Case study: Redesigning for growth in global hospitality

The challenge

The business was growing successfully in one of its global regions, but the leadership team recognised that its organisation design had not kept pace. To sustain that growth efficiently and profitably, it needed to rethink its organisation design: reducing unnecessary layers, addressing duplication and fragmentation, and ensuring that the guest experience remained central as the organisation evolved.

Having worked with us before, they asked Change Associates to help.

What we did

Establishing the design principles

We worked closely with the senior leadership team to define the future vision and goals and translated these into a clear set of guiding principles for the new organisation design.

These centred on three priorities:

• maintaining the focus on guest experience
• building a culture of continuous improvement
• delivering cost efficiency.

Current state assessment

We analysed existing headcount data using the industry-leading tool Orgvue, which enabled us to visualise roles, costs, spans, layers, and accountabilities by profit centre and function. This gave the leadership team a clear, evidence-based picture of where the opportunities lay: reducing layers, standardising and widening spans, and tackling duplication and fragmentation across the organisation.

Design blueprint

Working through the findings function-by-function with the senior leadership team, we applied the design principles to create a high-level organisation design blueprint to guide the redesign of the group as a whole. Once this was agreed, the senior team was restructured accordingly.

Engaging the next tier of leadership

We ran workshops with the next level of leaders to review the design principles and blueprint, and to share the analysis findings to help them build detailed designs for their own functions. The co-creation approach was important to our client as it ensured consistency across the organisation and genuine ownership of the design at each level, rather than a blueprint imposed from above.

HR partnership and capability building

We conducted design authority reviews of senior structure proposals to ensure consistency, alignment to organisation design principles and achievement of objectives. Throughout the project we worked closely with the in-house HR team, supporting planning, project management, benefits tracking and change management. We developed organisation design upskilling materials for HR Business Partners to build lasting internal capability.

Once the implementation plan was in place and the HR team was equipped to manage it, we handed over to the internal team to complete the final phase of the project.

Building on an established foundation

Throughout the project we drew on the organisation design framework and toolkit we had previously developed with the client. Rather than starting from scratch, this gave the business a consistent methodology to build on: accelerating the work, reinforcing best practice and deepening the client’s own capability in organisation design. The framework has now become an established part of how this organisation approaches structural change.

The result

• The senior leadership team aligned on a clear organisation design blueprint for the future, with shared goals and a common set of design principles.
• £5.5m of savings was identified to increase profitability.
• The senior team was restructured in line with the vision and blueprint.
• Operational leaders were engaged and equipped to deliver the next phase of the change.
• The HR team was upskilled in organisation design and confident to independently lead ongoing delivery.