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If you’re looking to bring clarity to an organization or a project, an organization chart (or org chart) can go a long way. If you haven’t created org charts in the past, you may find the process to be a little daunting. No worries, we have put together this quick guide to help you with just that!
Below, we cover the fundamentals of (just about) everything you need to know about org charts.
An organizational chart (also known as organization chart, org chart) is a diagram that visualize the structure of a company/organization and the relationships and relative ranks of its roles. Org charts can help viewers understand the size of the organization as well as the relationships between departments, teams and roles. Org charts are often used by companies' senior executives, managers and HR department for personnel planning and strategy.
The most common type of org chart is Hierarchical Org Chart. This type of org chart is especially helpful if you are organizing people or structuring a group or company that needs clearly defined positions and roles to be filled out and placed into a chain of command.
The top of the chart is represented by the most senior individual and leader, and each successive block down encompasses the next most senior individual and leader (or leaders). Relationships between direct reports are also broken down in these hierarchical charts.
Matrix org charts, on the other hand, are designed for use in organizations and projects where there are more than just one individual manager/idea at each individual level.
These charts handle more complex relationships with ease, still clearly defining the hierarchy and the relationships between all roles listed, but doing so in a cleaner way than a traditional hierarchical chart could.
A Flat Organizational Chart always consists of two or three individual levels. At the top you have your high-level managers and executives and beneath that you have your core workers and employees.
Traditionally, org charts are used to outline the organization structure and “chain of command” in businesses and organizations. These kinds of charts can be used by managers and executives to better understand the direct reports that they are responsible for, but can also be used by employees to better understand who they report to as well as how each individual group or project team contributes to the whole organization in general.
It’s also really easy to onboard new employees at every level with org charts, simply because the amount of information provided is always distilled down to the most essential components only on the relationship between all of the people listed.
Org charts can also be used during restructuring to help clear up any confusion or misconceptions. These kinds of charts guarantee that no individual or department “slips through the cracks”, as well – something that happens with an alarming frequency when these kinds of tools aren’t taken advantage of. Lastly, workforce planning and resource planning can take advantage of org charts, too.
Firstly, make sure that you define the initial purpose and overall goals of the org chart that you are looking to establish. Secondly, you’ll want to gather as complete information about each role as possible to detail your org chart from top to bottom.
The next piece of the puzzle is to figure out how you’re going to physically create your org chart moving forward. Modern software designed with org chart creation in mind is more accessible and affordable today than ever before. These kinds of Organizational Chart Maker can create org charts very quickly and effectively.
Finally, you’ll want to do everything you can to build in flexibility with your org chart right from day one. It’s unlikely that the structure you outlined is going to be completely permanent. Thankfully though, org charts built using Org Chart Software are easy to update, redefine, realign, and overhaul completely as your organization changes.
