Your gut is telling you that something different needs to happen in your business but you are not entirely sure where to start. It is a common dilemma for business owners and managers to identify what exactly needs to change and how.
It is also very natural to care about the people working for you. You don’t want to upset colleagues, who may also be friends or family members. You don’t want to unsettle your team or create a negative atmosphere. And you don’t want to lose valuable skills and knowledge whilst making that strategic business change.
But if you want to ensure your business is where it needs to be, you may need to do all those things. With change often comes difficult decisions.
My honest advice, and I say this to all my clients, is don’t plan your business around your people. Plan your business around what your business needs are moving forward. If you were starting the business from scratch what would it look like?
What needs to change in your business?
Map out your ideas. This could be growing or reducing service provision. Altering or expanding your product offering. Changing your marketing strategy, bringing in IT support, or HR support. Improving transport efficiencies, starting to export and so on.
Take a moment to day dream and visualise your ideal outcome. Then start to think about the steps needed to turn that into reality.
Then and only then do you consider the potential impact for your current people. It may sound odd for a HR professional to say ignore your people but it is honestly the best thing to do at times like these. It ensures you are making strategic and structural decisions for the right reasons. Remember it is post not person.
If that change relates to resolving a situation with a difficult team member, the best thing you can do is performance manage that person. Two outcomes are guaranteed. Things either improve or you are well positioned for a fair and legal termination. Either way it is a win-win for the business.
My top tips for reviewing your business structure are:
Be prepared to challenge yourself, your decisions, ideas and thought processes and be brave. Then;
- Start with a blank piece of paper
- Think about roles and functions. Think about what areas of the business you would like to remove, condense, grow or venture into.
- What gaps do you have and what would help you in a practical sense. What could you outsource and so on.
- You now have your mind map – what might this look like in terms of roles and job profiles. Get these down on paper and then decide what salary rates and benefits might look like for the new roles.
- Now and only now, consider the possible impact for existing people. This will involve identifying the following:
- current roles that are clearly at risk of redundancy
- people who genuinely have the skill set to be slotted into new roles and the personal impact for them (i.e. salary decrease/increase etc)
- areas where you actually want to test the market and roles will be subject to recruitment and external advertising. Anyone not successful then being redundant.
- Next, consider the finances. Does this provide you with the required overall cost savings or how will you fund the immediate short term costs if redundancy applies.
Continue to review the above as necessary, then go for it and commence a business restructure!
For any help with strategic reviews, staff consultation, redundancy or recruitment processes contact us today……..
