Organisational restructuring is a complex process that impacts the overall company and employees’ life as well. It is usually defined in the corporate strategy. The most common triggers to restructuring are: profit, cost optimisation, company’s market share status, clients’ feedback and behavior towards company services and products. Since these factors are rapidly changing corporate strategy is exposed to the market pressure to perform faster in mid term and in short term. Company strategy is no longer expected to be lasting and fixed for the long run as in the classic approach. Agility is the new norm.
How to solve this contradiction?
Quick approach - cutting costs - staff and process transformation. The budget will be safe.
How does this look in practice?
First, there are experts (internal or external consultants) who evaluate jobs within the company, their impact and necessity for the organisational performance. And the costs of course.
Second, driven by the willingness to save costs, platforms, tools and specific software are implemented to optimise processes where possible and necessary. This might require new jobs creation within the organisational structure and transformation of existing departments and teams. This directly impacts the work culture and employees’ routines.
Then there is a definition of the new organisational structure.
Restructuring stands for partial structural change and not overall replacement of the current corporate structure. This is the main challenge because old structures must coexist with new ones. The old approach should work with new structures and very often there is a back and forth process until the whole new working reality is set up and running.
What an employee can do in corporate restructuring times:
- Be curious, learn new useful approaches, know-how that will help you survive the initial post restructuring chock.
- Do not protest, block the process. It will happen sooner or later. Why? It has been decided on a senior level. Instead of wasting precious energy check what you can learn to adapt.
- It might seem that your department will be affected. Check with the colleagues from the HR department for other internal professional opportunities where you and your expertise will be valued and needed.
- Find a mentor within the organisation. This is an option for you to avoid the negative impact of uncertainty when restructuring starts.
- Provide constructive and impartial feedback when something is not working since the new processes are established and check for improvement approaches.
- Be pro-active and see all today' s challenges as tomorrow’s opportunities but not on every count.
This is not about stopping following your work ethics. It is about learning to adapt in an uncertain work environment. Once employees rediscover their stability then they will work again in an efficient way and add value.