Tag Archive for: Ingentis org.manager

Visualizing organizational relationships in your org chart

Ingentis HR gimmicks

 

By Kelly O’Hara

 

Relationships within an organization are neither simple nor one-way. Therefore, it’s not enough to display a standard hierarchical structure when trying to point out the deeper connection of co-workers. As mentioned in an earlier article about organizational visualizations, illustrating relationships that are cross-departmental, project-based, or otherwise outside of an employee’s regular reporting structure helps HR and managers see all areas of the organization that an employee touches. So let’s have a look at different visualization possibilities in this next Ingentis HR gimmick.

Why visualize relations

Structures and relationships in organizations aren’t always black and white. For example, an employee can directly report to one team or manager but also work closely with another team. Or, there is a special connection between two colleagues that may not have too much impact on the everyday work life but is generally of great importance, e.g. a mentorship. This is why it’s very helpful to use different visualizations to highlight specific connections.

Solid and dotted lines

The most common way to do this is by implementing solid and dotted line structures.
The solid line is also known as legal line and typically represents the reporting structure concerning for example vacation requests, everyday workflows and legal processes. Dotted lines on the other hand can be a bit more nuanced and are implemented differently amongst companies. Here are some examples:

Mentors

At first sight, it may not seem necessary to include a mentorship on an org chart, but they can be helpful for oversight especially during employee onboarding. If your company has a formal mentor program for new employees, it can help to keep track of who is working with whom, or show if there are enough mentors for all the new employees.

Successors

To assume that your org chart is set in stone and that no one will move away from the company or change roles only hurts you in the long run. Org charts are constantly changing due to joiners and leavers, promotions, or role changes. One way to stay on top of these changes and make transitions easier for your organization and teams is to implement a successor program.
Not every role needs an official successor documented, but high- to mid-level managerial positions can benefit from having a successor in place. Successors can be visualized on an org chart through the use of dotted lines. This allows both HR and upper management to track a successor’s relationship with their current and future role and make sure that processes are in place for future success.

Deputies

Another reason to work with dotted lines is to point out one’s deputy. Let’s say, you’re planning on going on a sabbatical. Your colleagues will need to know who to get in touch with once you’re out of office. Implementing dotted lines in your org chart is a quick and easy way for them to find the answer. No need for the time-consuming questioning of several co-workers in vain – it’s all there, in your organogram.

Network visualizations

One valuable structure to document is that of agile networks, such as project teams. These networks are typically temporary and comprised of employees from multiple departments. For example, a product launch would require employees from product, engineering, and marketing to work together closely. A customized relation, illustrated as what we call a network visualization, could connect all team members, including the project team lead.
To avoid confusion, this network visualization would not be part of the default org chart but an additional view.
As a result, the default org chart would provide an overview of the legal structure while the network visualization shows how many project teams there are and who is part of them.

Both our org charting solutions Ingentis org.manager and orginio offer the possibility of highlighting relationships via dotted line. In addition, Ingentis org.manager enables network visualizations. To find out more about the software, visit:

Ingentis org.manager 
orginio

Organizational visualizations with org charts

Ingentis HR gimmicks

By Kelly O’Hara

We as humans are inherently visual. About 83% of what humans perceive is based on sight1 with the other 17% broken down among the other senses. As a logical consequence, we believe that the visualization of HR data (or any data in general) is an essential tool for identifying the information that is important to you when sifting through the data jungle! So, let’s explore some different ways you can create visual representations – with your org chart!

Hierarchy Structures

One of the most obvious visualizations for org charts is the hierarchy structure. Being able to see an entire organization from top to bottom in a visual way makes it easy for anyone viewing the chart to understand relationships and reporting structures quickly. An org chart can show details like pictures of employees, team structures within groups, and other data, or it can be a simple hierarchy tree that allows for viewers to easily drill down into departments and command structures.

KPIs

Integrating KPIs directly into your org chart gives HR and managers quick access to important information about teams and departments, facilitating the process of HR controlling. For example, if your organization is looking to grow a department’s head count by the end of the year, showing the head count KPI right on the chart makes it easier to see how close you are to reaching your goal at a glance rather than drilling down into the department and manually counting the roles. Or, how about visualizing each department’s budget spent to see at a glance if they are still on track?
Check this page to see some more examples of how the visualization of KPIs looks like with Ingentis org.manager: https://www.ingentis.com/orgmanager/orgchartsoftware/controlling/

Big Data

The visualization of big data can be incredibly beneficial. Rather than working with spreadsheets and documents full of numbers and text, creating a visual representation of your organization’s data can make it easier and faster for consumption of the information at a glance. Employee demographics such as gender or age, location and head count are just a handful of data sets that can be visually represented.

A thought to keep in mind: The larger your organization, the more data you most likely have available. However, just because you have data available doesn’t mean you need to visualize all of it! Focus on making your complex or extensive data visual. If a visualization of the data doesn’t help in time-to-comprehension, it probably isn’t necessary.

Relationships

Relationships on an org chart can be different from a standard hierarchical structure. Visualizing relationships that are cross-departmental, project-based, or otherwise outside of an employee’s regular reporting structure helps HR and managers see all areas of the organization that an employee touches. For instance, you can create separate groups for these relationships (e.g., project or agile teams which we’ll go further into below) or show the relationship through dotted lines. Read more about the visualization of organizational relationships in this Ingentis HR gimmick.

