As the economic recession leads to inevitable redundancies and organisations look for other ways to streamline their efficiency or effectiveness, so the inevitable rounds of restructuring follow. In principle it is a simple exercise that just needs good project management. So why are so many restructures often painful processes that lead to political wrangling and ultimately fail to deliver the expected goals, often ending in yet further restructures?

Primarily because organisations treat them as simple exercises that only need good project management. For example, during a recent project TalentDrain identified that nearly 75% of employees who had joined the organisation around the time of a recent restructure were unclear as to which function they reported into and thus were ultimately unclear of the organisational goals they were helping to deliver.

Instead, organisations need to treat any sizeable restructure as the equivalent of an internal merger which, if it is to be successful, needs the same focus on engaging and involving people.

We fully understand that success in this complex and fast moving environment is not as simple as the deployment of a questionnaire. As engagement and retention experts, TalentDrain’s Unify offering provides clients with a range of diagnostic and consulting solutions encompassing Insight, Strategy, Execution and Sustainability.

Insight
One of the key success factors in any restructure is ensuring people are engaged, focused and confident it will be a success. However, few organisations invest the time and effort to understand what their people are thinking.

Strategy
Organisational change inevitably brings ambiguity and uncertainty that in turn can lead to a loss of performance focus and organisational confidence. Our consultancy team have considerable experience, gained as internal OD professionals and external consultants, in ensuring strategic planning embraces all aspect of organisational performance.

Execution
Restructures come with high expectations in relation to enhanced organisational performance and quick returns on investment. The juxtaposition is that change brings disruption, takes time to implement and requires people to change their behaviour. Managers need practical support to enable them to keep their people focused and deliver the short-term goals.

Sustainability
The pressure of everyday business means that organisations rarely step back, review and implement their learning into subsequent change initiatives. TalentDrain have developed a fast review process to enable organisations to improve their capability to deliver subsequent organisational change initiatives.

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