask the same questions again, rebuild documents, or discover requirements late. The cause may be a missing relationship, a vague handoff, or incompatible systems. Those call for different fixes.
The same problem appears on both sides of a boundary
One part of the organization repeatedly sees an issue, but the team able to address it receives too little detail or no feedback. Recurrence points to where information stops. It does not yet explain why.
One person carries the coordination
A connector may be doing valuable work. If decisions, requests, and updates stall without that person, however, the network is fragile and the employee may be overloaded. Check whether direct working relationships and documented routines can support the same process.
A project runs on personal workarounds
Teams get a result because a few employees know whom to contact. That can hold while workload and team membership stay stable. It is still not a reliable process.
Teams cannot see one another's work
Limited visibility matters when people need shared timing, customer context, or technical dependencies to make a decision. It is perfectly reasonable when their work is independent. A better question is: what does one team need to know about the other, and by when?
How ONA finds collaboration gaps
ONA represents people or groups as nodes and work-related relationships as ties. The ties may come from focused surveys, communication metadata collected under clear rules, or actions in work systems such as requests for help, recognition, ideas, and problem reports. Each source captures only part of collaboration.
Tie the analysis to a work question
Begin with a process that crosses teams: “Where does information about customer issues stop before it reaches product?” or “Which launch activities depend on one coordinator?” A specific question sets the boundary of the analysis and separates relevant collaboration from general activity.
Choose signals that fit the question
A survey can reveal whom people approach for information or help, but it depends on participation and recall. Communication metadata offers scale but not the meaning of a message. Actions inside a work platform cover only activity recorded there. Before collecting data, explain the purpose, what will be collected, who can see the results, and how they may be used.
Compare ties within and between groups
Look at where recurring contacts appear: inside one team, between functions, across locations, or around a shared process. Researchers use measures such as network modularity to describe clustering. The number describes a structure; it does not rate the quality of collaboration.
A Management Science study examined aggregated, anonymized metadata from 362 billion emails across 4,361 organizations, plus several communication channels within one global company during the move to remote work. Modularity rose in 2020 while membership in subgroups became less stable. The unusual period and the limits of metadata matter: the result does not mean that every organization is siloed or that sending more messages would solve the issue.
Inspect bridges and bottlenecks
A person who connects two groups helps knowledge move between them. The same position can concentrate too much coordination in one place. Find out what work travels through the tie, how often, and whether direct contacts or a routine could carry some of it.
Check the map with the people doing the work
Discuss the pattern with employees. Review task dependencies, decision rights, handoff records, and customer cases. Compare several periods when possible, because a single snapshot can reflect survey participation, seasonality, a reorganization, or a temporary project.
What to do after finding a gap
Match the intervention to the cause rather than the shape of the network diagram:
- For lost context at a handoff, agree on an intake format, required information, an owner, and a feedback loop.
- For conflicting goals, add a small number of shared measures for the end-to-end process alongside functional targets.
- For knowledge trapped in one group, set up a recurring exchange, documentation, or paired work around the expertise others need.
- For an overloaded connector, create direct ties, distribute coordination, and include that work in workload planning.
- For unclear decision rights, state who contributes information, who decides, and how affected teams hear the result.
Do not begin with a company-wide instruction to “collaborate more” or another series of standing meetings. Every connection costs time. Change one process first, then check whether the required handoff became more reliable.
How HiveHR surfaces cross-team signals
HiveHR records work actions inside the platform: thanking a colleague for a specific contribution, proposing an idea, or reporting a problem. When teams use these actions regularly, repeated ties and themes can show where help is exchanged, which groups are connected, and where the same issue travels through several stages of a process.
These signals do not describe every relationship in a company. They produce questions that managers can test with employees and process evidence. A separate analysis of informal leaders can help identify who carries knowledge between groups and whether that role is overloaded.
Frequently asked questions
What is an organizational silo?
It is a pattern in which a group exchanges too little information or too few working relationships with other groups required for a shared process. Specialization alone is not a silo.
How can you identify silos between departments?
Choose a cross-team process, examine the working relationships relevant to it, and compare the network pattern with employee accounts and process evidence. Low interaction without a work consequence does not establish a harmful silo.
How does organizational network analysis help?
ONA shows how ties are distributed within and between groups. That can reveal a weak connection or an overloaded bridge and show where further investigation is worthwhile.
Are organizational silos always bad?
No. Boundaries help teams focus and develop expertise. They become a concern when they block information or cooperation required for shared work.
How do you break down organizational silos?
Fix the mechanism: the handoff, decision rights, knowledge exchange, conflicting goals, or dependence on one intermediary. More messages and meetings across the whole company are rarely a precise answer.
Can HiveHR identify organizational silos?
HiveHR can show patterns in recognition, ideas, and problem reports recorded in the platform. Those patterns support a hypothesis about cross-team connections; they still need to be checked with employees and process evidence.
Test one cross-team process
Run a 30-day HiveHR pilot to collect the first work signals and decide which connection deserves a closer look.
Sources
- Reagans, R., & McEvily, B. (2003). Network Structure and Knowledge Transfer: The Effects of Cohesion and Range. Administrative Science Quarterly, 48(2), 240–267.
- Zuzul, T., Pahnke, E. C., Larson, J., et al. (2025). Dynamic Silos: Increased Modularity and Decreased Stability in Intraorganizational Communication Networks During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Management Science, 71(4), 3428–3448.
- Cross, R., Borgatti, S. P., & Parker, A. (2002). Making Invisible Work Visible: Using Social Network Analysis to Support Strategic Collaboration. California Management Review, 44(2), 25–46.
- Jones, A. A., Uhd, J., Kabore, C. D., & Cornett, K. A. (2024). Breaking Down Silos in the Workplace: A Framework to Foster Collaboration. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, 30(6), E306–E311.