Updating PowerPoint organizational charts 360x faster

Have you ever been asked to make a small update to an org chart?

At first glance, it seems like such a quick task. There’s no way that “making Sharon’s team report to Joyce” will take much time at all. So, without even realizing you’re about to do something endlessly frustrating, you fire up PowerPoint with your latest org chart.

The first problem hits you in the face. The org structure is too big to fit on one slide. It is split over dozens of slides. Finding Sharon’s part of the org and Joyce’s part of the org and viewing them both on your screen at the same time proves difficult.

No more illusions about this being simple. This will be hard, but you’re set on delivering this for your boss. You try to get through these steps as quickly as possible:

  1. Find all of the boxes that represent Sharon’s organization unit
  2. Cut Sharon’s boxes and connectors
  3. Rearrange the the rest of the boxes on the slide so they look nice
  4. Find all of the boxes that represent Joyce’s organization unit
  5. Make room for Sharon’s boxes on Joyce’s slide
  6. Paste Sharon’s boxes
  7. Adjust all of Sharon and Joyce’s boxes so that they look good and are legible
  8. Go back over every slide to do some “quality assurance”
  9. Save and send the new org chart to your boss
  10. Hope that there are no more “small updates” to your org chart

Is that your experience? If not, I’m starting to doubt you’ve ever worked with an organization chart in PowerPoint before.

If so, then you’re in luck. We did this same task with OrgWeaver in 5 seconds. Watch the video below to find out how OrgWeaver is 360 times faster than PowerPoint in  making this small org chart change. Imagine what OrgWeaver could do for big organization changes.

 

 

Reorganization Case Study: Focus on what really matters with OrgWeaver

A clear example of what to avoid during a reorganization.

A clear example of what to avoid during a reorganization.

At the end of a recent reorganization process, an HR Director with years of experience said, “OrgWeaver allowed me to focus on what really mattered during our reorganization.”

What really matters? Taking care of the people involved in a fair way.

What typically distracts HR teams from what really matters? Spending endless frustrating hours on spreadsheets and post-it notes.

This particular case study was for an organization with approximately 100 people. They first used OrgWeaver to find out that their current org structure was like a tangled rope that no one could straighten out. Once they saw how they could improve the organization structure, they used OrgWeaver to implement a new org, communicate the details to employees, gather feedback from employees about their preferences, and make final staffing decisions in a fair and transparent manner.

Anytime that an HR Director has success with OrgWeaver, we appreciate the chance to share their stories with the HR community. Here are some more quotes and key points about the value of OrgWeaver from this case study:

“My executive team was happy to have a system that remembered complex decisions so we didn’t have to keep the puzzle in our heads.”

  • OrgWeaver keeps track of what roles are needed, who is being considered for each, and what happens to each person who doesn’t get a particular role.

“Employees didn’t need any training in order to be truly involved in the process through a simple website.”

  • OrgWeaver is easy for people to pick up and use, which allows them to focus on collaborating in a transparent process.

“I was able to deliver on time without the stress and wasted hours of keeping track of spreadsheets and post-it notes.”

  • OrgWeaver greatly speeds up the process of making optimal reorganization decisions.

“Throughout the process, any challenge I had was solved directly and quickly by the support team behind OrgWeaver.”

  • OrgWeaver is a true solution backed by leading experts, not just another software that sits on the shelf. Deploy it quickly, and only use it when it can add true value.

What really matters to you during a reorganization? Is it taking care of people in a fair way, meeting deadlines, keeping track of the staffing puzzle, and/or collaborating with colleagues? If you want to discuss what really matters to you, reach out to Nick to have a meaningful discussion about reorganization processes.

The Biggest Challenge to Implementing a Successful Organizational Change

Have you ever heard an executive say: “Our people are our most important asset.”?

It’s such a common phrase to hear, and yet it is hard to know what it really means. Ask an executive and she might say things like:

  • We recruit the best people, pay them well, train them, and promote them from within based on merit.
  • We create a positive working environment, focus on diversity, run healthy living initiatives, and actively foster a unique culture.
Reorganization cartoon

An outcome to avoid

In order to do all of these things well, teams spend years streamlining processes, hiring people to fill specialized roles within HR, working with global software vendors to manage the data, and  bench-marking “employee engagement” surveys to publish in annual reports.

This all works well until a company needs to perform an organizational change. Organizational change is as certain as death and taxes, and yet companies are failing to prepare for it. Without preparation for the next merger, reorg, or downsizing, this is what typically happens:

  • Employees are viewed predominantly through the lens of “cost”
  • Decisions are allowed to be driven by those who are “loudest” or “best connected”
  • Commitments to diversity, health, merit, and a positive culture are down prioritized
  • Investments in HR technology are squandered because they can’t handle the flexibility of an organizational change.

So what is the biggest challenge to implementing a successful organizational change? Preparation.

Executives can prepare for organizational change by:

  • Asking HR teams to take a strategic role in organizational change
  • Pre-evaluating the tools, methods, and vendors that specialize in organizational change
  • Communicate the principles that will be followed during future organizational changes

I’ve personally worked with great executives that are on the leading edge of organizational change and have seen first hand the positive results of implementing well-prepared changes. More can be done to prepare for organizational changes and it is a task worth doing to truly treat people as your most important corporate asset. Will you?

 

 

 

3 Simple Keys for HR to Manage a Successful Org Change

As an HR professional, you are bound to get a request to manage an org change. Your business will need to scale up or down in some areas, change people’s roles, or build a new structure from scratch. These are strategic changes and this is your chance to establish HR as a strategic partner.

Before you get that request, prepare to manage a successful org change by remembering these 3 simple key concepts that we’ve learned from supporting merger integrations, reorganizations, and downsizing processes:

  1. Get your data in one place
    • If you have to open several systems and documents to understand your organization, you will drown in administrative tasks before you even start to make strategic decisions. Before an org change starts, discuss with your team how you can get all of the data you need into one place. Perhaps you already have a system that lets you work with different scenarios in the safety of a secure sandbox. If not, assess if an online tool that is quick to set up could meet your needs (for example, try a free account on our OrgWeaver software platform)
  2. Know who needs to be involved
    • Make a list of every stakeholder who will need to provide information or receive reports during the org change (Executives, Managers, HR, Recruiters, Employees, Unions, Shareholders, etc.). Org changes require a lot of communication, so it is important to identify ahead of time who will be in charge of gathering & sharing different types of information for different people on a regular schedule.
  3. Keep track of decisions
    • No matter how good an HR team’s intentions are during an org change, you will be required to answer difficult questions about how decisions were made. From the very beginning of an org change, keep consistent notes on who made decisions, at what time, and for what reasons. If you don’t have the capacity to track these decisions on your own, a software tool like OrgWeaver can automatically keep track of how decisions were made.

We’re taking our own advice here at BrightArch to “keep things simple”. We’ve simplified the name of our software to OrgWeaver (which everyone agrees is much easier to say than OrganizationWeaver). And we’re simplifying the way customers can pick up and use OrgWeaver to solve complex org change challenges. More to come in the coming months.