Nikos-Kefis
by Nikos Kefis,
Senior HR Consulting Manager,
NHS Shared Business Services.

Restructuring. It’s a word guaranteed to strike fear into even the most experienced manager’s heart. Understandably so. The NHS has seen more than its fair share of change over the years, and staff get tired and demotivated when the deckchairs are constantly reshuffled.

And yet, NHS organisations have a legal duty to make decisions which support population health, quality services and the sustainable use of resources. Which means that sometimes, inevitably, restructures are necessary.

So how do you make a restructure as painless and effective as possible? In this blog, I’ll share with you some of the secrets behind a successful restructure. What should you do? And possibly more importantly, what shouldn’t you do?

From day 1:

  1. Show your working

When you’re thinking about a restructure, it can be tempting to go straight into the how and the when. Don’t.

At the risk of coming over all primary-school teacher, remember Rudyard Kipling’s honest serving men – what, why, when, how, where and who.

A restructure will only be successful if each one of these is considered, with the issues understood and agreed on by all parties. Be specific. If your primary motivation is to save money, be clear about that – how much money needs to be saved, over what time period, and what’s the risk if it doesn’t happen? What are the alternatives?

  1. Keep it legal

This sounds obvious, but I know of a lot of poorly-designed restructures where managers have failed to understand the law and interpret it correctly. That’s understandable – it’s complex. But legal challenges are costly, time-consuming, demotivating and reputationally disastrous. Ensuring your plans are fully compliant, from day 1, is essential, and given the recent and forthcoming changes in employment law, external expertise is often useful to confirm this.

  1. Get the data

When you’ve been with an organisation for a while, it can be tempting to take short-cuts, assuming you already know what’s what. That assumption is dangerous. The most successful restructures assume no prior knowledge and ensure that decisions are grounded in robust data. Impartiality helps to ensure that decisions are taken for the right reasons, not influenced by vested interests.

What next?

Once you’re sure you have your foundations right, you can begin to move ahead with your restructure.

  1. Assemble your team!

HR clearly has an instrumental role to play in managing the operational aspects of restructuring and supporting the organisation’s strategic vision. You may also have change champions; union and staff-side reps, IT and infrastructure, payroll, finance, estates and facilities reps and so on. Your team should contain the expertise you need, but not be so large it falls prey to paralysis by analysis. (Jeff Bezos maintains that you should be able to feed the team with two pizzas. Who am I to argue?)

  1. Build a future ready workforce

Restructures usually bring in new job positions or alter responsibilities to existing ones. Assessing what new competencies are required, identifying skills gaps and building your strategic workforce plan will ensure that the right capability (size, location, time cost etc.) exists in your organisation.

  1. Retain, retrain and redeploy (whenever possible)

When a restructure happens employees could move horizontally (to other roles or departments) or vertically (promotion or demotion). An internal mobility and retraining plan should be a priority focus for HR as a means to reduce potential redundancies and maintain employee engagement and morale.

  1. Communicate communicate communicate

Clarity, transparency and accuracy of communications are non-negotiable for a successful restructure. HR has an important role to play ensuring that the content meets all the three characteristics and that it reaches everyone in the organisation, even those on long term leave  – parental or sickness for example.  A useful rule of thumb is “triangulation”, which means that people don’t typically take in a piece of information until they’ve heard it from three different sources. So ensuring all your people hear all the communications through three different channels is what you should be aiming for. Yes, it’s complex, but it’s the only way to maintain employees’ morale and confidence during uncertain times of change.

  1. Transform culture

After restructuring, new services may be introduced while others may cease to exist, ways of working may change, and culture may change too, to align with the new direction of the organisation. HR should be able to identify those changes and help the impacted teams shape and reinforce the behaviours that the new organisation model needs.

  1. Put employees at centre

A restructure is a stressful exercise. Your HR should be prepped for success – for example, they should be able to train line managers around how to treat confidential information, how to show empathy and how to handle difficult conversations with affected employees.

Employee Assistance Programs, regular check-ins with impacted employees, and real-time feedback mechanisms could also be amongst the initiatives that HR can lead to maintain employee morale and reduce absences or turnover.

Want to know more?

At NHS SBS, our HR consultancy services are designed to assist you throughout your workforce transformation and restructure journey, delivering efficiency and productivity savings. For more information about our service offering and case studies visit HR Excellence | NHS Consulting Services | NHS SBS

 

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