Yes. OrganizationWeaver was designed to be an easier to use and more controlled system than standard spreadsheets. With the investment of a few hours of hands-on training for the design and staffing teams, the integration process will proceed much faster and safer than by attempting to carry out these tasks using Excel. OrganizationWeaver removes inefficiencies from the process by streamlining it.

No. OrganizationWeaver helps the integration team break down problems and make optimal decisions in the right order and with the best background data available. No decisions are made automatically.

OrganizationWeaver is a plug-in and plug-out software. At project start, we import relevant data from your existing ERP or HR management systems. At project end, we export optimized data back into your backend systems. Here’s a typical run-down of a project.

Step 1: An OrganizationWeaver technician will import and cleanse all of the relevant data your team will need to make optimal decisions. The core team of people who will be using OrganizationWeaver will decide the parameters and restrictions for the tool. The core team will also be trained on the aspects of OrganizationWeaver that they will be using.

Step 2: The core team, with possible sub teams, begins to build the detailed organizational design. Any number of project members can work simultaneously, complementing each other’s input as they work their way through a large number of small decisions in the optimal order.  Each organizational unit and position will be created and approved by the proper team members. You will re-use whatever you can from the original organizations, and change whatever elements that need to be changed. Team members will use templates to create detailed position properties, such as job descriptions, for all positions quickly and completely.

Step 3: Once the detailed organizational design is complete for one or two organizational levels, it is time to start staffing personnel into those positions. The first step of staffing is to define initial candidates for each position. This can be done in several ways, but in most situations, we recommend collecting structured information from employees about their preferences. In most cases, these preferences represent the best available initial candidate allocation. To make the gathering of this information possible, information about the new organizational structure is shared with the employees eligible for the positions currently being staffed. Employees will be given some time to look through the new structure and share which positions are their top priorities via an intranet solution. At the same time, they provide a range of other relevant information about their staffing preferences (e.g., their location preferences).

Step 4: Team members will begin to decide who is most qualified for each position, based on the initial candidate allocation and different methods for moving candidates between positions. All of the relevant data is at their fingertips so they can make optimal decisions. The system makes sure all decisions are made in the right order – you just have to work through it and make sure every small decision is of high quality.

Step 5: Once every position has been filled, every downsizing decision has been approved, and demographic ratios have been double-checked, final staffing decisions will be communicated to employees. In the mean time, the next levels’ organization design is on its way.

Step 6: An OrganizationWeaver technician will export all employee, organization, and job description data back into the appropriate business support systems. OrganizationWeaver is then removed and there will be no on-going maintenance fees.

The OrganizationWeaver staffing process can be carried out in multiple waves. For instance, top performers that are the highest priority to retain can go through the staffing process before anyone else. They can be locked down to positions, ensuring that their preferences are met, and that they are not caught by the flow of candidates between positions during the main staffing puzzle.

To ensure that project members are unbiased and don’t make sub-optimal decisions, project members are handled through a separate workflow that ensures that they aren’t asked to make decisions that are in any way related to them.

OrganizationWeaver is flexible on what approach to take to downsizing. Every organization has their own policies for the downsizing process and OrganizationWeaver is able to help get to a final list of employees to go through that process. Still, we do have three imperative principles. The first principle is that the organizational design process and the staffing process should be as divided as possible. Thus, after the design phase, the sizing of the new organization is already done, and the size of potential redundancies is already given before the staffing process starts. Our second imperative is that all staffing decisions should be based on criteria defined before the actual staffing process begins. And finally, no person should be automatically downsized if they’re not staffed to any of their preferred positions. The system has plenty of workflow options for candidates not staffed to their preferred positions, and only candidates that are actively marked for downsizing evaluation should go through that process.

The OrganizationWeaver staffing algorithm helps team members focus on the most important decisions to make at each point in the staffing process. For instance, if there is a slim chance that an employee will become available for a position, the final staffing for that position is delayed. If someone on the staffing team makes a decision that matters to another team member, the solution will call that to the other team members’ attention. It is the tweaking of this algorithm, through much iteration, that has made OrganizationWeaver the best tool available for carrying out large staffing projects, achieving the optimal staffing while minimizing the number of employee-position evaluations.

