Who needs local management?
Globalisation of our economies, and in
particular of many of the companies making up these economies, is having a
major impact on the way people engage with their work. And where undoubtedly this can have a positive
bearing on some (i.e. in terms of
possible opportunities for development, growth – or indeed the mere survival -
of the companies concerned), other elements are likely to have a much less
favourable influence on the day-to-day working lives of the employees within
(parts of) these companies. The obvious one being security and certainty; we
don’t need to search very long to find examples of large, often global,
organisations deciding to close, or sell off, parts of their operations, seemingly, at the stroke
of a pen. You may be working for a highly successful operation one day, with
this same unit being ‘surplus to requirements’ the next.
Another consequence of the increasingly global nature of the organisations we work for is
that management structures often span different geographies, meaning that the
person you report to is less and less likely to be occupying a desk near you,
often not even in the same location. For many he or she may actually be based
in a different country, or worse, time zone! And if that isn’t the case for
you, it quite likely is for your boss. This isn’t necessarily a
problem, but it does require a different approach to factors such as teamwork,
communication, performance management, and learning and development.
And it has
a major side-effect: increasingly, people work in locations where there is no formal
type of ‘local’ management structure in place. Where their location, factory or
office may, at some stage in the past, have been an almost independently
operating unit, with all the managerial structures you would expect, the
situation today is likely to be very different. Take-overs, mergers, de-mergers,
restructurings, ‘realignments’, downsizing, and whatever other organisational
development we can think of, is likely to have led, for many, to working in a
local unit of a company increasingly managed from afar.
In many
locations, offices, factories and warehouses belonging to large organisations,
the concept of a ‘local management team’ is fast disappearing. There will still
be people in managerial roles, some may even be quite senior, but the structure
of the unit may be such that the various ‘sub-structures’ (think teams,
departments, shifts, etc.) are all being run from outside the site, with a
large likelihood even that department A ultimately reports to someone based in
one location, with department B led from a totally different office, maybe even
from a different country. As a result, the notion of a local team or group of
individuals being ‘in charge’ of that specific location may have disappeared
over the years.
It is this
development I would like to put up for debate: is ‘doing away’ with a formal
local or ‘site’ management structure simply something we have to get used to,
or are there good (enough) reasons to consider some sort of replacement. When I
am involved with reporting organisational engagement survey findings, more
often than not these organisations will still measure ‘local’, yet without
anyone to hand these findings to, as there is no longer a structure
facilitating this. Yet, these same survey results often highlight that the
site/unit/location has a very distinct culture, with all its associated local
issues and challenges. It often actually suggests that as far as employees are
concerned, not having this local structure in place is seen as a rather regrettable
void.
And this is
just one example where some sort of local managerial structure would be
helpful. Communication, recruitment, building management and facilities, general housekeeping matters, CSR,
local PR and dealing with various day-to-day issues are just a small selection
where a local group of employees would very likely benefit from some sort of formalised guidance based in the same location. Or indeed the opportunity for
senior management of the organisation to have some eyes and ears on the ground
other than the hearsay from individual managers they may currently rely upon.
Putting
something like this (back) in place doesn’t have to be a complicated matter,
nor would it necessarily lead to an added layer of management and / or bureaucracy.
Assuming the unit concerned is of a reasonable size, there is likely to be some
form of informal hierarchy already, as will there possibly be people on site
with roles that would typically lend themselves to be included in some sort of
formalised ‘management’ structure. This is likely to involve HR, but may also
benefit from involvement by functions such as Facilities, Communication and
Finance. I purposely put the word management in inverted commas, as it may well
be beneficial to, when naming such a structure, use different wording. Given
its main roles are that of communication and representation, and that it will be of a
more consultative rather than decision-making nature, calling it something like
the ‘Communication Team’ may well be preferred.
Knowing that most
organisations where this is a live scenario will have multiple sites /
locations where this applies, running a pilot in one or two of these would be
an easy way to test whether working this way is actually beneficial, or whether, for them,
the notion of ‘local management’ can be assigned to the organisational scrapheap
for ever.
Ruud Jansen Venneboer
Managing Partner
Making Change Happen
No comments:
Post a Comment