Collaboration And Teams - Why Employees Who Work Across Silos Get Burned Out - Sun and Planets Spirituality AYINRIN

 Collaboration And Teams - 

Why Employees Who Work Across Silos Get Burned Out - Sun and Planets Spirituality AYINRIN

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Summary.   

When employees collaborate across silos, there are numerous benefits for organizations. But the employees who do this critical work — also known as boundary spanners or network brokers — may end up overwhelmed, burned out, and can even develop abusive behavior toward their fellow employees. Research shows why this can happen, and suggests three key strategies companies can use to mitigate any negative effects: strategically integrating cross-silo collaboration into formal roles, providing adequate resources, and developing check-in mechanisms and opportunities to disengage.

In today’s fast-paced and complex business environment, fostering collaboration across organizational silos, whether between different teams, divisions, or regional offices, is no longer a luxury — it’s a necessity. It is key to improving performance, unlocking innovation, and speeding up coordination.

Both research and practice highlight the importance of engaging employees in breaking down silos. These individuals, known as “boundary spanners” or “network brokers,” often go beyond their formal roles to bridge gaps between disconnected people and units in an organization, facilitating the flow of ideas, information, and resources. Research also suggests that engaging in these activities can boost employees’ careers because they are exposed to unique strategic information and insights from different parts of the organization.

However, our recent research uncovers less obvious, yet significant risks associated with cross-silo coordination. Across field data, surveys, and experiments involving more than 2,000 working adults across two countries, we found evidence that engaging in collaboration across silos, and particularly acting as an intermediary between disparate individuals in an organization, can lead to increased levels of burnout and negative social behaviors.

The Unseen Costs: Cognitive Overload and Emotional Strain

While past research has documented many benefits of boundary-spanning, we suspected that individuals collaborating across silos may be faced with higher levels of cognitive and emotional demands, which could lead to higher levels of burnout. We also wanted to understand if the exhaustion and burnout they faced may lead to abusive behavior toward others.

We employed a multi-method approach to test our ideas. First, we conducted a field study at a university in South America. We collected email exchanges among employees to measure how and how much they collaborate across silos. These emails were anonymized to remove any personal information about the senders and recipients. We also measured their burnout and level of aggressiveness using a survey. In a second study, we surveyed a sample of U.S. employees across a range of organizations in different industries. We asked them to report on their behavior when collaborating across silos and, later, on their burnout and abusive behaviors toward others. In a third study, we conducted an experiment that placed participants in scenarios representing different ways to collaborate across silos and measured their impact on self-reported burnout and abusive behavior. Across the studies, we measured moderate levels of abusive behaviors relevant to workplaces, such as being rude to others, making negative comments, undermining others, and putting them down.

Throughout these three studies, we identified that engaging in cross-silo collaborations, especially when keeping people across silos apart (whether physically or in terms of communication) increases burnout. This increase in burnout is due to the additional cognitive and emotional demands these activities entail. When engaging in cross-silo collaborations, employees need to handle complex, often conflicting information and perspectives from various sources and reconcile them to generate value for their work and their organization. They often encounter divergent expectations or group norms and need to adapt to them to make progress in their work. Moreover, while breaking down silos and facilitating collaborations, individuals often find themselves with limited control over their collaborators’ work.

Take the hypothetical case of Nilam, an engine system engineer at a successful startup, who is loosely based on a range of informal interviews we conducted with managers. Nilam works with two coworkers from different teams: Jun, a marketer, and Riley, a production lead. On one particular project, Nilam sought their perspectives early on in designing of the company’s new fuel-efficient engine.

While Nilam was initially thrilled to work with both of them, the demands associated with these interactions soon became overwhelming. Jun advocated for a power-dense engine that market research shows to be in demand. On the other hand, Riley was concerned about the production and cost constraints of such a new engine: Increasing its power density might mean higher production costs, even hurting its fuel efficiency.

The cognitive load ramped up as Nilam tried to reconcile these conflicting requirements through separate back-to-back meetings with Jun to discuss customer preferences and with Riley to go over production costs. Each meeting ended with a list of action items that Nilam had to incorporate into the engine design, adding to their workload.

Moreover, Nilam faced the challenge of adapting to different group norms. As a marketer, Jun was all about making quick decisions and fast iterations. Riley, however, followed the stringent protocols of their production team and was methodical and risk-averse. Managing these conflicting approaches was stressful for Nilam and took a toll on their mental health over time.

