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Harvesting Your Employees' Knowledge
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Knowledge Management is based on the theory that an organization’s most valuable resource is the knowledge of its people. At some level, we are all knowledge managers. We manage knowledge acquired through training, or through experience. We manage knowledge that is learned, and knowledge that is innate. There is rarely a time when we’re not actively managing our knowledge in some way, shape, or form.
Knowledge management in the workplace involves collecting and curating collective employee knowledge, and applying that knowledge to achieve specific goals. It is about ensuring that employees have the knowledge and information they need—where they need it, when they need it, and in the format they need it.
Knowledge management is critical because it establishes an environment where employees can create, learn, share, and leverage intelligence together for the benefit of the organization.
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What is Workplace Redeployment?
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Workplace redeployment is when a member of staff leaves a team or position in order to start in a different role for the same company. For example, someone may leave a team because it is overstaffed in order to work with another team that requires a bit more assistance.
Workplace redeployment is a strategy that helps to optimize your employment situation. It can often involve a single person, but there are times where it might require entire teams to be reshuffled and split into different departments.
There are actually a number of reasons why someone may be redeployed in their own company.
Skills shortages
Gartner Inc. conducted a survey of 137 senior executives in 2018. The results showed that 63% of senior executives had growing concerns of a skills shortage throughout 2019. As businesses evolve and tackle new challenges, it’s become important to hire new talented individuals to help bolster a team’s productivity and efficiency.
Unfortunately, this can quickly lead to redundancy issues which may cost more money. In addition, finding talented people with the required skills can be difficult. As such, many companies have turned to redeployment instead. By establishing new roles in the company and training individuals to move from their existing position to a new one, it could potentially solve a business’s skills shortage problem while helping to retain the best talent within the organization.
Redundancy
Some employees may be made redundant because the project they are working on could be shut down or handed over to another group. They could also be made redundant if there are more efficient ways to perform their role, such as using automation.
However, instead of just letting these employees go, there is value in re-training them and then redeploying them into other positions. Current employment statistics show that there is a massive employment concern with many talented individuals being released from their workplace. For companies to avoid firing too many staff members, they need to start using redeployment to take advantage of the skills those employees have and their existing familiarity with the workplace.
Expansion
Redeployment can also be used to move employees from one location to another. For example, an employee may have the skills and experience to work in a managerial role. However, their employer might find it difficult to open a new management position to take advantage of those skills.
However, if the company was to open a new location, then those employees could be redeployed to new locations in order to accommodate expansion while also making the most of their leadership and managerial capabilities.
Surplus staff
Some companies may also have surplus staff that are soon to be made redundant. This can happen when a company engages in a large project that requires multiple staff members to be hired for several years. However, if the project fails or doesn’t produce sufficient results, then it can lead to a large number of surplus staff.
To make effective use of this staff, they can be redeployed in various positions in the company. This allows a business to take advantage of those existing skills and can prevent downtime.
Source: ezra.com
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Ensure Employee Well-Being During Redeployment
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Redeployment has a significant impact on the employee experience, often creating feelings of insecurity among those who are going through the process. When employees face a workforce re-organization, they often feel a reduced sense of control, and research has shown the feeling that they are losing autonomy can lead to employees feeling demotivated and stressed.
To make the experience less painful, leaders should focus on facilitating employee well-being throughout the redeployment process by:
- Ensuring transparency in communications to increase trust, while framing messages in a way to facilitate acceptance and positive reactions;
- Inviting employees to be part of the redeployment process, since giving them a voice can help reduce resistance;
- Creating opportunities for employees to participate in job crafting, which can decrease employee stress related to job insecurity, increase engagement, and heighten a sense of workplace identity;
- Driving a culture of psychological safety, which allows for further information sharing, work engagement, creativity, commitment, satisfaction, and performance; and
- Ensuring employees have sufficient role clarity to increase psychological safety, self-efficacy, and in turn, lead to satisfaction, higher performance, and increased commitment to the company.
Source: plum.io
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Eight Signs It's Time To Reorganize
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If your company is experiencing one or more of the following issues, it may be time to consider reorganizing.
1. The competitive landscape has changed
The business world moves quickly. Innovations and technological advances can disrupt entire industries in just a few short years. Local, national, and global economies evolve, impacting costs and introducing new players to the industry.
If you’re still operating the same way you were even five or ten years ago, you may already be falling behind your competition.
2. Employees' skill sets don't match their function
If there is a mismatch between your employees’ skills and their job functions, you are wasting one of your most valuable resources—your people. Putting the right people with the right skills in the right job is crucial to your business’s success.
3. Performance is lower than expected
Low performance can have a variety of causes including poor management, lack of proper training, insufficient tools or technology, and low employee engagement. If performance metrics are consistently lower than unexpected, consider whether your organizational structure is contributing to the problem.
