This is the first article in a series concerning employee engagement. In our rapidly changing society, it is becoming vital that all who take part in the organisation understand what the objectives and incentives are at all levels. Increasingly, our work is turning into the processing and enriching of knowledge – but knowledge of the system in which this happens is essential, and this is where employee engagement comes in. In this article, I explore the causes, impacts and outcomes of corporate reorganisation, and how engagement at all levels is key to make such exercises less traumatic.
I love to cook. I have a work area in my kitchen, organised so that all the necessary elements for the production of various dishes is as efficient as possible.
i use spices and herbs in my cooking. Over the years, and much experimentation on my family, I have worked out the ideal blend of these ingredients to produce results which are sometimes restaurant grade. There have been disasters, such as the Chernobyl Green Curry or the Singapore Sludge. But my family have survived, so that’s all good.
Anyway, to the point of this post. I have a spice cupboard and it was a complete mess- empty jars, spices in duplicate, ingredients never used resulting in an endless search for the items which I needed most. Annoying and frustrating !
So I carried out a reorganisation. I was ruthless – I binned all the ingredients I have never used, merged some jars and rationalised the layout of the ingredients so that the most frequently used ones were easily to hand. The result: blessed efficiency and reduced frustration when preparing food.
This made me think. I have spent many years working with organisations that, on a more or less regular basis, went through reorganisations. I wondered if the process I used to reorganise my cupboard was similar to the one used when a corporation goes through a rationalisation exercise.
Humans are not spice jars. If my spice jars had feelings, then what I had done would have been cruel, cold and ruthless. But at least I was quick. When a corporation does this, the process is nearly not so fast, but the impact on those targeted by the reorganisation is considerable. The effect on morale is huge, and repeated instances of these happenings have a deleterious effect over time.
Another side to this is that there are times when reorganisations are essential. Again, looking at large corporations, these acquire over time a cohort of people whose functions become unclear or redundant. The onset of automation increasingly replaces swathes of workers, and you cannot help but feel that the corporations actually perform a useful social task by providing employment to people who might generate little value, and sometimes are a cause of cost and friction.
This is all well when times are good. But when the organisation is under stress, efficiency becomes key because survival is at stake, and areas that are not core to the purpose of the corporation must be looked at.
And thus, rationalisation takes place. Some organisations do their best to make the process as fair as possible. Some don’t. I have heard some horror stories about workers being made redundant by text, or a climate of fear and doubt caused by poor communication.
I’d conclude that it’s important, either as a worker or as a leader, to be as engaged as possible in the organisation. This is not to promote a culture where every body is super enthusiastic (that would be tiresome for us Brits), but more to make sure that the purposes of the organisation are well understood and communicated, and that the challenges, internal and external, are taken on board so that all can make the right strategic decisions – the leaders about the future of their organisation, the workers about their role and their relevance to it, and ultimately their career moves. Denial is not an option.
Just so you know, my ultimate goal is to promote data democratisation to assist employee engagement. It will favour the platform that my current employer produces, so I am not entirely without bias in my writing. Still, I hope that the journey I take to the eventual conclusion is one that you will recognise, and maybe act upon. It’s up to you.
A Blog about Data 
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