Which Management Levels Are Included in Training During a Restructuring Period?
When a restructuring decision is taken, the first documents prepared inside an organisation are usually the timetable and the new organisation chart. Which units will see their headcount structure change, which positions will be merged and on which date the announcement will be made are all set down in writing. A second preparation heading sits immediately alongside this work: preparing the managers who will carry the decision inside the organisation.
In most organisations this second heading is considered at one level only. The managers who will hold the meetings are identified, a session is planned for them and the preparation is treated as complete. Yet responsibility during a restructuring period is not concentrated at a single level. The level that establishes the rationale, the level that conveys the decision and the level that continues working with the team afterwards are not the same. Because each does a different job during the period, each has a different preparation requirement.
When the scope is built around that distinction, communication stays consistent throughout the period. When the scope is narrowed to one level, the flow of information breaks between levels. The gap between what is said to the departing colleague and what is said to the remaining team becomes visible inside the organisation very quickly, and the manager is left holding a message whose rationale they do not know.
How the scope is built is a decision independent of the organisation's size. The same question arises at a site of four hundred people and in a unit of ten: who will speak to whom during this period, and what will that person have been prepared for? Once the answer is in writing, the communication plan for the period is largely complete.
Below we address three subjects: the responsibilities of each level during the period, the criteria that determine the scope of training, and what this work leaves behind once the period has closed.
How Responsibility Is Distributed Between Levels
The task of senior management during the period is to establish the rationale for the decision and to carry that rationale without altering it. Why the organisation is being restructured, on what criteria the decision was taken and what structure is intended at the end of the period are defined at this level. The same level is also in contact with audiences outside the organisation. Where customers, suppliers, employee representatives and public communication do not rest on the same rationale, every internal explanation becomes open to dispute. Preparation at this level is built around how the message is constructed and how consistency is maintained across different audiences.
Middle management implements the decision. This is the level that runs the timetable, holds the meetings and represents the organisation to the other party. The manager did not take the decision, yet becomes its face inside the organisation. The flow of the meeting, which questions are answered and to what extent, and how the career transition support offered by the organisation is conveyed are all worked through with this level. Managers hold performance, salary and promotion discussions many times a year; this meeting is not one of them, and there is no habit to fall back on. The work organisations carry out under the heading of Process Management for Managers addresses precisely this requirement.
First-line and field managers maintain daily contact. After the announcement day they continue working with the same team on the same line, the same shift and in the same meeting room. Most questions during the period reach this level, and they are not asked in formal meetings but on the production line, in the corridor and during breaks. Preparation here is built less around how the message is constructed and more around managing questions and protecting the working order of the remaining team.
The part of senior management's preparation that takes the most time is simplifying the rationale. A decision usually rests on several sets of data: capacity utilisation, market contraction, merging functions, investment choices. Not all of that data lands in internal communication. Once the rationale can be stated in a single sentence, every level uses the same sentence. A rationale that has not been simplified is reinterpreted at each level, and three different accounts remain in the organisation at the end of the period.
Middle management's second requirement concerns what follows the meeting. Having completed it, the manager stands in front of the remaining team the same day. The interval between those two conversations is short and leaves no room for fresh preparation. For that reason the aftermath is rehearsed alongside the meeting itself: when the team will be informed, in what scope and in what order is settled in advance.
Preparation at the first line turns on concrete situations. The answer to a question asked mid-shift, how a departing colleague's work will be handed over, and who is the point of contact on leave and pay all become clear at this level. Such questions are not met by corporate communication material; the answer the manager gives in the moment is what counts.
What the three levels share is that they carry the decision together. What differs is the audience in front of them. When the scope of training accounts for that difference, a single account remains in circulation inside the organisation.
Management Training: The Criteria That Determine the Scope of Training
Alongside the three levels there is a fourth group: roles that carry no managerial title in the hierarchy yet are the first people teams turn to for information. Long-serving technical specialists, shift supervisors and administrative staff fall into this group. Teams consult them during the period. Including these roles at least in the information flow when the scope is set clarifies the source of what circulates inside the organisation.
The number of levels also varies with the structure of the organisation. In matrix structures an employee has both a functional and a project manager. Here, who will hold the meeting and at what stage the other manager is informed are defined at the outset. Without that definition, the same person receives differing information through two channels.
When levels consult one another is also part of the preparation. A middle manager knows in advance who to turn to when a question falls outside their authority, on which subjects senior management will step in directly, and where the human resources team is the point of contact. With that flow defined, managers are not left to produce answers of their own.
Scope is determined by the structure of the period rather than by the size of the organisation. Of two organisations of similar size, one may be adjusting headcount in a single unit while the other is closing a production site. The management preparation for those two periods will not be the same. We look at the following criteria when setting the scope:
• Which units the decision covers and how many people it touches
• Who will hold the meetings and how many fall to each manager
• The working pattern of the teams affected: shift, field, office or remote
• Whether the managers have held a comparable meeting before
• The time remaining between the training and the announcement timetable
• The structure the teams will continue to work within after the period
Once these criteria are clear, the scope takes shape in two directions. The first is the number of levels: in some periods senior and middle management are sufficient, while in site-scale periods the first line is brought into the work as well. The second is the content allocated to each level. With senior management we work on the framing of the message and the map of audiences. With middle management we work on the meeting itself, rehearsing the flow, the questions to come and how the career transition support programme will be explained. With the first line we proceed through the concrete situations they will encounter during the period.
