Organization modelling

A design/modeling approach to organizational structure that can have full integration with human resources management offers new possibilities of synergy in the way a company's organizational structure is managed. In particular, the advantages of integrating the two areas (organizational structure and human resources) become obvious if the philosophy that moves company activities is made to harmonize with service/production processes.

Organizational managers and those responsible for human resources are the corporate roles most closely involved with design/modeling activities and/or the re-engineering/continuous improvement of business processes.

LORE has been designed to assist the tasks of process design and analysis, and provide continuous monitoring of these tasks, thus making it possible to:

• set goals for the analysis/design of processes and models;
• create process structures characterized by efficiency and effectiveness;
• optimize the allocation of technical and human resources;
• allow for “context” variables that depend on “mission statements” and company values.

LORE supports managers for:

• handling the need to identify the ideal human resources to be allocated to each workflow activity, either by defining the ideal profile (forming a Team using the HR To Be method), or by assisting with management of available staff (forming a Team using the HR As Is method).
• consistent planning of the competencies required for each activity type to be placed in a specific process context being ether designed/modeled or re-engineered.

It is essential for organizational and personnel managers to have all the information necessary to:

	Assign a human resource group to a main process, according to which roles are required, i.e. create a Team; in this sense, the aim of support software is to encourage an integrated vision of individual company processes in order to identify (and later to manage) the various lower-level processes;
	Design/model the processes, or re-engineer them, even creating more elementary processes, or sub-processes, by identifying performance indicators which can quantify the effectiveness/efficiency of the process being designed, modeled or analyzed;
	Optimize the allocation of human resources and the upgrading of the professional system; this aspect regards the immediate identification of available or (sometimes) recruitable human resources; the application guarantees maximum ease of access to the data in the human-resource management IT system (HRMS).
	In particular, the ability to “read” personnel data, enables a company both to make the best use of its employees for the specific competencies they possess, and to update its professional system.

AS IS - TO BE analysis

For process modeling/design, there are two working methods that define the qualities and quantities of a working Team, both for individual activities and for the whole process being designed.

The two methods are called To Be and As Is. The application is able to run in both these modes thanks to the linking of LORE Portal to one or more personnel data archives.

It is therefore able to access:

• all the information concerning the professional system, i.e. the list of roles defined for the company,

• all the requirements (the competencies needed) for each role;

• all significant information concerning all employees;

and it is therefore possible to choose whether to approach the work:

• from the To Be perspective, i.e. design or model a process (with the activities involved), and start by considering in an "abstract" way the elements concerned in implementing a procedure flow. This means describing in the organizational analysis the individual activities, and the roles to be put in charge of them, examining the competencies defined by the professional system for each role involved and, finally, evaluating the quantitative aspects of the team (number of resources it contains) allocated to a specific role or activity, without taking into account the actual characteristics of employees.

• from the As Is perspective, i.e. design or model a process (with activities involved), considering the steps in the process flow and, (unlike with the To Be method) working on the real data of the employees actually available, so as to optimize allocations by managing the "real" personnel resources.

Finally, note that the ability to work in the two modes (To Be and As Is) makes it possible to generate the data from which to derive summary information on the personnel quality/quantity requirement, which will then be used for hiring and training purposes.

Top-Down or Bottom-Up team design

In Organization Modeling, the option to create a Team using either the To Be or As Is method makes it possible for organizational design to take either a top-down or a bottom-up approach.

If we choose a top-down design method, we can define a process and its constituent activities, and plan from the beginning the allocation of roles professionally related to activities defined for the process; expressed in more concrete terms, this method consists in allocating a number of roles that possess the matching competencies for the activities making up the process.

In this case, it is possible to draw data from the company professional system archive (or other HRMS), or from other specialist HR applications, making it possible to select the roles needed to fulfil the know-how requirements of the activities specific to the process.

Consequently, with this method, the responsibilities for the individual work areas are assigned to various professional profiles, then the individual resources (available or hirable) that best fit the roles required (identified during the modeling/design phase) are allocated.

The application can monitor the resource requirement determined by the process design/model structure through the appropriate indicators.

When a bottom-up perspective is chosen for organizational analysis, processes can be designed/modeled, and the related team created, starting from the resources effectively available. With this approach, it is essential to have the relevant, up-to-date information in the personnel data archives, and it should be available quickly and in sufficient detail.

Here, it can supply a vast range of information from the company personnel archive (or from another HRMS), and can carry out specific, accurate searches, as well as examine the characteristics of each of the selected employees.

In this way, teams can be formed taking account either of the particular characteristics of the resources available, or of the know-how requirements of the activities specific to the process.

Finally, from the same working perspective, note that it is possible to monitor the resources required by a process model/design, while providing continuous monitoring of resource allocation and the needs for matching/re-adapting technical/professional competencies.

European KM Forum

LORE is represented in the European Consortium of KM Forum, an EU funded project that will become a European exchange for the sharing of knowledge management expertise. 

For any information and detail please refer to the official project web site www.knowledgeboard.com

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