Redesigning Organizations for Performance: HR’s Role in Building Tomorrow’s Workplace

 

Improving Organizational Performance

Improving how an organization performs often means realigning its structure, roles, processes, and culture so they support new strategic goals. When these elements are out of sync, even the best strategy struggles to take off.

Competency Connection

Imagine an organization pursuing growth through a merger or acquisition. HR has already done its due diligence on a potential company that senior leaders are very eager to acquire, mainly because it would help strengthen their long-term vertical strategy.

As the CHRO reviews the data gathered by an HR task force, several important competencies come to life. Most of the early findings are financial—information about workforce demographics, costs, and contractual obligations. Here, Business Acumen and Analytical Aptitude help the CHRO understand what those numbers really mean.

But the CHRO also notices some cultural signals. A Global Mindset helps them see that the target company operates in a very hierarchical way. Decisions require multiple layers of approval, communication is formal, and conflict resolution is highly structured. This stands in sharp contrast to the CHRO’s own organization, where autonomy and innovation are encouraged. These differences could lead to misalignment in culture, employee relations, and even skill requirements—issues that will matter long after the merger paperwork is signed.

Using strong Consultation skills, the CHRO presents these findings to senior management, highlighting not only the financial implications but also the cultural and strategic risks that could shape the success of the merger.

Organizational Interventions

Organizational interventions look at whether the structure of an organization is helping—or holding back—its strategic goals. Structure refers to how work is grouped and how the pieces connect.

Interventions are especially important when an organization:

• Is no longer meeting strategic goals because its structure has become ineffective or outdated—this is common as organizations grow.

• Has shifted its competitive strategy and now needs new capabilities, such as faster decision-making or greater adaptability.

Redesigning the Organization

Organizational design includes everything that supports how a company functions. This goes beyond structure and also includes:

• The mission, vision, and strategy

• How decisions are made

• How information flows

• How work processes connect across teams

• The systems used to align people, resources, and capabilities

All of these elements work together as one interconnected system. Any redesign must respect that interdependence.

HR’s Role in Organizational Design

HR plays a key role in shaping how an organization is designed. This includes:

• Diagnosing what's causing performance issues

• Helping leaders explore clear design options

• Ensuring decisions align with both short- and long-term strategy

• Guiding leaders in understanding their responsibilities during implementation

• Monitoring whether the structure continues to support the company’s strategy

• Securing the right internal or external expertise to support development

Structural Characteristics in Organizational Design

Work Specialization

This refers to how much work is broken into specific jobs. Specialization can improve efficiency but can also lead to siloed thinking, boredom, and reduced innovation—especially in complex, tech-driven organizations.

Decision-Making Authority

Organizations must decide where decisions get made—centrally at headquarters or more locally at the operational level. Empowering the right level ensures fast and effective decisions.

Layers of Hierarchy

Modern organizations tend to flatten their structures to eliminate unnecessary layers and increase agility. Two concepts matter here:

• Span of control: how many people report to each manager

• Chain of command: the flow of authority

As organizations evolve—especially those using matrix structures—traditional chains of command may look more like networks than vertical ladders.

Formalization

This refers to how much rules and procedures shape behavior. While formalization offers consistency and control, too much of it can limit creativity and responsiveness. Culture heavily influences how formal or flexible an organization can be.

Departmentalization and Common Structures

Organizations group work in different ways:

Functional Structure

Teams are grouped by specialization—like marketing, finance, HR, or operations. It’s simple and efficient but may create silos.

Product or Customer Structure

Each product line or customer segment has its own division, complete with dedicated functions. This builds deep expertise but increases staffing needs.

Geographic Structure

Divisions are based on regions or countries. This allows better responsiveness to local needs but may reduce consistency across the organization.

Matrix Structure

Employees report to two managers—typically a functional manager and a project or program manager. This fosters collaboration and agility but can also create confusion if not well managed.

