The Business Org Chart: A Smart Tool to Increase Employee Engagement

Do you realize you have a powerful tool at your disposal to influence the culture of your company, as well as the efficiency and productivity of your employees? Actually, I should say you have the potential to have this tool impact your company. Would you be surprised if I told you that organizational charts can maximize employee efficiencies, productivity and general well-being?

If you’re using Visio, PowerPoint or other similar software, you have about as much functionality as a printed phone book. Sure, names and job title are there and you can see where each person sits on the corporate ladder, but that’s not all that helpful when it comes to today’s demanding business environment.

One Of The Biggest Time Drains

Think of how you and your employees work. It’s constant go, go, go. You expect information to be instant, accurate and at your fingertips whenever you need it. Wasting time searching for information and people takes up nearly 20 percent of a workweek, according to McKinsey research. That’s a significant amount of of time that can’t be regained elsewhere. It’s lost, gone to email searches, phone calls, conversations and file searches. It sort of reminds me of how we used to reference encyclopedias and Dewie Decimal cards to find information. If you have no idea what either of these things are, I’ve made my point.

Business organization charts have evolved and can do so much more than what they used to do, but only if you invest in modern org chart software that leaves the past where it belongs and brings the company directory into the internet age. Using a mobile app, you can find more than just names and contact information. You can find the person you need in seconds. You can find a person based on their talents, skills, background and job function.

Today’s business org chart is powerful because it helps people find who they need and what they need in only seconds. It also gives organizations something that is often missing in many organizations – the ability to connect with the talent they already have.

Use It or Lose It

Every person who is hired was brought on board because of their unique talent and skillset. They were hired because they filled a key resource gap. They were hired because their personalities seemed to fit the company culture. They beat out other applicants because they had that “it” factor that impressed at least one hiring person in the company.

Every new hire and every employee in your company has something to offer others in the company, likely more than just one thing. Yet if no one knows about these things or even thinks to ask, what good is it? They might be great at their job, but think how much the rest of the company is missing when that talent remains bottled inside a single team? Specific skillsets that could be extended to other areas, projects and teams are never utilized to their fullest potential.

Business organization charts can provide every employee with insight into details of co-workers that reveal much more than job titles. By simply searching for a specific skill or experience, all possible employees fitting the description are presented, along with their contact information. Companies suddenly have more than employees, but a giant pool of skills and talents ready to be leveraged in various capacities across the enterprise.

Not only does this open up an entirely new resource pool from which everyone in the company can benefit, but it also enables employees to discover areas for advancement as they constantly find new ways to apply their talent. This is critical for employee retention as more than 75 percent of employees believe it is management’s job to provide them with accelerated development opportunities in order for them to stay.

Engagement Starts With People

One of the coolest ways I’ve seen business org chart software make a real difference is in office culture. Employees, particularly new hires, are wanting to forge friendships and relationships with the people they spend so much of their time with every day. Yet the larger the organization, the more challenging this can be. Workers often stick to the people around them and their own teams, rarely branching out to meet others. This, of course, gives birth to silos and divisions that are more than just part of the business structure. There are divisions among workers, systems, applications and data, too.

By offering employees a simple, easy and always-accessible app where they can instantly find who they need, along with personal details of each person to humanize them and find common ground, you are giving your employees the most powerful engagement tool available. Human interaction and collaboration breeds innovation, creativity and immeasurable potential. Providing a resource platform that inspires people to come out of their silos and work together will not only boost productivity, but motivate employees to work as a team. Not just the team they are assigned to, but with others across the organization with whom they can share ideas and information.

It Doesn’t Have to Be So Hard

Employee engagement is one of the hottest topics today. While 90 percent of executives understand the importance of employee engagement, fewer than 50 percent understand how to address the issue. Corporate offsites, incentives, happy hours and contests may work for some, for a time, but giving employees a better way to interact with each other, learn about each other and find one another builds lasting relationships, even friendships, that keep people engaged long after the “Employee of the Month” plaque cycles through the halls.

In fact, most incentive and rewards programs are focused solely on an individual, not on the entire workforce. Instead of bringing people together, they can further divide the have’s from the have not’s. Research actually suggests that “rewards succeed at securing one thing only: temporary compliance. When it comes to producing lasting change in attitudes and behavior, rewards are strikingly ineffective.”

Using org chart software builds bridges, lays out the welcome mat, and pulls up a chair to the table as people who may have never interacted before find themselves working together on projects, sharing ideas and even a pizza at lunch. The work environment becomes a community.

The idea for employee engagement is less about singling out certain employees who meet a set standard, but keeping them feeling good about where they work, who they work with, what they do, and where they can go. It’s showing them you care about their aspirations, their happiness, their well being. Helping them foster relationships, enabling them to fully use the skills they’ve worked hard to learn, providing a path to professional growth – these are the things that make employees want to stay.

So for the 50 percent of executives who are scratching their heads and wondering how they can improve employee engagement, take a look at business organization chart software. It might be the easiest technology implementation with the highest ROI you’ve ever experienced.