The first agile organizational structure at Swiss Post

The operative word is agility. Instead of thinking in strict hierarchies, employees organize themselves on their own initiative and in a project-oriented manner. Claudia Kaiser and Hanneke Gerritsen, joint Heads of Employee & Organizational Development, explain the structures that have just been introduced in their department.

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The Employee Development unit has had a new organizational structure since April 2018. Why?

Claudia: When our department was reorganized in February 2017, I was given a significant cost reduction goal. We were asked to reduce costs while maintaining the same level of service and quality. This was only possible by making a fundamental change. The experience of other companies shows that agile forms of organization are a good way to meet these types of efficiency goals.

Hanneke: The work environment is becoming increasingly complex. We want to be more diverse and more flexible in order to continue to be able to meet challenges in the future. The agile concept is perfectly suited to this: it gives us greater flexibility and allows us to respond better to a changing operating framework.

Claudia: It was also clear to us that our range of services would remain unchanged and that we wanted to respond better to the needs of our partners. We can become more efficient with agile structures by standardizing services which were previously duplicated.

What does the agile structure in Employee & Organizational Development mean in concrete terms?

Claudia: Management tasks are divided among a greater number of people and hierarchies have become flatter. Tasks, competencies and responsibilities are divided differently, but must be defined very clearly. Management tasks are divided among several people, with somebody from the team taking on the leadership role after consulting the team.

Hanneke: This structure is perfectly suited to integrating push-and-pull assignments. These include tasks emerging in individual units as well as those prescribed by central management, i.e. the Group. 

The company Spotify operates an agile structure consisting of small teams referred to as “squads”. Several squads form a “tribe”. “Chapters” consist of experts from different tribes. What are their main characteristics?

Claudia: Generally speaking, our organizational structure is similar. Our employees are organized in unit groups, which correspond to both their “tribes” and their “squads”. On the other hand, we work in specialist groups which are comparable to their “chapters”. 

Hanneke: The specialist groups are responsible for implementing the Group’s strategic goals. They set new standards, refine the specialist topic and define processes. They know the benchmarks, trends and most up-to-date solutions on the market. Their focus is on next practice. The unit groups are responsible for unit-specific tasks, which are dealt with by task teams. 

How is work organized within the units?

Hanneke: The teams consist of people with a wide range of knowledge and experience. Each person assumes a certain technical role and is responsible for fulfilling their tasks. The teams are given great individual responsibility in order to find solutions quickly and enable them to make decisions.

Up until now, our units have consisted of teams and a management team. What has changed?

Claudia: Employees are now working on interdisciplinary, Group-wide tasks as well as tasks relating to a specific unit. This means we can ensure that the know-how from individual units is also applied to Group-wide solutions.

Hanneke: We build teams of people with “T-shaped skills”: employees work both as specialists in their particular field and also as generalists who are able to think and work in an interdisciplinary fashion.

What are the benefits?

Claudia: We consider the greatest strength to be the concept of “doing both”: we work as experts on strategic aspects and as generalists developing market-specific solutions. We are confident that this is a “win-win” model for both companies and employees. In addition, the so-called “bottleneck” which occurs in traditional structures becomes much wider in agile structures.

Hanneke: We can pass on responsibilities and decision-making authority to employees. Teams can organize themselves and act on their own initiative. However, this requires a clear operating framework which has to be agreed with management in advance.

What are the disadvantages of this structure?

Hanneke: The way we work is changing and old hierarchies and processes no longer apply. In short: the agile structure demands quite a lot from both employees and managers. We have to get used to a whole new working culture.

Claudia: Our environment is not organized in an agile way and is more catered towards the established management structure. But the traditional, never-changing boss no longer exists. We’ve already invested a great deal in the interfaces to make sure that the business model of the entire HR department can be adopted by others. After all, Employee & Organizational Development is only one part of P and therefore dependent on the entire business model.

What was your Approach?

Hanneke: The organization chart has changed significantly since we started our project in spring 2017. Employees were given the opportunity to provide regular feedback. The stakeholders must be convinced that the concept of self-organization has advantages for them, otherwise it will become an uphill struggle.

Claudia: At the beginning, I had a vision but no concrete ideas. When I was supposed to quickly draw an organizational chart, I was completely out of my depth. The structure has developed step by step and sometimes we even went one step back. We discussed this in detail in the management team, incorporated employees’ ideas and input and observed other companies.

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