Organisation Development and Organisation Design (OD&D) are two distinct yet interconnected processes that focus on improving and enhancing organisation performance and effectiveness.
What’s the difference?
Organisation development: is a holistic approach used to identify what is needed to improve an organisation’s effectiveness and performance, focusing on using behavioural science to design and deliver change, taking into account culture, values, capability, behaviours, relationships and ways of working.
Organisation design: focuses on structuring an organisation to align with its strategic goals and objectives. It involves designing or redesigning the organisation’s structure, roles, processes, and systems to optimise performance, efficiency, and agility.
Why is Organisation Design and Development effective?
Together, these practices can enable organisations to deliver sustainable strategies, build adaptable workforces, and create great employee and customer experiences.
Organisation Design and Development helps organisations to understand their current state, and work towards an imagined or desired future state, identifying issues and opportunities, and effectively supporting and facilitating people, teams and organisations through change.
Creating the conditions for Good Work
Despite the ever changing world of work, the need for Good Work remains constant. The Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD) define the 7 dimensions of Good Work as:
- Pay and benefits – work that is fairly rewarded with flexibility of benefits.
- Contracts – contract type that provides job security.
- Work–life balance – work that allows employees good work life balance.
- Job design and the nature of work – workload or work intensity, autonomy or how empowered people are in their jobs, job complexity and how well this matches the person’s skills and qualifications.
- Relationships at work – social support and cohesion, the quality of relationships at work, psychological safety, and the quality of people management.
- Employee voice – work that gives people the voice and choice they need to shape their working lives.
- Health and wellbeing – work that is physically and mentally healthy for people.
OD&D has many ways to influence the broader system within which work takes place.
Using an OD&D lens allows organisations to step back and evaluate how each aspect of work in the organisation links with each other and what the challenges and opportunities are for creating the conditions for Good Work.
If you want to explore how we can assist you with organisation design and development, contact us today at info@voltedge.ie.
