When business conditions deteriorate and Companies lay off staff, there is more pressure on employers to re-allocate responsibilities within and amongst departments, in order to attempt to get the same work (or more) done with fewer resources. While an obvious strategy to undertake, this may just make an unfortunate situation worse, assuming that remaining workers are being fully utilized, unless coupled with other initiatives, such as work productivity initiatives (automation, simplification, reduction, elimination of work processes); reduction in work distractions (e.g. meetings volumes/frequency), talent initiatives (e.g. hiring of students, interns, co-ops, less expensive contract staff), and incentives (e.g. profit-funded bonuses; paid leave; training).
Outside of times when poor economic conditions dictate a necessary re-allocation of responsibilities however, there are still situations when doing so can really contribute tangibly to long-term business competitive advantage and financial success.
Below are some of these:
1. Succession Risk Mitigation: Both at an individual contributor and a leadership level, there is a need to ensure that critical knowledge and expertise is retained within the organization, in case of employee turnover, and so re-allocating functional responsibility to more than one job holder and leader is key.
2. External Factors Change: Technology advances for example, make it possible to combine formerly disparate functional responsiblities under one roof in a way that streamlines processes, enhances performance metrics, and reduces costs.
3. Internal Factors Change: Company elects to move from a product-based focus to a customer-based focus for example, to enhance customer communications and service, and ideally optimize share of customer wallet, causing roles to move from product leaders to customer leaders.
4. Benchmarks Driven: Company desires to improve its benchmark performance (vs. its market segment or market in general), and focuses on organization design to drive gains in engagement and productivity, through, for example, reviewing matrixed management, hierarchy, and span of control.
5. Employee Feedback: Company learns through its employment engagement surveys and other employee feedback mechanisms, that the current allocation of roles and responsiblities, and/or current leadership structure, is contributing to less than optimal efficiency, and heightened employee angst and risk of regretted turnover.
In any of the above situations, it can make tremendous sense to re-allocate responsibilities within and amongst functions. Regardless of the driver for these changes however, key to success remains doing your homework up front by validating the need, exploring alternatives, vetting these to identify those that provide the greatest return at the lowest risk, and choosing the leaders who will implement the changes very carefully on the basis of credibility, communication skills, ability to deliver, and empathy.
All change situations create heightened anxiety and fear amongst employees. As a result, when it’s time for your organization to re-allocate responsibilities, do so, only after careful consideration. Communicate clearly before, during, and after the change process, and inter-actively, so that employees have knowledge of and understand the change, and are able to buy in and actively support this. Most importantly, be patient. Change is never a linear process. There will be progress and setbacks however so long as you keep your eye on the end goals, and remain positive and supportive, you will get there.