Try e-mail to conduct business as an alternative to phone tag. Hire temporary staff. Identify heavy workload periods and see if temporary staff can provide relief and save overtime pay. Use college interns who are eager to get experience and earn credit hours. Develop cross-functional work teams.
Some projects require the expertise of several different employees in a department.
These informal groups provide the ideal foundation for cross-function work teams. A team has the advantage of bringing a variety of ideas and perspectives to a process and can turn an individual responsibility into a team responsibility. Empower teams to make their own decisions. Once your teams are trained and working together, encourage them to become more results oriented by empowering them to make their own decisions. This can be an uncomfortable process on both sides.