Has your organisation design taken a pounding in the name of surviving the current economic climate?

These initiatives offer real short-/medium-term cash-flow improvements, but they represent significant organisation or operating model changes and have an impact on delivery. So once these changes have been made, how do you start to glue your organisation back together? 

The operational reality is that these changes may have unintended consequences and implications that could last far beyond the current recession, including:

• Breaking established processes and protocols (which may not be documented, but which depend on individuals knowing how to get things done)

• A heightened risk of losing valuable knowledge, accumulated over many years but never recorded or passed on to other employees

• Those left within the organisation struggling to cope with ‘business as usual’ as they find themselves doing the jobs of one or more of the displaced employees and becoming overwhelmed by their day-to-day duties

• Random acts of redeployment and resources being hidden for the promised recovery

• Some employees may even end up in a role for a role’s sake rather than one that is suitable to their skills. This is typically compounded by a lack of training during lean times.
  

Awareness of these risks is the first step. In the midst of significant and critical decisions, the imperative to make a difference to the bottom line often leads to the organisation’s design being left to one side. The second step is to rethink the extent to which your organisation can still deliver for your customers: 

• Do all your key activities still make sense and add value for your customers? If you stopped providing something as a way of taking short-term costs out, has it been missed? This may be the opportunity to refocus on your core business.

• Do you still have the right operating model processes and systems to make it work? Front and back office cuts, as well as the removal of non-core activity, may mean that complex operating models can be simplified and systems and processes can be reviewed and rationalised.

• Are your people in the right roles with the right skills to survive today and to respond to recovery? This is not the time to cut development without considering how you will thrive in recovery. 
  

Wherever possible, organisations should take bold statements of commitment and support people to cope with changes to roles, scope of responsibility and delivery requirements.

Is your organisation thinking about the wider impact of recent decisions on your effectiveness? The impact on delivery for customers?   Are you now working towards longer-term sustainability? To discuss any of these questions in more depth, contact hrconsulting@paconsulting.com