Is workplace hierarchy a good thing or not?

LEADERSHIP

            Before diving into the topic, I want the reader to think of a cricket team without a Captain, a country without a President or a team developing a product without a Leader. If you think hard enough, there will be a common issue faced by each one of the groups, which is decision making. Especially in a team working environment everyone in the team has different values and views on life and work. So, a healthy debate about a particular issue can boil down the options to a considerable amount. Let’s just say a team ends up with two options. Here a team will be divided into two factions, which is bad for any workplace/sport. This is where a leader comes into play.

            A leader considers all the available options, not just the two and choose the relevant option which he/she thinks is for the betterment of the group and also explains what he/she thinks that is the right decision.

MULTI-LEVEL HIERARCHY

            Since we spoke about leadership, which is a form of hierarchy, now let’s talk about multi-level hierarchy. Multi-level hierarchy is the most common form of hierarchy in most firms and organizations. Before going deep into the topic, one should understand ambitions drive human beings to do great things. In an organization with multi-level hierarchy, people will be automatically motivated to get to the next level. Hierarchy is alright when there is no toxicity in the culture of the organization, where people don’t act as a good team player just to get themselves ahead in the line. In many organizations people don’t act themselves during the time of appraisal.

A wrongly formed hierarchy represents a boat full of captains and no sailors in it. Here, of course the leadership knows a certain way how to move the ship(organization) forward, but there will be no sailors to make it happen. Another problem these organizations face is their employees think they are not getting enough credit for what they are doing.

Every organization will go through a learning curve, where they find out the exact number of levels required in a hierarchy required to run it. Also, the leadership needs to communicate to the employees, they must have skills to move to the next stage in the simplest language possible. When this is achieved, the employees will know what is required of them to reach their preferred destination.

HR’s ROLE IN FINDING THE RIGHT HIERARCHY

            I believe an organization’s hierarchy can be greatly influenced by the Human Resource Department. The HR department should take the maximum responsibility in finding the right hierarchal culture of an organization. It can be done by timely discussion with the top-level leadership for a varied period of time. Someone may find the sweet spot in one year, someone else may find it in three years. As long as the process is fine, I am sure the result will be incredible. Finding the right hierarchal culture is a dark horse, which should be given proper care or else it could cripple the organization. Eucto-People does just that for your organization. We work with during the learning curve and develop you from down. Here’s a way off the top of our head

            Promote Internal Job posting or IJT. This means, when some of the employees think they are best suited for some other role inside the company, it is the management’s responsibility to see that he/she really means it. IJT can produce long term positive effects including productivity, work satisfaction, employee happiness and FINDING THE RIGHT HIERARCHY.