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Surviving and Thriving During Organizational Restructuring

Posted on October 14th, 2016 Read time: 2 minutes

Helping your business prosper means restructuring at times. Learn how to restructure your organization with minimal disruption for maximum effect.

Align Business Structure with Strategy

 It’s essential you align your business structure with your strategy. For example, if your goal is increasing sales and marketing results, focus on those areas during your restructuring process. This may seem obvious, but many businesses fail to do so and end up in worse financial positions than before they restructured.

 Reduce Complexity and Costs

 You also want to reduce complexity in your business structure, product or service offerings, and transactional processes to reduce your costs. Start by structuring your business goals before assigning employees for each role. Once you have your company’s objectives written, you’ll be equipped for placing qualified workers in required positions. You’ll also want to define leadership roles as simply as possible, so that they’re easily understood and adhered to without excessive training.  In addition, determine which responsibilities are filled by each role so you can eliminate inefficient processes and enhance your core business. You’ll ensure value-added tasks are completed while you eliminate redundancies.

 Create Realistic Role Responsibilities

 Ensure that the roles created during restructuring include realistic expectations for your employees. You don’t want them taking on unreasonable amounts of work they can’t accomplish weekly due to downsizing. Also, take into account realistic groupings of skill sets required for each position. By narrowing down too many specialized skills needed for a role, you reduce the number of candidates available for the position, making it harder to fill.

 Build Reasonable Management Expectations

 Make sure your managers can balance their leadership expectations with increased output standards. Mangers still need to mentor their team members so your workers remain engaged in their tasks and produce quality output. Ensure managers have a reasonable number of staff reporting to them, team members can finish their work independently, and managers can complete their own tasks on time.

Clarify Accountability

Clarify who’s responsible for what after restructuring. Clearly state each worker’s role, responsibilities, and functions within your organization. Be sure each staff member understands who’s involved in specific operations, and what each employee is being held accountable for. Your business may then continue operating with reasonable efficiency.

Allow Flexibility

Allow for flexibility the first few months after restructuring. Help your employees get used to their new roles, expectations, and business operations. Allow room for growth into new positions and responsibilities within your organization. Find out where issues still exist, and work on solving them.

You may want to complete the restructuring process in stages so the changes are more manageable. You also may use contract staffing for assisting your employees with the transitions. Your company’s processes and output will become more streamlined over time. 


Follow these guidelines when restructuring your organization to make the process as efficient as possible. For additional assistance with growing your company, reach out to the trained experts at Innovative Employee Solutions today!

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