For any business, an organizational chart plays a crucial role by demonstrating the hierarchical relationships in a team or the whole organization. Besides, it ensures transparency and collaboration while making it easier for new team members to remember who reports to whom. Creating an organization chart can be a complex and time-consuming task. An organizational chart template can make this task easier for your company. Let’s dive in to learn more about the organizational chart, its usages, types of the org chart, and some top organizational chart example providers.
What Is an Organizational Chart?
An organization chart or “org chart” is a diagram used to represent relationship hierarchy within a team or the organization. In simpler words, it displays how employees of an organization are connected. While the most common application of these charts is to show the structure of a business, these can be used for planning and budgeting purposes as well.
Why Do Teams Use Organizational Charts?
An organizational chart for business is useful in various ways. Here are some main reasons teams use org charts.
Effective Growth Management
Leaders need a clear view of where the employees fit into their organization and what roles they play. Only with this visualization can they find the areas that need a change. In cases like new hiring or team merging, organizational chart examples are perfect to map out the movements beforehand to predict the scenarios successfully.
Better Communication Among Team Members
An organizational chart for business visualizes the working relationships with complete transparency. With its help, every employee knows who can assist them when needed. Instead of struggling to fix the issues alone, people can communicate with the right person. Moreover, this chart lets you see everyone involved in a project, so you do not end up asking the wrong person for help. All these ultimately boost efficiency and minimize wasted time.
Showing Reporting Relationships
In large enterprises, internal transfers often take place. Also, it is difficult for the new recruits to remember the team hierarchy. An organizational chart helps employees understand where they fit into the overall scheme of the company. Thus, they can refer to the chart to know whom to report to and communicate to for their position.
Visualize the Whole Picture
People often forget that their work is actually contributing to something far more significant. Organizational charts can help you with that. When employees can see their position in the big hierarchy and how they contribute to the smooth running of the business, this will definitely improve staff morale and increase their work output.
Types of Organizational Structures
If you check out organizational chart examples, you will notice that there are plenty of them. The reasons are the existence of various types of org structures based on which org charts are created. Here, we will discuss some common varieties of organizational structures.
Hierarchical Org Structure
It is the most common type of structure people use to create their organizational chart. Here, the highest-ranking individuals are placed at the top of the chart, and the lower-ranking people are positioned under them. You will find similarities between this structure and the shape of a pyramid. This chart ensures accountability and motivates employees to climb up the ladder with performance.
Functional Organizational Structure
This structure also looks similar to the hierarchy structure, starting with the highest-ranked professional on top and gradually moving down. But the difference is, here, the employees are grouped based on their expertise and position within the company. This structure is also highly scalable.
Horizontal or Flat Organizational Structure
A business with only a few people at its employee-management level will find a flat chart highly beneficial. Usually, startup companies have this horizontal structure before creating various divisions. However, even some enterprises follow this structure to promote substantial and transparent interaction among all teammates and reduce oversight.
Divisional Organizational Structure
This structure is ideal for big corporations where there are multiple divisional corporate systems. These divisions have authority over their personnel and consist of separate promotions, workforce, distribution team, IT team, etc. Corporations with this structure enable a faster response to the market or client needs. Additionally, it promotes democracy and personalized strategy while helping the firms stay flexible.
Matrix Organizational Structure
In this structure, cross-functional teams created for specific tasks get displayed. It is basically a combination of two or more organizational structures. It allows people to get a dynamic understanding of the organization.
Team-based Organizational Structure
Companies with such a structure will categorize their employees by department. Instead of focusing on the conventional hierarchy, it concentrates more on employee autonomy, team collaboration, and conflict resolution. This system is best suited for agile and scrum enterprises.
Network Organizational Structure
The present-day reality forces many organizations to have their resources spread in different places. Businesses where the organizational framework depends more on communication and connections instead of hierarchy should have a network of organizational systems. This structure displays the complex linking of on-site and off-site resources. No matter which type of structure you have, the following organizational chart makers will let you create it easily.
SmartDraw
SmartDraw provides you with a number of organizational chart templates for various industries, including corporate, gaming companies, research divisions, finance divisions, government, HR departments, non-profit organizations, hospitals, and photo-based charts. If you do not want to spend much time making this chart, you can take a template and add names to create a personalized org chart for your company. However, it offers an array of options to edit the chart, such as changing shape, adding pictures, creating sub-chart, chart direction, and brach style.
Canva
Canva is another platform with a rich organizational chart template library. It has professionally designed templates that will quicken your workflow. Anyone can start using its drag-and-drop tools to create the org chart for their company. Canva lets you add images to the chart and customize the color to match your brand. Besides chart creation, it also offers features such as sharing, downloading and publishing the charts in high resolution. Moreover, you can embed the charts chart in reports and presentations.
Lucidchart
Lucidchart is a cloud-based, intuitive and responsive platform that lets you create an organizational chart effortlessly. Here, you can create a chart from scratch or edit any of its templates to create a personalized org chart. Its org chart editor enables you to produce an org chart in a few simple steps through its state-of-the-art data import feature. All you need to do is upload employee or staff data to the Lucidchart organizational chart template through its data import functionality. The online tool will automatically create a sample org chart for you. In addition to org chart production, it also lets you connect the tool with third-party business and HR management tools like BambooHR, Slack, Confluence, Google Slides, etc.
Venngage
Whether you belong to a large enterprise or SMB, you will find the right organizational chart template for your organization on Venngage. You can select the perfect template for your needs and customize it with the Venngage editor. You can add text, icons, charts, maps, backgrounds, and images. By adding YouTube links, survey polls, form, and HTML, you can make the chart interactive. It is also possible to add items you frequently use in your brand kit.
Visme
If you want an org chart maker that can convert your organization’s structure into engaging visuals in minutes, Visme is the tool you are looking for. It has a large number of beautiful org chart templates to choose from. Also, you can use any of its themes to ensure the chart coincides with your brand identity. Visme offers templates for schools, editorial departments, web design agencies, project teams, and many more. You can choose the one that fits your team most and edit it with easy formatting.
Adobe Express
Adobe Express offers you a free platform to create organizational charts for business online. The platform believes that clear design is essential for an organizational chart. Hence, it offers some beautiful and trending org chart templates that you can easily personalize. Users can pick any template and add images, icons, graphics, and borders to make a chart on this easy-to-use platform. You can either upload these assets from your computer or take help from the Adobe Express libraries. Besides downloading the chart, you can also revisit the project anytime in the future to update it.
Visual Paradigm Online
Visual Paradigm Online is a web-based platform where you can draw your own organizational chart for free. You can choose from its hundreds of templates and smoothly edit them with the drag and drop feature. The coolest feature of this tool is anyone can enjoy an unlimited number of shapes and diagrams besides unlimited access time. People creating charts for personal and non-commercial purposes retain the ownership as well. The charts can be downloaded in PNG, JPG, GIF, SVG, and PDF format.
Conclusion
Having an organizational chart for business lets you keep track of your entire workforce. There are various types of organizational charts that can be used to address your team’s requirements. As you have learned about organizational chart templates available for creating functional and attractive org charts, you can utilize them to manage your team better. Those involved in project management should also know about the milestone chart to track the progress of a project.