Our research also shows that the higher level of burnout boundary spanners such as Nilam experience can have spillover effects on their coworkers because it increases the likelihood of engaging in aggressive or abusive behavior. Feelings of exhaustion and of being overwhelmed can lead to abrupt or derogatory comments, displays of impatience, as well as being more prone to conflict. All of this poses a serious threat to the vital role boundary spanners play in fostering cross-silo collaboration within an organization.

The Solution: Organizational Support for Connection and Recovery

So, what can organizations do to encourage important cross-boundary engagement without exhausting their employees? We suggest three main strategies.

Strategically integrate cross-silo collaboration into formal roles.

Certain functions within organizations are structurally positioned to engage in cross-silo collaboration more frequently, for example, project management, sales and marketing, and human resources management. The first step to reducing burnout from cross-silo collaboration is to formally recognize their role in bridging different contacts and teams in their job description, workload, and performance evaluation.

For example, in Nilam’s case, this would mean including the involvement of key stakeholders from marketing and production as part of an engine system engineer’s job description and responsibilities, along with developing specific objectives related to this boundary-spanning role. Recognizing these activities as part of Nilam’s role is an explicit acknowledgment of the demands that the role carries. The same addition would apply to the job of Jun and Riley, such that marketers and production leads expect to cowork with people from different teams.

What’s crucial here is ensuring that the work performed by boundary spanners is recognized and that there are clear expectations for their indispensable role as cross-team, cross-function collaborator, in addition to their functional roles.

Provide adequate resources.

Burnout often stems from a mismatch between the demands of a job and the resources available to an employee. This issue becomes more acute for those who informally take on the task of cross-silo collaboration, as they face extra cognitive and emotional burdens without necessarily receiving additional support to manage these challenges effectively.

Therefore, it becomes crucial not only to acknowledge people’s roles in cross-silo collaboration formally, but also to equip and prepare them with sufficient organizational resources. These resources include essential technological tools for collaboration and, perhaps more importantly, comprehensive training programs in areas such as communication, negotiation, cultural sensitivity, and project management.

Furthermore, given the evidence that recognition and incentives can mitigate the negative impact of burnout, offering rewards for achievements in cross-silo collaboration can provide further motivation and recognition. For example, consider introducing a “Cross-Function Collaboration Champion” award, accompanied by a financial bonus, to recognize individuals or teams who excel in cross-silo collaboration between different departments or geographical locations to enhance work quality or knowledge exchange. By ensuring that employees are both well-equipped and recognized in this manner, organizations can significantly mitigate the risk of burnout and foster a healthier, more productive workplace environment.

Develop multifaceted check-in mechanisms and provide opportunities to disengage.

Due to the inherently demanding nature of cross-silo collaborations — both informal and formalized — engaging in boundary-spanning activities can lead to burnout among employees. Therefore, it is crucial for organizations and managers to identify when their key boundary spanners are becoming overloaded and help them disengage regularly.

Detecting burnout in employees requires a multifaceted approach that combines direct communication with observation to provide feedback and support. First, managers can actively use their one-on-one check-ins to understand the challenges faced by boundary spanners. Second, observations of changes in work habits, such as a sudden drop in productivity or an increase in absenteeism, can be a sign of burnout. Additionally, since burnout often manifests in aggressive behavior toward others, it is important for managers to be vigilant if team members suddenly act aggressively or abusively. Third, pulse surveys, which typically collect data on employees’ current state of mind, workload, and well-being, can be another way to detect symptoms of burnout in boundary spanners.

Finally, because the demands faced by individuals like Nilam occur informally outside the zone of formal influence of their manager, they are often only partially visible. Hence, to help boundary spanners disengage, organizations can cultivate a wider workplace culture that emphasizes the importance of breaks and recovery time and legitimizes disengaging completely from work during the evening or the weekend. For example, having leaders delay their answers (or questions) until the next working day signals that immediate responses are not required during non-working hours.

. . .

Cross-silo collaboration is a double-edged sword in the modern workplace. While it undeniably serves as a catalyst for expedited coordination and innovation, it can adversely affect the well-being of those who engage in it. The good news is that organizations can adopt a multifaceted approach to support their boundary-spanning employees.

Adopting these approaches will require effort and time at both the organizational and individual levels. However, we believe this is a worthy investment, not only to address the risk of employee burnout in cross-silo collaboration but also to nurture a workplace ecosystem that is healthier and more conducive to long-term success.

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