Time is a criterion in its own right. Where preparation is compressed into the announcement timetable, the manager is left with no room to work. This is why the preparation stage is run as a separate heading within the programme as a whole; we set out the full implementation stage by stage in How Career Transition Support Is Delivered in Turkey.
The time allocated per level follows the same criteria. Work with senior management is usually short and completed in a single session, since the aim is clarity on the message and the map of audiences. Work with middle management takes longer, because rehearsing the flow of the meeting takes time. First-line sessions are planned in small groups and around site conditions; in some periods short sessions timed to the start of a shift work better than one long session.
The position of the human resources team is a heading in its own right. A significant share of questions during the period comes to that team, which is also the first point of reference for managers. Bringing the human resources team into the work alongside managers means the answers given to internal questions corroborate one another.
In structures with employee representation the scope widens a step further. The order of announcement and the form of communication are defined in advance; which subjects the manager is authorised to address and which are referred to their internal point of contact are clear from the outset. Building that distinction into the preparation prevents a manager from making a commitment outside their authority.
The organisation's administrative and legal framework is also reviewed in the work that sets the scope. What information the manager may convey in the meeting, which subjects will be communicated in writing and when each document will be shared all sit within the preparation. A manager who knows that framework does not step outside their authority, and the participant is not left with partial information.
Setting the scope down in writing is the final step. Which level works on which content, by what date it will be ready and who consults whom during the period are collected in a single document. That document becomes the organisation's internal reference for the period and stops managers relying on differing sources.
A level left outside the scope will produce its own answer during the period. That answer may be given in good faith and still fail to match the organisation's account. The decision on scope is therefore a communication decision rather than a budget line.
The Work Remains With the Organisation After the Period Closes
The format of the training is settled together with the scope. Classroom sessions suit establishing a shared framework, small group work suits rehearsing the meeting, and one-to-one preparation suits managers running a period of this scale for the first time. In most periods all three are used, with the sequence varying by level.
As the scope widens, the time given to the work increases. Conversely, the time saved by narrowing the scope is spent during the period on managing questions and repeating announcements. We set both sides out with our clients when the decision on scope is taken.
When management training and leadership programmes are planned in connection with a restructuring period, they can look like a one-off exercise. In practice the capability a manager gains during that period continues to be used once it has closed. Conveying a difficult message plainly, meeting a question without deferring it and continuing to work with the team after a decision are behaviours equally required in performance discussions, role changes and salary reviews.
For that reason we place the work inside the organisation's existing leadership programme. Content prepared for the period becomes a permanent heading in the programme calendar. Newly appointed managers inherit the same framework, and the organisation does not begin its preparation from nothing in every subsequent period.
The second lasting output is institutional memory. The implementation guides, meeting flows and written frameworks provided to managers during the period stay with the organisation. In the next restructuring period those documents are updated rather than rewritten. How the organisational output of the programme is tracked is examined in detail in How Are the Results of a Career Transition Support Programme Reported to the Organisation?.
For some managers group work alone is not enough. Those running a period of this scale for the first time, those taking on a large number of meetings, or those who must give notice to a team they have worked with for years are supported with one-to-one preparation. The work organisations carry out under the heading of executive coaching comes in at this point and proceeds within the same framework as the preparation for the period.
It is often overlooked that the period affects the manager as well. The person implementing the decision may have worked for years with the colleagues leaving their own team. Where this side of the preparation is neglected, the manager's manner during the period is read by the team as distance. We therefore make room for the manager's own position in the work; supporting the person carrying the period has a direct bearing on the picture the remaining team sees.
A third output is the experience managers pass to one another. Those who have run one period share what they learned with colleagues joining the same work in later periods. That internal transfer speeds up the settling of externally provided content into the organisation's own language.
A short review once the period has closed is also part of the work. Which questions arrived in greater volume than expected, which subjects were left thin in the preparation and where the remaining teams needed support are all set out in that review. The scope of the next period is largely determined by those notes.
One condition for the work to last is that its owner inside the organisation is clear. Once it is set down in writing which team updates the programme, when newly appointed managers are brought in and how often the content is reviewed, the work becomes a permanent heading within the organisation.
Across the projects we have run since 1996 the pattern points in one direction: periods where preparation is built level by level close with fewer open questions, the working order of remaining teams recovers more quickly, and the message the organisation gives throughout
the period stays whole.
At E&E Group we have, since 1992, designed management training and leadership programmes together with our clients' restructuring plans, determining which levels work on which content according to each organisation's own structure. To plan your organisation's preparation with us, you may get in touch.
