Impact Consulting has a wealth of experience in helping organizations to get the most from a company restructure. Using our psychological knowledge and expertise, we have helped staff and organizations to cope with the changes they face during a restructure, whilst also remaining positive and motivated. In this article, we explore a recent example, where we have helped our clients get the most from a restructure
Impact Consulting were approached by a large NHS Foundation Trust earlier this year. They explained that due to the changes taking place within the NHS, a number of providers would have to be integrated. They were planning a major restructure in order to cater for the merged organisations and wanted our assistance to ensure the process ran smoothly.
When the organisation had confirmed the new structure, we designed a series of assessment centres in order to select the most suitable candidates for the available posts. We know that this process provides a number of key benefits to the organisation and the employees involved. Research highlights the importance of ‘person-job fit’; if a person is well matched to a job in terms of their skills, abilities and personality, they will be happier in the role and feel more motivated at work. This in turn has an impact on the turnover rate thus saving the organsiation money. ‘The cost of an assessment centre needs to be compared with the potential cost of recruitment error (probably between £5000 and £50000, depending on the seniority and potential for business errors’ (Sterling, 2010, CIPD)
The process had a number of benefits for the employees involved in that it gave them an opportunity to identify their strengths and areas for development. Impact Consulting provided employees with an opportunity for developmental feedback, which helped them to produce a personal development plan to outline their goals going forward. For any individuals who were unsuccessful in obtaining a post following the restructure, the development sessions helped them to gain more clarity about their future career direction, as well as strategies for coping with changes.
The commissioner was delighted with the outcome of this work and the managers involved were enthused about working with and developing their new teams. They could clearly see the benefits of the approaches we adopted. Research estimates that use of systematic selection techniques increases productivity of selected individuals, in financial terms, by an average of 40% of their salary. This varies from 20% for operational roles up to over 60% for senior roles. Therefore, if 10 middle managers, on £50K for example, are selected via an assessment centre they are likely to yield a financial benefit to the organisation of £250K per annum (ie: 50% of £50K x 10). (Smith and Robertson)
‘Impact Consulting have been instrumental in informing and supporting our revised strategic direction. It now feels that the organisation has real clarity about its direction of travel and the energy level and commitment of the new HR function is amazing’