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British Telecom

British Telecom (BT) improves Human Capital Management using OrgPlus Spans and Layers Analysis

BT employs 120,000 people worldwide, with the majority based in the UK. It has a long history at the forefront of telecommunications and is successful at adapting new technologies for customers in an ever changing business environment. In order to maintain its position as an efficient, leading edge technology company, it recognized the need to re-structure and better manage its greatest resource, its people.

Extreme cost pressures in any company can undermine overall efficiency, and BT is no exception. The planned objectives were to cut costs with an assumption that removing a layer of personnel would provide the necessary savings.

Lawton Harper, Director, Organization Effectiveness & Efficiency for British Telecom Wholesale, was tasked with carrying out research into the effects of layer removal. He applied prior experiences with organization structure and used the theory of "Span Control" which was first popularized in the UK by Sir Ian Hamilton in 1922, to advocate an optimal reporting structure that would result in the greatest organizational efficiency. However, span theory is not straightforward and does not just rely on the number of people reporting to a single manager, but requires an assessment of the nature of the work and other situational factors. This is required for layers of managers and their direct reports as well.

Nicola Jones, Information Modeling & Design at BT, used OrgPlus Professional software to create organizational charts for 120,000 employees. Once successfully imported into OrgPlus, this data was easy to manipulate and control. She was able to create charts that connected directly to the PeopleSoft HR database. The job of charting every employee accurately, would normally have taken several months, but was reduced to a matter of weeks using OrgPlus software.

Span and layers could now be viewed easily and quickly across the whole organization. Details such as title, salary and "reports to" were exported to spreadsheets for more targeted analysis. The scenario planning tools within OrgPlus gave fast and accurate results to many "what if" modeling situations.

Using certain metrics as guidelines, groups or divisions could be highlighted with higher than average layers or narrower than normal spans, as potential candidates for restructuring.

HumanConcepts, as the author of OrgPlus, was instrumental in partnering with BT to redevelop the software kernel to manage arithmetic calculations that could have normally only been achieved using mainframe technology. Without access to these services, OrgPlus provided a solution in a fraction of the time and cost usually associated with heavy, modeling programs.

HumanConcepts is the leading provider of workforce modelling and intelligence solutions. With its OrgPlus technology charting millions of employees for organizations worldwide, including 400 of the Fortune 500, HumanConcepts has defined best practices in organizational charting. OrgPlus integrates with HR systems to automatically create, update and distribute organizational charts for team collaboration, organizational planning and critical decision-making. OrgPlus integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Office applications.

HumanConcepts is based in California with offices in the United Kingdom and Germany and offers OrgPlus software and services worldwide. For more information visit www.humanconcepts.com.