As the planning stages of a new year commence, many management teams will be faced with the decision to restructure their organisation to better manage downturn or accelerate growth.
If your organisation falls into this category, now is the time to start preparing your business for change – even if it is still months away. How can you ensure you have a successful restructure and your team has a smooth career transition next year? These four tips will get you started.
1. Know why you are restructuring
When you have clarity on why you need to restructure, you can manage change more strategically and eliminate future unnecessary changes, which can lead to change fatigue.
Clarity around the change will also help you identify the right structure, the right roles and the right people to fill these roles, and make it easier to encourage buy-in when you do eventually communicate your plans to your team.
2. Identify your organisational strengths and weaknesses
If you know a restructure is in your future, it’s important to understand where your workforce strengths and weaknesses are now. Talk one-on-one with staff, supervisors and managers to assess the skills of your employees and build a list or core competencies so you can quickly identify gaps.
A lot of organisations miss this crucial step in preparing for change and find out right in the middle of it, which can lead to staff being placed in the wrong role or urgent hires that may not be the best fit for your organisation. You might find through this process that some staff members are being underutilised and could take on more important roles or responsibilities.
Doing this step before change can also help you identify your change leaders, those staff members who will be your champions and help get buy-in from other staff. It will also help you uncover areas you could redeploy employees who are at risk of redundancy.
3. Organise talent development
During restructure you can often end up with less staff having more responsibilities. While that can work in favour of your bottom line, it can be a big adjustment for your team. With new roles and responsibilities, your staff members will need access to the right support and training to transition into their new roles easily.
But don’t think career development needs to happen after the restructure. Why not organise career coaching, leadership coaching and training now to make the restructure easier on your staff and more cost-effective for your company by shortening the adjustment period.
4. Find an outplacement provider
Now is also the time to lock in your outplacement provider. While outplacement is for your transitioning team, also remember that it is a way to protect your reputation, and as such deserves care and attention.
As your transitioning staff will have different needs, make sure you select a provider who has a wide range of outplacement programs to cater to those who may want to retire, start their own business or consult, change industries, move into management or find a similar job to the one they are in now. The quicker and easier you can make an employees career transition, the more grateful they will be.
Time to plan your restructure and make sure you approach redundancy the right way? Call the transition experts, Turning Point Partners today on 1300 27 83 45.
