What is Hierarchy? Importance of Hierarchy in an organization?

Hierarchy

Hierarchy is an arrangement of items in which the items are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another.

A hierarchy is a system in which members of an organization or society are ranked according to relative status or authority.

Importance of hierarchy in an organization

1.   Accountability: Without an established structure, all level of employees are unable to perform their roles efficiently. Hierarchy establish the protocol that inform everyone within the organization from top to down on how to address issues that affect the company.

2.   Supervision: Every kind of work require supervision. Appointing supervisor for a team is very important to keep the team functioning smoothly. Supervisor is also accountable for his team’s work, he points out and fixes all kinds of flaws before they can have any damaging effect on the outcome.

3.   Discipline: Having established hierarchy within an organization, employees will be discipline naturally since everyone is answerable to someone, discipline and ethics are essential to get things done, especially in a large organization.

4.   Commitment: Commitment plays a vital role to achieve organizational goal, working in a hierarchical organization you are forced to take deadlines more seriously as you are supervised and accountable.

5.   Training: A hierarchy should be designed in a way so that the team lead or manager is more skilled to train their subordinates, as team member will always look up their managers or team lead for their guidance and experience.

6.   Delegation: A hierarchical organization appoint good managers who know how to delegate work according to the skills of his individual team member, and also knows the amount of workload each one can handle. If not the operations would be all over the place, without following a structured pattern.

7.   Team-work: An organization goal cannot be achieved by a single person. A well designed hierarchy gives birth to teamwork among the employees. Employees are happy if they know the organization hierarchy and their position in that structure, they do not have any personal vendetta among themselves or towards the management.