ESSENTIALS TOOLKIT: STREAMLINING YOUR STRUCTURE AND ROLES

TIME TO GET IN SHAPE

As revenue opportunities start to reappear and staff come back from furlough, you’ll be faced with big decisions on the structure and roles that will serve you best as your business moves forward.

Even if you’re starting to feel more optimistic about your future prospects, revenues and client commitment will continue to be uncertain and unpredictable. So you’ll still want to keep things tight – focusing on efficient while minimising costs. Your people are your biggest costs, but also your most important asset. Keeping everyone on reduced salaries or just taking out the marginal members of your team are unlikely to build the positive spirit or create the cost agility you’ll need.

CHALLENGE YOUR STRUCTURE

If your structure was conceived in a previous era, or if it just evolved in more prosperous, upbeat times, it’s unlikely to be right for now. To get into the best shape you should take a step back and ask yourself whether your current structure is really the best to deliver both the results and the resilience you’re seeking. For example, do you really need those separate departments or business units with their own managers and bureaucracy? Are all your current capabilities required to win and retain the clients you want – or could you partner with others or outsource? Would you be in a better place with new capabilities? Are enough of your team actively involved with clients?

SHARPEN YOUR ROLES

It will pay you to take a good look at individual roles and responsibilities too. Roles that existed in a different era or when you were a larger business won’t necessarily be as relevant today. As businesses grow in good times, it’s easy for roles to drift and for salaries to become over inflated. Do check carefully to see that your spending on each individual is in line with the value they’re creating for the business. You should also be considering the opportunities to re-define roles, shuffle responsibilities and sharpen the level of client focus. You may well find that you not only reduce costs but become more efficient too. And don’t exclude yourself and the other members of your leadership team – are responsibilities clear between you, is the focus on the things that are most important and on those that will make the biggest difference?

THINK DIFFERENTLY

In reviewing and changing your structure and roles you should be brave and bold. Don’t be stuck in traditional and just follow yesterday’s conventions. Be determined to think and act differently. Think positively about making changes – they could provide the freshness and energy you’ve lost in recent months.

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WHAT TO DO

Every business will have different issues in relation to its structure and roles, but the approach required to move to a good situation will be similar in most cases. The main phases will be:

1. Frame & Clarify: Review your structure, role descriptors, staff costs, salary levels, work processes, fee rates, capacities and efficiency against relevant historic and expected future industry performance standards. Identify gaps and scope for improvement. Define your objectives and measures of success.

2. Explore & Prioritise: Define the options for your ways of working, relating to the type of clients/projects you plan to be doing in the future. Confirm the capabilities and staff resources required and assess the salary/cost implications. Map against your existing situation, identify the potential changes and prioritise in terms of contribution to achieving your defined objectives.

3. Plan & Act: Consider the practical implications of implementing your priority changes by reference to existing contracts, terms of business, availability of desired capabilities/resources required, cost and management time required. Shape into an implementation plan with clear stages and measures of progress/success. Get moving!

HOW WE CAN HELP

We recognise that agencies will have different levels of capability, time and budget to deal with a specific issue. So we’ve designed all our services to give you different ways of drawing on our expertise and experience to help your business thrive.

Insightful Mentoring

We’ll bring all our knowledge and experience - and share it with you throughout the process. You and your team will handle most of the work in line with the programme we’ll agree together. We’ll review and challenge your work and make sure you stay on track to deliver your objectives.

Hands-on Partnering

We’ll not only share all our knowledge and experience, but we’ll use our expertise and ideas to actually deliver specific parts of the programme for you. We’ll take on some of the detailed challenges but will always be close to you and your team. You’ll be confident of the best possible outcomes, efficiently and quickly.