Some companies have all information about employees, positions, current structure, employee performance, etc. handled by one ERP system such as SAP or Oracle. Others have large amounts of information scattered between a number of systems. OrganizationWeaver handles both situations.
Because OrganizationWeaver is not a long term installation, there is no need to build integration points that have to fit long term plans for the IT architecture. A few simple batch exports are all that is required to set up OrganizationWeaver for a project, and for large projects we take weekly batch exports of employee statuses from the backend system throughout the project period. After the end of the project, the optimized data is lifted back into the surviving business systems in a similar manner. So, rather than adding to the IT integration requirements related to your transformation effort, OrganizationWeaver actually plays the role as data migration medium, supporting your IT integration.

While we believe that OrganizationWeaver provides exceptional value, we also realize that sometimes businesses have priorities best served by other methods. We have a full guarantee to deal with the rare occasion when another method needs to be implemented.

Organizational transformations are sensitive processes which need to run smoothly. Therefore, an OrganizationWeaver technician will be on-site during the entire project period to take care of the technical implementation, data migrations, setting up parameters, optimizing reports, and being a resource for the core team to optimize their use of the tool.

No. OrganizationWeaver makes organizational restructuring efficient; it does not help run the day to day operations of a company. Once the transformational change is complete, all data from OrganizationWeaver is exported into the long-term systems of choice. OrganizationWeaver does not have a place in the IT infrastructure beyond 2-12 months.

Using OrganizationWeaver shouldn’t change the way you think about using external advisors. We work well with external consulting companies and have experience in working with many of the global consulting companies often involved in large transformation projects. It is important that your external advisors are aware of OrganizationWeaver and the added possibilities provided by the software, but the use of OrganizationWeaver doesn’t normally change your need for leveraging external advisories in your project.

• Strategy consulting:  Many companies buy services to support them in evaluating their strategic alternatives. In an organizational transformation, this might include high-level sizing decisions, choosing basic design models, etc. These decisions are important input into the project phase where OrganizationWeaver provides the highest value: The detailed design and staffing of the organization.
• Candidate evaluations: Also, many companies buy services to support them in evaluating candidates for executive positions. These high level decisions do not interfere with the detailed staffing process supported by OrganizationWeaver.
• Project management support: Many companies buy services to help them manage the execution of the transformation project. Consultants supporting the design and staffing process will be working with OrganizationWeaver. The solution will support them, and the rest of the project management with structuring data, monitoring progress and results, engaging employees, etc. The need for external consultants doesn’t change, but it will allow consultants to focus on giving advice, rather than to focus on stitching together pieces of information from large numbers of spreadsheets.

OrganizationWeaver is a dedicated software for designing and staffing organizations. Large organizational transformations are often programs consisting of many workstreams or projects that we do not support. For example, we do not support any of the following activities:

• Business strategy
• Business transformation planning and program management
• Business process redesign
• IT consolidation or other IT transformation activities
• Communication planning
• Training or skills development

Further, there is a range of HR-related day-to-day changes which we do not support. This includes the following:

• Leadership development, coaching
• Succession management
• External recruitment
• Competency management
• Performance management, 360 degree feedback

OrganizationWeaver helps companies comply with normal regulations for restructuring processes. These include; the requirement to evaluate all candidates for each position on predefined sets of criteria, the requirement to store HR information in a safe environment, the requirement to log all decisions for future scrutiny, and the requirement according to data protection regulations to expunge or anonymize all data after a certain period if it is not explicitly being used. These properties, and the increased control from a centrally driven process, makes OrganizationWeaver a low legal risk alternative to spreadsheet based solutions. OrganizationWeaver also helps support the rights, needs, and preferences of employees (key aspects that are normally emphasized by employee unions).

Note that different countries have very different regulations and policies. Practices can vary greatly even among different groups of employees in the same organizations. Please contact us to inquire about specific functionality of OrganizationWeaver

Yes, it is not only possible, but valuable to harness their preferences. The key is to set reasonable expectations for everyone involved.

If you are able to communicate to employees that there will be a controlled process, where everyone will be heard individually, and staffing decisions will follow a defined set of criteria, it will be much easier to manage expectations. The more open you are, the less rumors and false claims will arise.

If, on the other hand, it becomes obvious that the process will be uncontrolled, highly decentralized, political, or blind to individual preferences, then many employees will become frustrated, opposed to the change, or indifferent.