What is Org Chart Software?

Have you ever dreamt that you’re minutes away from presenting, only to discover your slides aren’t working and you’ve misplaced your notes? Talk about waking up in a sweat-induced panic.

But for some leaders, that nightmare is actually a common occurrence. When you store your people data across multiple spreadsheets – or worse, in a filing cabinet – things are bound to go awry.

Instead of leaving your presentations and metrics up to fate, look for other solutions to set you up for success, like investing in org chart software. As a function of a people operations platform, automated org charts help you visualize your people, understand your data, and create connections among employees.

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What is Org Chart Software?

At its core, an org chart is a diagram that visualizes your organization’s reporting structure and hierarchies. It’s a valuable resource to easily surface employee information when you need it most. Yet, without the right tools and resources, an org chart can be time-consuming to create.

People new to org charts may have tried translating employee data from disparate spreadsheets into PowerPoints or even hand drawings. Those require manual updates and excessive copy and pasting. They’re also prone to human error.

Enter org chart software, where there’s no drawing boxes in slides or wondering if your latest spreadsheet is up-to-date. Instead, a people operations platform with org chart functionality will automatically incorporate data from your HR systems and create beautiful visuals with the click of a button.

Org chart software gives everyone real-time visibility into their company’s org structure.

Org Chart Features to Empower Your People

If you’re still using manual methods to create your org chart, you probably don’t use the word “powerful” to describe its capabilities. But when you have org chart software, you can confidently declare that your org chart helps deliver powerful, data-rich insights to improve your people and your company.

The right org chart software will foster connections and build transparency in your workplace, as seen in the benefits below.

Sync with Your HR Tech Stack

An org chart shouldn’t be yet another platform to toggle between. It also shouldn’t require manual updates every time there’s a new hire or another round of promotions.

The right solution is a one-stop-shop that integrates with your payroll, HRIS, and ATS systems. And it doesn’t just integrate; your org chart should automatically update whenever your people data changes. Yes, you read that right. No more blocking off your calendar to amend your now out-of-date org chart.

With this open time in your day, you can actually dig into the org chart’s data visualization to help you discover themes, intersectionalities, and areas of improvement.

Org charts can sync with multiple HR systems, like your payroll, equity, and ATS, to provide an up-to-date view of your organization and team structure.

Allow Leaders to Access Rich People Data

Making your org chart is easily accessible to all (with different levels of security) helps keep everyone informed and aligned to the same information.

On an executive level, org charts enable leaders to make transparent, high-level decisions that are backed by metrics. Access to these numbers is even more crucial when you’re scaling rapidly or have a distributed workforce.

That’s because org chart software doesn’t just give you a one-dimensional look at your people data. Instead, with a plethora of integrations and data sets, you can overlay different metrics on your org chart for better, clearer visualizations.

Shelby Wolpa, Former VP of People Operations for Invision, is no stranger to helping companies scale, and needed a modern people analytics solution to help tackle the data challenges her company was facing. After choosing an org chart that allowed her team to visualize relationships between individual employees and larger teams, as well as integrate seamlessly with other back-end systems, Wolpa saved hours of manual data entry and reporting. She says, “Being able to visualize the org chart by any dimension (department, time zone, gender, squad) has empowered my team to make more strategic decisions.”

On a department level, org charts empower your managers’ decision-making by allowing them to easily filter by performance, compensation, tenure, DEI data, and levels. And when leaders can slice and dice your people data, they can make better-informed decisions for their team and your company.

Empower your manager's decision-making process with easy-to-filter people data.

Equip Your Employees With Information

Manually built org charts are flat; displaying names and job titles leads to little employee engagement or knowledge learned. To get the biggest bang for your buck, the right org chart software engages employees at every level.

Providing easy employee access (no more finding this month’s email blast with the most up-to-date version) to your org chart helps individuals visualize your company so they can easily find who to go to with questions in various situations. What’s more, the org chart helps them understand where they and others sit within the organization and even see plans for open roles across the team to understand company growth plans.

Colin Bramm, CEO and co-founder of Showbie, knew he wanted a platform that not only helped visualize potential company growth, but also individual employee growth. After researching his options, Bramm chose a dynamic solution that delivers powerful visuals his team could easily understand. He says, “I think everyone who works here deserves to be part of an organization where their personal growth is fostered. And [our org chart] gives us a complete picture of where we’re going and how we’re going to grow our people.”

What’s more, a dynamic org chart connects your entire workforce by enabling everyone to know who sits where within the organization. Wolpa states that their org chart “has helped [Invision] create a more transparent organization and helped employees forge deeper relationships with their coworkers.”

With access to personal profiles, employees can discover fun facts that help drive connections, such as the best way to contact Luis in Accounting or Jennifer’s favorite pizza topping (it’s pineapple).

Personalized employee directories help your company stay transparent and your people connected.

More Robust Org Chart Features

It’s important to note that not all org chart software is built the same. Best-in-class solutions offer additional features to further bring transparency and connection to your people and company.

Export and Explore Historic Views of Your Business

When you choose an org chart that shows your organization’s history, you can understand how your organization has evolved over time, as well as determine next moves and plan for future goal-setting initiatives.

This information is also helpful in presentations to board members or potential investors. The visualization is easy to generate and easy to understand, even if the people in the room don’t know the full historic details of your business.

Specifically, Weifang Zhu, SVP Growth and Operations at Even Financial, says that using org chart software with historical viewing capability easily allows leaders to see how company resourcing needs change over time. She continues, “This function allows me to forecast future headcount and spend changes. Additionally, its many integrations provide a holistic understanding of our workforce’s compensation and benefits in one centralized repository.”

Understand where you’re going – and where you’ve been – with time traveling functions.

Visualize Your Organization With Maps

Org charts allow you to see who sits where within your company. But how about seeing where your people literally sit? Modern solutions allow you to view your people on a global map showing city-level locations.

Map features deliver many benefits, including:

• Driving in-person connections. Providing every employee with a map view of their colleagues is helpful for remote teams that encourage regular meetups or one-off in-person events.

• Hiring strategically. Knowing who lives where allows your People team to strategically hire (for example, hiring customer success managers on the east and west coasts).

• Responding to any location-based disruptions. When people think of contingency plans, they’re usually synonymous with large disasters. But more common are scenarios like data breaches, power outages, and natural disasters. With a map view, you can respond quickly and efficiently to those impacted to mitigate any downtime to your business plans.

• Planning off-site gatherings. Off-site gatherings are one way to improve employee engagement, but can be costly if you have a distributed workforce. The map visualization helps event and financial teams quickly determine convenient and easy-to-access locations for your people.

Whether your people are remote, hybrid, or in-office, having an understanding of where your people are can have big advantages for communication and visibility across your org.

Org Chart Software Benefits Your Whole Company, Every Day

When your employees have full context and clarity, they can do their best work.

The more you and your people know about your business, the more equipped everyone is to make smarter, more strategic business decisions.

It goes beyond seeing how an organization is connected. Robust org chart software provides a 360-degree view of a company, its people, and everything in between. That way, everyone is armed to make better business decisions now and in the future.

Having the right HR technology in place brings transparency to your company and gives People teams a real-time picture of your data. Learn how to find the best HR technology for your organization with our Ultimate HR Tech Buyer’s Guide.