When I first transitioned to Human Resources, I quickly found the value of an organisational chart. It was my secret weapon to determine all manner of information about an organisation, which may not be apparent without a quick look at an “Organogram” as the South African’s call it. What a lovely word, “Organogram”, it conjures up an image, painting or creative graphical representation of the organisation. A picture paints 1000 words and an organogram is perhaps the best example of this, it relays so much about the way that an organisation operates.
The height of the hierarchy can explain a lot about the way the organisation will work as discussed in the research paper Analytical Comparison of Flat and Vertical Organizational Structures. Flat organisations have few layers or just one layer of management. This means that the “Chain of Command” from top to bottom is short and the “span of control is wide”, generally resulting in better communication, the ability to be adaptable, and decisions being made efficiently as less people need approval because of the lack of hierarchy.
The converse is also true, the more layers that are added to an organisation, the slower the decisions are made. It is easier for employees to get lost, and very often, employee engagement scores are lower as they feel that they are a lot further away from the decision makers. Although it is often necessary, the bigger the company gets, you cannot have the CEO having hundreds of direct reports and making all of the decisions themselves.
If you go into a company and it is not easy to get your hands on an organisational chart, there is a fair chance that decision making will be a difficult or unstructured. One step that any organisation can take to start improving the clarity for employees and quicken the decision-making is to get very clear of the organisational structure and don’t keep it a secret. An organisational chart is an aid for all employees to understand the business and how to get things done and should be available to all and regularly updated. It is also vital to maintaining an accurate workforce plan and manning budget. It does however take a bit of effort to keep it up to date, well worth it in my opinion. Do you agree?
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