6 Steps for Using RACI for Downsizing

In this Fast Company article, “6 Steps that Leaders Can Take to Support Their Team Through Layoffs” author Nettie Nitzberg gives good advice about the best way to support your team through a reduction in force. She focuses her advice on how to maintain and even strengthen a great company culture through the challenges of letting members of the team go.

One of her recommendations is to stay grounded in the core tenets of good leadership: communication and transparency.

One of the main questions people will be asking is, “How will we get all the work done?” RACI can help to think through and then communicate the answer to this question. 

Here are six steps to take to apply RACI to redesigning the work of your team, with fewer members.

Whether people are stepping away temporarily (for family leave) or leaving their job permanently, ROLE MAPPING with RACI can help your team adapt.

1. Map the role of the person who is leaving.
   
   Using the Role Design Template, or Excel, begin by mapping the R’s for the role – what are the actual deliverables – the work – that this person does currently?
   
   When you are done,  you may have a template that looks like this:
   
   
2. Move the work of this role to other team members. You can draft this initially and then discuss it with the team, or you can build this transition together. If you have enough time, be inclusive in creating the new assignments.  This can help with “buy in” and we recommend it.
   
3. Map the decisions the role has been making independently – their A’s or Approves.  This is often overlooked and can help reduce the confusion that often accompanies losing a team member.
   
   
4. Map the expertise or advice that this team member contributed (their C roles). This will help you think about what kind of institutional memory is being lost. Where can the team go to find similar expertise? This may also prompt you and the employee you are losing to document what they know for others.
   
   
5.  Standardize processes. Going through this RACI exercise for downsizing may produce some insight about how to standardize processes the company has been using.   Standardizing process in a more formal way makes it easier to hand off work, and easier to train new team members.
   
   
6. Automate. Once you have gotten this far, you have built the springboard for automation. What parts of the job you are losing can become standardized enough that they can actually be automated?

   
Whether you are losing staff temporarily or permanently, taking the extra time to think through the ROLE MAPPING steps will make for a smoother transition. You may end up strengthening your business rather than weakening it.

Please contact us here if we can help you redesign the work of your team.