You’re not alone if your organization has faced a recent organizational change.
Funding shifts, federal policy changes, and economic uncertainty have forced many mission-driven organizations to make hard choices. For many mission-driven organizations, the majority of the budget goes to staff salaries and benefits. That means that when funding is disrupted, staff are often the first to be impacted.
It can be a painful place to be, but it can also be a turning point. The restructuring process can be more than just surviving; it can be an opportunity to strategically realign your people-systems around clarity, sustainability, and equity, strengthening both the efficiency and impact of the organization.
When roles shift or entire teams are consolidated, leaders are left with critical questions:
If decisions aren’t grounded in a strategic, long-term restructuring plan, organizations risk repeating the same painful adjustments multiple times. Multiple rounds of downsizing or changes create fear and instability, eroding both culture and employee engagement.
However, with a deliberate approach, you can rebuild the organizational structure in ways that strengthen it, rather than weaken it. This kind of strategic restructuring allows for adaptability, helping organizations respond to external factors without losing sight of equity or values.
While reorganization is never easy, following a thoughtful process can make the experience more transparent, equitable, and sustainable—here’s how to begin.
Before you redraw job charts or update pay scales, take a step back. Conduct a financial risk assessment to clarify:
From there, create realistic financial scenarios—not just best case or worst case, but what’s most likely to happen. Without this, you risk making cuts or changes that aren’t sustainable, which can force you into repeated restructures. Each new round makes the problem bigger, fueling instability and creating fear across the organization.
→ Use Edgility’s Funding Risk Assessment tool to map your exposure across key funding streams.
→ Watch the Risk to Resilience Webinar for a deeper dive on scenario planning and how to prepare your organization for disruption.
Funding Risk Assessment: A framework for evaluating risk based on funder diversity, funding channels, restrictions, relationship stability, and benchmark dependency. This framework helps organizations assess funding stability by examining donor diversity, restrictions, relationships, and benchmarks to identify potential risks.
A restructure is the right moment to revisit your job family framework—the levels of roles, their scope of responsibility, and management expectations.
That process should include:
By grounding job families in both organizational design and market reality, you create a structure that is clear, equitable, and sustainable for the future. This sets the foundation for a successful restructuring that avoids inefficiencies and supports long-term strategic objectives.
After a restructure, compensation benchmarks must be revisited. Roles may look different, and relying on outdated pay data can create inequities. A fresh market analysis helps you:
Restructuring impacts people deeply, and effective communication must be handled with care:
Above all, honesty matters. Staff will ask, “Will there be salary cuts? Will there be raises? Could I be next?” Even though you cannot predict the future and commit to never having to downsize again, sharing what you can now will help to alleviate concerns, build trust, and credibility.
Restructuring decisions are financial, but at their core, they are people decisions. Equity and humanity must guide the process:
Together, these actions show that even during large-scale reorganization or layoffs, a successful organization remains committed to fairness.
Restructuring is never easy, but it doesn’t have to leave lasting scars. When approached with foresight, clarity, and equity, it can become a reset that builds resilience.
By grounding your restructuring plan in financial risk assessments, job family redesign, market-informed compensation, equitable talent evaluation, transparent communication, and values-based decision-making, you not only manage change responsibly—you reinforce the culture of trust and care that sustains your mission.
If you’re ready to go deeper, explore our eBook Compensation with Purpose: Designing Equity-Centered Pay Structures for Nonprofits, Education, and Healthcare. It unpacks how to design pay systems that align with your mission and values while staying competitive in today’s market.
Q1: Why is realignment important after a restructure?
A: After organizational change, job roles and responsibilities often shift. Without realignment, organizations risk confusion, inequities, and repeated cuts. Realigning roles, job families, and pay structures ensures clarity, fairness, and long-term sustainability.
Q2: What is a financial risk assessment, and why does it matter?
A: A financial risk assessment helps mission-driven organizations map out how diverse their funding is and anticipate high, medium, or low risks over the next 2–3 years. It provides the foundation for scenario planning, helping leaders avoid unsustainable cuts that erode trust.
Q3: How do job families support a successful restructuring?
A: Job families define levels, responsibilities, and management expectations across an organization. Updating them during reorganization ensures consistency, prevents inefficiencies, and makes it easier to benchmark pay fairly against the market.
Q4: Why revisit pay scales after restructuring?
A: Restructuring often changes roles significantly. Market analysis ensures salaries reflect those changes and prevents inequities. It also helps organizations balance external benchmarks with internal value and equity priorities.
Q5: How should staff be evaluated in new roles?
A: Consistency is key. Use the same data sources—such as resumes, performance evaluations, and prior experience—for all staff. Invest in professional development to help employees adapt to new responsibilities or technologies.
Q6: What role does communication play in the restructuring process?
A: Effective communication is essential. Inform affected staff and their managers first, provide managers with FAQs and talking points, and be honest about what the changes mean. Transparency and empathy build credibility, even during difficult moments.
Q7: How can organizations anchor restructuring decisions in values?
A: Successful organizations apply equity and consistency across all staff, support those impacted with extended notice or job search resources, and explain not only what is changing but why. This ensures decisions reflect the mission and values of the organization.
Q8: Where can leaders find tools to support this process?
A: Edgility offers resources such as:
Do you want support realigning your job families and compensation framework after restructuring? Schedule a discovery consultation with Edgility Talent Partners.