The current department system as in the field is great and all however I believe it could be changed to be better.
My idea for this is have an area within settings where you may configure a Department, or even a page for departments as i'm not bothered. But essentially upon creation of a Department you'd be able to assign a Department Director, Department Manager's and then also setup if anyone may join the Department or not.
Then with these departments members of the workspace can either be invited to the department by the director or they may request to join. Once in a department they'd be able to see Department only announcement's, Setup Department wide Requirements, Department only Documentation, and anything else that the community of hyra may want which I'm sure they may comment it on this post.
I know that this would be quite alot to develop however I believe that a good amount of communities would love something like this.