Aligning Roles and Responsibilities

Highly integrated structures can fail when roles and communication paths aren’t clear. Tools like RACI charts help define:

• Responsible — who does the work

• Accountable — who owns the outcome

• Consulted — who provides input

• Informed — who needs updates

Clarifying these roles is essential during restructuring or when new processes are introduced.

Organizational Effectiveness & Development: The HR Blueprint for a Healthy, High-Performing Organization

 

Organizational Effectiveness & Development

In its role as a consultant to the organization, HR may be called upon to act in the capacity of an "organizational" physician, requested by organizational leaders to examine the health of the organization, assess its ability to function at a level needed to attain strategic goals, and recommend and possibly implement improvements to the organization's "effectiveness."

Organizational effectiveness and development (OED) can be seen as a process or tool to fulfill this role-to identify and remove internal obstacles to the organization's strategic goals and continuous improvement. The skill of asking questions is critical in OED, and the questions should start with "Where are we now?" and "Where do we want to go?" and "What is keeping us from getting there?" This is the effectiveness part of OED. The development part comes with the next question: "How must we change to get onto the right path toward our goals?"

OED identifies and addresses organizational performance issues through planned interventions that engage stakeholders in information gathering and solution design and implementation. Interventions may focus on organizational or team performance issues. Organizational interventions may result in changes in structure, culture, competencies, technology, or processes. Team interventions focus on developing more unified and focused teams and helping dysfunctional teams move past conflict and toward accomplishment.

Organizational Development

Organizational effectiveness and development (OED) focuses on the structure and functionality of the organization to increase the long-term and short-term effectiveness of people and processes. The term organizational development (OD) refers to an organizational management discipline used to maintain and grow organizational effectiveness and efficiency through planned interventions.

Organizational Theories

If organizational development is comparable to conducting a medical examination, organizational theories help to explain how the organization functions, including its parts and how they interact.

A number of organizational models have been developed, such as the McKinsey 7-S Framework, Kotter's eight-step change model, and Lewin's change management model. The terms may be different, but what these models propose is very similar. In order for an organization to implement its strategy successfully, it must align its various components. For example, its structure must suit the strategy. If it does not, the structure or the strategy must be changed.

the major organizational elements that must be aligned with strategy include:

      Structure-the way the organization separates and connects its pieces.
 Systems-the policies that guide behavior and work, the processes that define how tasks will be performed, and the technology or tools used to support that work.
Culture-the set of beliefs, attitudes, values, and behaviors shared by members of the organization and passed on to new members.
 Values-principles that the organization and its leaders have explicitly selected as a guide for decisions and actions.
Leadership-the model of behavior that leaders set for the rest of the organization.

The way these elements are implemented and aligned can affect:

• ·          The motivation employees apply to their work.
• ·          Employees' engagement or identification with their work and the organization's goals.

·  Performance levels and results-the effectiveness and efficiency in reaching goals for the entire organization, for its structural pieces (such as divisions, functions, teams), and for individual employees.

·          Governance-the organization's ethical and legal compliance and its approach to managing risk.

HR professionals will apply their Consultation competency to understand their organization according to this model and then to evaluate its ability to meet the strategic goals the organization has set. HR will deliver a diagnosis or assessment and then a course of treatment or interventions that will be taken to correct performance obstacles.

HR Audits Made Simple: A Complete Guide to Process, Types, and Best Practices

 

HR Audits

In an HR audit, an organization's HR policies, practices, procedures, and strategies undergo a systematic and comprehensive evaluation to establish whether specific HR practices are adequate to achieve the function's goals. For example, policies must be aligned with current organizational goals. Audit results help to identify gaps, which can then be prioritized for corrective action.

Decisions about what to audit can result from a variety of internal and external factors. Poor KPI results may require closer analysis of processes to identify possible causes. Changes in organizational strategy may require realignment of HR policies and practices. New laws and technology can change the way work is done and introduce vulnerabilities that must be managed. The audit targets are prioritized depending on the constraints of time, available resources, and/or budget. Keeping a log of issues that have arisen may help identify areas of weakness that can be examined and addressed during the audit process.

