Cost centre
A part of the business tracked for the costs it generates rather than the revenue it earns, used to understand where money is spent. In people terms, mapping employees to cost centres is what makes workforce cost reporting possible.
A part of the business tracked for the costs it generates rather than the revenue it earns, used to understand where money is spent. In people terms, mapping employees to cost centres is what makes workforce cost reporting possible.
An informal or secondary reporting relationship, drawn on an org chart as a dotted connection rather than a solid one. Useful in moderation, but someone with three dotted lines effectively has no manager at all.
An organisational design with very few management layers between the top of the company and the front line. It speeds decisions and cuts overhead, but past a certain size, spans of control stretch until nobody is really managing anyone.
Agreeing how many roles the business will fund, where and at what cost, usually per team per quarter or year. It is the budget conversation inside workforce planning: workforce planning asks what capability will be needed, headcount planning decides what will actually be paid for.
The framework that defines roles, job families and levels across a company, and how they relate to one another. It underpins fair pay, sensible titles and career paths that mean the same thing in every department.
Assigning every role to a level or grade with defined expectations and pay ranges. It makes “what does it take to get promoted” an answerable question instead of a mystery that varies by manager.
The manager an employee reports to directly and works with day to day, responsible for their workload, development and performance. Most of how a company treats its people is experienced through this one relationship, which is why manager capability moves retention more than most policies do.
An organisational design where people report to more than one manager, often a functional lead and a project or product lead. It shares expertise efficiently, at the price of built in tension over priorities.
Deliberately shaping how a company is structured: who reports to whom, how work is divided and where decisions sit. Structure quietly drives behaviour, so it deserves to be designed on purpose rather than accreted by accident.
The number of management levels between the chief executive and the front line. Every layer adds coordination cost and slows information on its way up and down, which is why growing companies periodically audit and remove them.
Running the organisation as a structure of defined positions, each with its role, grade and budget, which people then occupy, rather than as a list of whoever is currently employed. It makes a vacancy a real, plannable thing: the seat exists even when nobody is sitting in it.
In HarmoniHRM: Organo keeps open positions visible on the live chart alongside the people in post, so the structure you are hiring towards never disappears from view.
The chain of management a person sits within, from their direct manager up to the top of the company. Clear lines make accountability legible; tangled ones make every decision a negotiation.
Changing the shape of an organisation: merging teams, removing layers or redistributing work. It is legally and humanly sensitive, because roles often change or disappear, so both process and communication have to be handled with care.
In HarmoniHRM: Organo keeps a live picture through any restructure and lets you time travel through past structures, so the before and after are both on record.
A person who is the only one able to do something critical, so their absence stops the work. Org design’s job is to find them before a resignation does, then spread the knowledge.
In HarmoniHRM: Organo flags single points of failure and reporting loops on the live chart.
An open position that exists in the structure but has nobody in it. Tracking vacancies on the chart shows both the organisation you have and the one you are hiring towards.
In HarmoniHRM: Organo shows open positions, pipeline candidates and confirmed starters directly on the chart.
Forecasting the people a company will need, in which roles and when, so hiring and development can run ahead of demand instead of behind it. It connects the business plan to the org chart.
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