A Proposal to Effectively Integrate Employees and Departments. A common difficulty for placing strategic plan in action is the lack of communication among departments as well as an alignment among those departments objectives. It is a simple knowledge, but often forgotten due to the day-by-day tasks. Job Visit is a simple way to create a common understanding of each department's importance for the organization. Hence, it creates a more productive workflow with minimum costs.

1. Job Visit
A Proposal to Effectively Integrate
Employees and Departments
By: Francisco Berger

2. Current Scenario
Each day, Organization are becoming more complex, more dynamic, more multinational and thus more
difficult to be managed. Market plays a significant role on it, however growth, new products, new business
model and crisis might be decisive as well for an Organization restructuration. This ever changing scenario
leads to noise and disruption among departments within the Corporation. Most of the times, these
problems are not directly seen and therefore, not measured:
PEOPLE ORGANIZATION GENERAL IMPACT
- Lack of clear Job
Description;
- Incomplete Organogram;
- Different objectives among
people and departments.
- Complex structures (e.g:
more than 1 direct
manager);
- High Turn Over index;
- Frequent structural
changes (usually coming
from high management or
new strategic plan);
- Merge and Acquisition
implying restructure on both
ends.
- Continuous gaps between
strategic plan and operational
plan (department plan);
- Lack of communication and
thus priority within the
Organization. Leading to lack
of quality and/or rework;
- Non measurable revenue
loss.

3. Job Visit
The proposal of Job Visit is to enhance people and department interaction in a simple but effective way. It is
a simple methodology focused to seek how a certain department works (formally and informally) as well as
non confidential information usually not disclaimed (department objective, people’s difficulties and general
department visibility from the rest of the Organization). Job visit is based on:
- Enrolling the operational team from each department (visitor and visited)
- Planning the set of question and information to be inquired by the visitor;
- Planning the visit and gathering available information by the visited in order to be the most productive
as possible;
- Feedback to the visitor’s department;
- Feedback to the visitor’s and visited ’s department;
The objective is to have the visit flow on all departments, in
such way it is possible to have the most clear picture of all
important work, objectives, gaps etc.

4. Enrolling People for the Job Visit
- Manager from each department should choose someone (the Visitor) with a certain seniority and a
certain Organization understanding, in order to maximize the visit. The same must be done from the
other end (the Visited). It must be formalized to both departments and the HR (The program
moderator).
The Visitor Planning
- The Visitor is invited to query his/her peers, from the department in order to abroad a general opinion
towards the Visited Department. Manager should moderate this debate (possibly during a short
meeting). The specific content of this inquiry should vary from each company and what it believes is
necessary to share with all employees. However, a general line of question is advised to be followed.
The Visited Planning
- The Visited is invited to also query his/her peers, from the department in order to abroad a general
opinion towards their own Department. Manager should moderate this debate (possibly during a short
meeting). Manager should review and determine what sort of information is not strictly confidential.
Manager and Visited should plan ahead the full visiting day, taking into consideration a period for
queries, a period for general visit and chat, but also a period for work (just as a usual day) having the
Visitor by his/her side (as a listener).

5. Feedback
After the period of visit, follows the feedback phase. It consists on the Visitor’s job of consolidating
gathered information and then passing along to his/her peers.
The Peers Feedback
- Visitor should elaborate a report containing all important information, facts and opinion arising from the
visit day. Naturally, this report must be submitted to the Department Manager first. In a brief period,
this report should be presented to all department’s team, in a form of a presentation. Obviously Visitor
must be managed and lead in such a way, all question and doubts regarding the Visited department are
fully answered. Team must close the meeting out with a keen sense of this department’s role within the
Organization.
The Managers Feedback
- A meeting between both managers and both, the Visitor and Visited should be held after the Peers
Feedback.
- Its main objective is to discuss all that has been gathered, understood, presented and discussed with the
Visitor’s department team. It should essentially reveal the prior impression of the Visited Department
and now the new image the Visitor’s department has of it.
- It should also have a set of ideas to support and ensure a better work among all Visited Department’s
employees. The decision to implement in an Action Plan is the Visited Department Manager.
- Human Resources should specially follow this meeting, in order to moderate and gather all data from
this Job Visit, along with other Department’s Job Visit.

6. What Outcome to be Expected
All above describe ONE Job Visit. The fully implementation requires an information exchange from all
departments within the Organization (once again, managed by Human Resources). However, improvements
do not have to wait for the full program implementation. A few issues are expected to arise from this work:
Short Term
•Clear gap list among departments;
•Awareness among same level employees;
•Sense of unity and what is priority on the entire Organization.
Medium
Term
•Job Description alignment as well as full review of Authority and Responsibility;
•Improvement on informal communication among departments;
•Reduction on unproductive meetings (enrolling non essential personnel)
Long Term
•Review and improvements on Department’s budget and manageable goals;
•Eventual restructure of some needed areas;
•A more functional breakdown of Strategic Planning decision, based on Strengths and Weakness of each department, thus
ensuring that everyone from top-down will understand and follow the plan.
Job Visit Program must be performed every time when there is a critical Organization modification or
planned frequently in advance (e.g.: once a year).

7. BERGERStrengthening Business and People
Francisco Berger
55-31-8321-4981
55-11-98399-0666
fberger77@hotmail.com