Even though almost 75% of employers rate collaboration and teamwork as “very important,” according to data from Queens University of Charlotte, 39% of employees think that people in their organization don’t collaborate enough.

Improved communication between team members in the workplace often brings fantastic results, including:

• Smoother team building

• Greater agility

• Enhanced focus

• Efficient performance

• Reduced workload

In light of those benefits, it’s easy to agree that workplace collaboration is critical. But achieving these results can be difficult. Here are five tips to streamline communications in the digital age:

Information hoarding, whether intentional or not, can be a costly problem. In fact, International Data Corp estimates that Fortune 500 companies lose at least $31.5 billion a year by failing to share knowledge across teams and individuals. When employees don’t share their knowledge, teams miss opportunities to collaborate, individuals waste time trying to track down information, and organizations fail to preserve expertise and tacit knowledge when people leave the company.

At the end of your day, do you close out dozens of browser tabs that you intended to look at but never got to?

Do you have piles of downloaded movies, TV shows, and music that you’ve never watched?

Have you ever discovered unread PDFs, e-books, and blog articles collecting virtual dust in secret corners of your computer?

Congratulations, you might be an Information Hoarder!

That means you collect information but don’t use it. Like the cat ladies on an episode of “Hoarders,” Information Hoarders have way more stuff than they know what to do with.

This very modern problem stems from the wealth of knowledge at our fingertips, our desire to consume it all, and our inability to do it.

I’ve observed a growing problem in today’s workplace where employees hide, hoard or simply don’t provide information to others in their organization. It’s disruptive and contributes substantially to the lack of productivity. Although employers have tried multiple solutions to the problem — meetings, team building, knowledge management systems — the issue remains largely unresolved.

Human beings are a complicated bunch, and, as it turns out, there are multiple reasons that can cause this breakdown in the flow of information from person to person, level to level or team to team. The fix depends largely on determining which specific issues are driving the behavior in each particular instance.