Does your company use org charts? If not, it could be missing out on a whole range of benefits that include everything from higher levels of efficiency to better workload management.
Over the last decade, org charts have undergone a complete transformation. What were once hastily written-up sticky notes placed on whiteboards dotted around offices have become digital tools that facilitate strategic organizational planning — they are now active management tools that help key corporate actors stay organized, be more efficient, and spot big-picture issues at an earlier point in time than they otherwise would have.
Today, many business leaders use org charts in recognition of the many benefits they can deliver. From the smallest start-ups to the largest international corporations, pretty much every type of business can make good use of organizational charts.
6 Key Valuable Org Chart Benefits
Here is a closer look at some of the benefits that org charts can bring.
1. Org charts show a clear reporting structure
Using org chart software, you can build a clear organizational structure. This provides your employees with a reference point for finding out who’s who, who they need to report to, who heads up certain departments, and so on. This becomes increasingly important as firms grow in size where there are many departments, some of which may overlap. Using your org chart, employees can easily get in touch with the right person from elsewhere in the organization.
2. Org charts make the onboarding process more efficient
One of the most commonly reported peeves for new employees is getting to know the people that they are working with. By creating an overall company structure using an org chart, new hires are able to learn names and faces of their colleagues even before they meet, making for a more efficient and comfortable first few weeks.
3. Employees manage their workloads better
When an org chart is deployed properly and well managed, it helps your employees to visualize and stay on top of their workloads. This is particularly important when it comes to the workloads of department leaders and higher-level managers because you can see how many people they are managing and, in some cases, how many departments fall under their remit.
4. It helps you build and experiment with hypotheticals
A dynamic org chart software or org chart tool (like ours — Organimi) will allow you to easily drag and drop people, roles, and departments to build and experiment with hypothetical changes to your company’s internal structure. This is useful in certain circumstances such as when there is a major organizational change is coming up, when growth is anticipated, or at the end of a major project.
5. It becomes easier to visualize skills and experience to identify deficits
In the day-to-day management of a company, it can be easy to lose sight of individual employees and what their specialist skills are or what experience they have. By mapping out individual employees using an org chart, you can use it as a way to keep an eye on your company’s people and their individual skills and attributes. This lets you ensure you always have the right talent on board and identify when skills gaps crop up, meaning that you have an opportunity to kick off the recruitment process and fill them in a timely manner.
6. They encourage wider collaboration
A live org chart can be used in a variety of ways. It can be printed, shared, exported, shared via email or through your company intranet, and more. This makes it a valuable tool for planning and collaboration, especially when it comes to scaling for growth, restructuring, and workforce planning because organizations are able to create shareable versions of their charts and use them to collaborate with individuals outside the company.
Organizational Planning, Simplified
Modern org chart software tools leverage technology to help employees and business leaders access important information, manage projects between departments, collaborate, promote positive company culture, develop connections, and more.
When organizations use org charts to their full potential, taking advantage of the many features and tools that they include, the benefits far outweigh the cost of acquiring and implementing them.
As an industry-leading SaaS platform, our cloud-based org chart tool, Organimi, is utilized by thousands of companies worldwide who trust it to streamline their workflows, aid their project planning, and make life a whole lot easier for their employees.
If you would like to learn more about Organimi and find out how your business could benefit from efficient and simple yet vastly effective org charts, contact the team today for a free trial.