Using an organizational chart for your business

How does your business interact with other companies? Are you able to build strong relationships with your customers and with other clients? You need to use organizational charts to help you see these relationships and to find ways to improve these relationships. What an organizational chart will do is to help you see these relationships in a clear manner but it also allows you to read in a hierarchical manner. This allows you to see how everything filters down and creates a functioning organization.

In the past an organizational chart was made with a pencil and paper but now you can find online templates so you can just input the information on your own. It takes away a lot of the time it takes to make a good organizational chart and to work on your company in the right manner. Most Microsoft programs actually have these types of templates that you can make in a few sections and you can use them with your presentations to your customers.

To make the chart work correctly it needs to depend on the organizational structure of your organization. What are the reporting procedures for your company? If you have people reporting to a single person, an organizational chart isn't necessary. They are mostly used to help see communication and proper reporting procedures for your company. Smaller reports to managers and then up to the top will benefit greatly from the organizational chart as it helps to clearly define the roles of each section. Variation between departments will also have an impact on the companies' organizational chart.

For a large company, assign numbers or symbols to employees. This makes it much easier to identify them. Smaller companies can actually use the names of the employees in the chart to see what their role is in the chart. If you do list their names you may also want to list their department and the function of their job duties.

For you to get started with your own organizational chart to work, you need to start with the President or CEO at the top of the chart. Then you will list the assistants and managers that report to you. Have numbers listed for the assistants and managers so you know which ones have more authority and so on. It also helps to have a symbol or the name of the department they are involved with. The labels should include something like "VP of Sales and Marketing" so you know what their job is. If there is enough room you can also add some of the main job duties they have like shipping, product pricing, etc. This allows you to break down the chart even more and will make it easier for you to glance at quickly if you need to know the specifics.

An organizational chart can be on paper but it does help to have it electronic as you can edit it when people leave the company and changes need to be made. Charts work best in landscape format as they do become quite large as it filters down to the various positions. This is why numbering and symbols are nice as you can list the number or symbol and on a separate page you can list the job specifications. Color is also nice as it does make an organizational chart much easier to understand. Color will help you to identify and link a department together. Then you should also consider lines and arrows to link relationships with departments or with other companies.

Organizational charts are great tools to keep the company flowing correctly and to improve communication within the organization.