Special Skills

Special skills can often be overlooked as an important part of org charts. Adding skills to your organogram can help HR or managers quickly find employees who fit certain descriptions or have a non-role-related skill without having to send out to company-wide communications asking for the information.
Keep track of who on your staff is certified for first aid, what additional languages anyone speaks, or what degrees people hold. And what about fun information for culture like who enjoys playing soccer? The options for what you record are endless. A great option to visualize this kind of information easily is with the help of icons. Another way of quickly finding employees with special skills is by incorporating the search function. This example called “Who plays soccer” shows how it works in our cloud solution orginio: https://orginio.com/examples/

Agile Teams

Since agile teams are dynamic-based on which roles are needed for projects at a certain time, visualizing how they fit into your organization can be incredibly beneficial. There are a few ways you can visualize your agile team within your overall org chart. For example, try color coding employees who are part of a team, creating completely separate groups for the agile team. Or giving iconographic indicators to these employees so that when you look at the organization as a whole, you can delineate which employees are currently working on an agile project.
We recently wrote a blog post about how you can visualize agile team structures which you can check out to dive even deeper into the topic.

To learn more about ways to visualize your org charts with Ingentis, have a look at our org charting tools:

1.See for example Florack, Scarabis, Primosch (2012, p. 325), or Braem (2004, p.192). 

The org chart as an operational tool

by Kelly O’Hara

Once in a while, when time allows, we would like to share with you why we are so into HR software. For example, when it comes to the efficient use of HR data: The amounts of information that HR departments have to deal with is enormous. And often, time is not on their side. But there are a few ideas that might help sifting through all of the data to discover and make use of what is important for the specific situation. For one, org charts are great for that. “Org charts?” you might say aloud in wonder. Let us walk you through it in our new blog series “Ingentis HR gimmicks”!

When typically thinking of an org chart, people often imagine a family-tree style visualization of their company’s structure that is mainly used to look up somebody’s phone number or last name. But did you know that there’s so much more to an org chart? With the following use cases, we’d like to give you an overview of the full operational power org charts really provide.

The Central Directory

The most common use case for an org chart is probably how employees can easily refer to it as a directory of their entire company that lets employees know who’s who on certain teams and their structures. Directory-style org charts can be quite basic, showing name and title and potentially nothing else. However, they become a lot more useful when they’re injected with a greater amount of information.

At the very least, org charts should include employee photos. This makes it easier for colleagues to seek one another out, especially in larger organizations. Further details like phone number, location, or even whether or not the employee is on parental leave can be added to the chart for better visibility into the workforce.

A Better Way to Plan

A robust org chart tool can help in planning team, department, and company reorganizations to the point of contentment before putting them into action. Using an org chart to visualize a reorganization can help avoid overlooked problems like too many vacancies on a team. Tracking budgets for teams and departments within an org chart can ensure that any changes your company is planning are feasible based on what certain teams are allocated.

The more collaborative the planning within an org chart is, the better. With a tool that allows for real-time tracking as well as multiple users, teams are able to plan more efficiently, without having to send plans back and forth to one another. Instead, members of various different teams can work together within the chart so that no plans or versions are lost.

Tracking Roles, Responsibilities & Workloads

Sometimes it can be difficult to see just how overworked an employee is until it’s visualized. With an org chart that tracks roles and responsibilities, team members and managers can quickly see if one person is taking on the majority of a certain type of work or if it’s spread out over the proper amount of people.

Tracking KPIs like this within your org chart, makes it easier to plan for additional headcount if workloads become too much for an individual or an entire team. Being able to compare similar roles and workloads within an organogram enables managers to see how comparable teams are structured and which structures result in the best outputs.

Bring Remote Workers Together

Since many companies now offer their employees to telecommute either full- or part-time, it is important to have tools available to facilitate the collaboration between these remote workers and teams. An org chart can help remote employees get a better picture of what their team looks like and who they can go to within the organization.

As face-to-face time may be limited with remote workers and teams, it is crucial to have a structure in place that allows them to easily access the information of their colleagues. Since walking to someone’s desk to ask a question isn’t a possibility, org charts help by giving more visibility into a team mate’s information.

Ingentis offers org charting solutions as add-ons to leading HR systems such as SAP ERP HCM, SAP SuccessFactors, Oracle HR solutions, ADP Vantage HCM, ADP Workforce Now and more. Click on the following links to learn all about:

orginio wishes you Happy Holidays and lots of smart org charts

Happy holidays and smart org charts for 2018!

Did you enjoy org charting with orginio this year? We hope the favorite features presented to you during the past months were helpful when working on your org chart. Of course, they are available online for you to browse.

Keeping it smart and simple in 2018

As for next year, look forward to some useful “How to” guidelines to keep org charting with orginio smart and simple. For example, are you planning to integrate your orginio into the company intranet? Or, would you like to provide org charts for different target groups? We’ve prepared some ideas for you!

orginio milestones 2017

Meanwhile, there are quite some orginio milestones to look back on: For example, a new webservice interface allows you to merge org charts from orginio and the on-premises solution Ingentis org.manager. As a result, decentralized structures can be shown within the central org chart.
As orginio now integrates with both ADP Workforce Now and ADP Vantage HCM, it was added to the ADP Marketplace. In our effort to provide a broad availability of the HTML5 app, we were also able to list orginio in the Deltek Product Marketplace. Of course, we won’t stop here and are already working on further integrations and app store listings – stay tuned.

Thank you

As you can see, it’s an exciting time for orginio and we are looking forward to all the things to come in 2018. But before targeting the next cornerstones, we would like to say thank you for your trust in us and in orginio.

We wish you happy holidays and a healthy and successful new year!