Organisational design

Overview

90% of leaders agree that organisational agility and the ability to respond effectively to challenges is critical for long-term business success. A third of leaders believe their organisation lacks this capability.

Our organisation design capability is focused on revolutionising how businesses think about organisation design, partnering with clients to design and implement the organisational models and structures that will deliver maximum agility, flexibility and responsiveness. Our specialists combine the best of the Strategy& and PwC toolkits and thought leadership to deliver adaptable, agile and sustainable value for our clients.

We help clients design an organisation and set-up of their people that is fit for purpose and addresses the internal, external, formal and informal factors that determine how well an organisation can put into practice its strategy.

We support your organisation through every step of this process, from the early stages to the implementation phase. Our portfolio of projects involves the following:

Organisational health checks
Governance and clarity on decision making
Capability modelling and functional deep dives
Contemporary / agile teaming constructs
Organisational cost effectiveness

Performance management frameworks
Interaction models
Service management frameworks
Strategic workforce planning
Workforce transitioning and implementing organisational design changes

Issues you may be facing

Have you developed a new strategy involving expansion, growth or new partnerships?
Are your resource allocations and capabilities not in line with your organisational strategy?
Have you grown extensively over the last years without reviewing your organisational structure?
Is your organisation not set up to enable growth?
Do you have the right skills in place to deliver your strategy?
Do you have unclear reporting relationships, lack of accountability, or duplications of effort?
Is there scope for centralisation within your organisation to enable efficiencies from economies of scale?

How we can help you

Assess
Design
Construct
Implement

Assess

Our organisational design projects aim at enabling client strategy as well as the capabilities required to deliver on the strategy. In this Assess stage we review the strategy, understand the organisation/structural implications required to deliver the strategy and develop design principles. We often accelerate the phase using our Digital Twin tool.

We use design principles to shape the future of the organisation and ensure that the designs we create are strongly linked to the strategic objectives. These principles are the translation of the strategic objectives into guiding parameters by which the design can be developed. These are agreed early in the project and help communicate how and why design decisions are being made.

Our specialised digital tools enable global and industry insights and how this will influence the design and future workforce requirements.

We also ensure we establish a baseline of the current state of the organisation and identify constraints and other implications of making organisation changes.

Design

The second stage involves designing high level to-be conceptual model options and then

evaluating these models against the design principles developed in the Assess phase. We also review the capability gap between as-is and to-be options and develop strategies to address the gap before selecting a preferred option.

The next step within the Design stage is to focus on what the functions will look like at a high level and how these functions will operate in the future. We’ll help you to define functional profiles, select the top team and define the key accountabilities required to deliver the conceptual model. Functional profiles are the shift from a conceptual grouping of capabilities to defining accountabilities at a team level.

Our accelerated and agile approach enables a collaborative sprint design process working with cross-functional client teams.

This phase ends with the calculation of the number of full-time employees required to fill the structure (capacity planning) as well as strategic workforce planning.

Construct

The Construct stage is focused around designing the enablers for the proposed structure and involves testing the design against a number of scenarios. Enablers include:

job descriptions – taking cognisance of contemporary and agile roles;
performance management frameworks and metrics;
governance framework and decision rights;
competency modelling allowing for cross-up, and multi skilling preparing people for the digital world;
multiskilled development framework taking future orientated requirements into account including identifying the skills gap and developing plans to close; and
workforce adjustment logistics: redeployment, redundancies, training or recruitment required.

During this stage we also develop the change and communication strategy and plan.

Implement

This stage is focused on rolling out the design and new ways of working to ensure that the benefits are realised. We often develop a business case, which is tracked over time to achieve the financial, efficiency and productivity benefits.

We'll support you through the transition phase and ensure that the new organisation is properly handed over to business. This stage also involves evaluating, reviewing and refining the design if necessary. It’s important to evaluate the effectiveness of the changed organisation and to make adjustments where identified.

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Contact us

Marthle du Plessis

Workforce of the Future Africa Leader, PwC South Africa

Tel: +27 (0) 11 797 4075