4. Inefficiency is widespread
Widespread inefficiencies in your organization point to outdated or outgrown processes. In other words, what worked for you in the past no longer serves your current business.
Inefficient operations can cripple your bottom line. If you don’t address the problem at the source, the only way to grow your business is to increase the number of employees you have. But this will quickly drain your profits and slow your growth.
5. Turnover is high
Employee turnover can cost organizations anywhere from 16% to 213% of the lost employee’s salary. Employees are appreciating assets—the longer they work at your company, the more valuable they become. That’s why it’s crucial to invest in and retain your people. If your company has high employee turnover, it’s time to reevaluate. What structures or processes are contributing to turnover? Are your employees leaving for competitors? Why?
6. Employees are overworked
Do you have teams that are overburdened and overworked? Overworking your employees can lead to increased stress, burnout, and turnover. Burnout isn’t just bad for employees; it’s bad for business. Burned-out employees are more likely to take sick leave and look for another job. Plus, increased stress on the job can lead to inefficiency, mistakes, and low morale.
7. Employees are underutilized
On the flip side, having too little work (or not assigning the right work) for your employees can be just a crippling and demoralizing to your organization as having too much work to do. Are you leveraging your employees’ full potential? Do your employees feel their work is meaningful? If not, you risk disengagement, low morale, and turnover.
8. Teams that are closely aligned aren’t collaborating
As your business evolves and grows, the structure of your departments and the makeup of your teams may no longer be effective. For example, do you have teams whose work or goals are closely aligned but they remain siloed?
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Implementing Organizational Changes
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Implementing change in your organization can easily become an overwhelming challenge — especially if your company doesn’t have deep pockets.
So, if you want to increase your chances to enact change successfully — and transform your company’s life forever — following these best practices will help you manage organizational change smoothly and with less resistance:
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- Create a tangible, realistic vision. Determining what you want your organization to look like in the future is critical to success. This allows you to trace the roadmap that will guide you to reach your goals.
- Embrace change management. The most difficult part of change is overcoming people’s natural resistance to switching things up. For this reason, you need to implement the right change management model for your business and get ready to deal with your team’s dissatisfaction.
- Get constant feedback from your team and employees. You need to find ways to get real feedback directly from your team so you can constantly improve the process. A great way to do this is through regular pulse surveys. That way, every employee can know that they’re being heard, which improves employee engagement.
- Use the right tools. Make sure you’re getting tools that are helping you to keep track of your project and improve your communication. Otherwise, you may find yourself having to deal with some unnecessary problems.
- Lead the project with top leadership skills. Your company needs strong thought leadership if you want to move your current organization to a better state. Ensure that you’re sharpening your leadership skills frequently if you want to lead a change management initiative properly.
- Communicate as effectively as possible. Communication can mean the difference between success and failure. If you find that your company is having communications problems, it’s time to address this issue as soon as possible. Failure to do so could very well mean you’ll face some hard times.
Following these practices will help you approach organizational change properly
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Why Organizational Culture Is So Critical
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Organizational culture is the very core of a company. It refers to the practical and pervasive implementation of norms, best practices, ideals, and shared values within your company. Your culture defines and shapes your work environment. Ultimately, developing your organizational culture is about building people programs to help you achieve your business goals while remaining in-line with your company values.
Culture connects the three crucial parts of any organization:
- Your organization’s business goals. What is your organization trying to achieve in the marketplace, and how will it get there?
- Your company values. Everything starts with the values held by company leadership and how well they walk the talk.
- Your people and people touchpoints. Think of all the programs, communications, and organizational behaviors within your organization. These hundreds and thousands of touchpoints make up your organizational culture—anything from your budget to the language you use in job descriptions to how decisions and business objectives are defined and communicated.
Investing in organizational culture and leadership where team members can thrive, engage with work, and feel supported is exactly what contributes to business success. By leveraging your company values, you can regularly and intentionally improve your business engine, customer support, onboarding, recruiting, internal processes, and nearly everything else about your organization.
Good culture drives employee engagement and increases retention, because your team feels supported and able to do their best work every day. With strong culture and values you can:
- Build team-oriented practices so your team can get their best work done.
- Reduce friction so team members can identify and execute high-impact projects.
- Ensure all team members feel welcome in your organization, regardless of gender, appearance, race, and identity.
- Connect everything back to your organization’s mission, so everyone understands why their work is a critical piece of the puzzle.
- Establish standards for teamwork, collaboration, and team building across your organization
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"You don’t choose your core values. Your company’s values are implied by the behaviors the people within your organization exhibit—and mostly the behaviors they exhibit when you’re not looking.
In other words, I believe you can’t create your values; you can only discover them alongside the people who make your company what it is."
Kyle Nakatsuji,
Co-Founder and CEO of Clearcover
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