Types of HR Audits

There are different types of HR audits, and each is designed to examine different types of HR goals-for example, to use resources efficiently or to maintain compliance with local laws and regulations. Exhibit lists the more common types.

Proving HR’s Strategic Value: How Data, Metrics, and Leadership Transform Organizations

 

Importance of HR Performance Measurement and Balanced Scorecards

Measuring and reporting results has several important benefits for HR:

·          Reinforcing HR's role in strategic development by measuring the effectiveness of HR strategies and senior management's implementation of those strategies

·          Identifying opportunities for redirection and improvement through periodic measurement of progress on strategic objectives

·          Strengthening HR's relationship with internal business partners

·          Supporting future investment in HR programs

The process begins with establishing key performance indicators (KPIs). HR KPIs are sometimes established by applying a balanced scorecard approach to the function's mission. The function then collects data to compare performance with these KPIs and other metrics. Assessment can include variance analysis of outcomes or results-such as variances of recruiting costs from budget. It can also include assessment of processes-how HR performs its work; whether that performance meets the function's mission, values, and goals; and, if needed, how those processes can be improved or changed.

Creating an HR Balanced Scorecard

Balanced scorecards provide a concise yet overall picture of an organization's performance. They can be used to focus organizations and functions on key strategic activities, to craft responses to goals, and to create metrics to assess the effectiveness of these responses. Balanced scorecards help support a clear line of sight from strategic goals to strategic performance.

By linking clearly defined department objectives and performance to the company's strategic business goals, a balanced scorecard for HR can serve as a way of focusing human resource staff on activities that will support the company's goals. An HR balanced scorecard also demonstrates HR's strategic value by defining and measuring HR's contribution in concrete, clearly understood terms.

 

For example, consider an HR function that has analyzed the organization's strategy and has identified the following ways in which it can contribute, based on the four perspectives of the balanced scorecard:

·          Financial: Develop alternative staffing strategies to provide more flexibility to meet shifts in production demands.

·          Customers (other functions and employees): Provide easier access to HR services, including consultation with functional leaders.

·          Internal business processes: Apply technology to increase efficiency and capture data.

·          Learning and growth: Make sure that future leaders will be available across functions, throughout the organization.

These goals lead to actions or programs. For example, the focus on leader development leads HR management to contract with an outside consultant to assess and work with identified high-value employees. To measure the effectiveness of this action, HR must identify the right metrics. What will indicate that the program is, in fact, resulting in a growth in leadership capabilities? Results from simulation exercises? Retention of key employees? Fill rate of leadership positions from internal candidates?

Mastering the HR Outsourcing Process: 9 Steps to Save Time, Money, and Maximize Value

 

The Ultimate Guide to HR Outsourcing: From RFP to ROI in 9 Strategic Steps

To ensure the most appropriate and productive use of outsourcing, HR managers should rely on a thoughtful, well-tested process. Even when an existing supplier relationship is satisfactory, it is beneficial for the HR organization to consider other options periodically. This not only improves transparency in the relationship but it also helps HR to confirm that the organization's needs are being met and to gain perspectives on new approaches and tools. Current suppliers should be included in the process (unless there have been serious, unresolved performance problems).

The outsourcing process includes nine steps:

1. Analyze needs and define goals.
2. Define the budget.
3. Create a request for proposal (RFP).
4. Send RFPs to the chosen contractors.
5. Evaluate contractor proposals.
6. Choose a contractor.
7. Negotiate a contract.
8. Implement the project and monitor the schedule.
9. Evaluate the project.

Analyze Needs and Define Goals.

A thoughtful needs analysis is the most critical stage. Analyzing a project that uses a contractor is not a one-person job. It requires a multidisciplinary team consisting of representatives of all potential users. At this stage, project goals and expectations are defined.

Example: A project team has been formed to purchase a new human resource information system (HRIS) for an organization. The team, consisting of members of the HR, accounting, marketing, and information technology departments, develops a questionnaire to distribute to all potential users of the new system to define the necessary functions.