Differences between Branch Hierarchy vs Single Branch with Departments
Overview
This article will first go through the key concepts of Head Office, Branches, Departments, and Regions, it will analyse the relationship of them and the considerations to factor in when you decide which option is best for your organisation. As it is not currently possible to change your organisation structure down the line, without considerable consulting work, then it is important to get this element of your organisation right from the start.
There are 2 supported organisation structures,
- The Hierarchy where you have a head office and sub organisation branch structure, where regions and departments can be managed at either
the head office or branch level allowing for local variances and
- The Flat structure where you have one branch and use regions and departments
within that branch to provide structure.
The Elements of Organisation Structure
Head Office and Branches
Both head office and branches are simply Organisations within CareVision. They have a parent - child relationship, where the Branch is linked to the Head Office organisation. Both Head Office and Branch have all the same capabilities relating to configuration with the exception that a head office cannot be given a parent organisation as there is a 2 level limit to the structure of organisations, and the child organisation can inherit settings from the head office (one way).
A head office is the principal office of a care organization and where all the generic rules, configuration, settings, forms etc that are need by all branches are set up. This makes managing and maintaining generic or cross branch settings and standards easier for large organisations, or franchise groups. Meanwhile within the branch, as they have the full capability of an organisation they can have their own local configurations and settings, allowing for a particular branch to have variances to the rest of the group. While a branch can have its own unique configurations and settings, it cannot share those with other child branches of the same parent organisation.
There are some key considerations relating to Head office and Branch's:
- An organisation can exist as a flat structure with no head office
- There is a maximum of 2 organisations deep on the hierarchy / branch structure available, if further breakdown is required it is recommended to use departments within the child branch
- If there are multiple branches, the majority of staff and clients are created in the branch level and will only have access to the branch level data for clients and staff, but will inherrit head office configurations and settings
- Staff or clients in branches cannot be shared across branches, this is a strict rule that cannot be changed
- Staff that work across multiple branches can be set up in head office, however they will get access to all child branches.
Departments
A department is a lower level/layer that exists within an organisation. Departments can be either location based but are more commonly organisational function based, depending on the organisation's structure. Departments can be set up with reference codes and reporting codes, and you can also choose to make departments mandatory on your clients or staff profiles.
Departments set up in a head office can be used in a child branch, while departments set up in a child branch cannot be used by the head office or other branches.
A key consideration about departments is that your staff and clients can be added to multiple departments within the organisation. This is different to Regions as a client can only be part of 1 Region, but a staff member can be a member of Multiple Regions.
There are a number of settings relating to departments to keep in mind:
- Make departments mandatory on staff or client profiles
- Turn on scheduling alerting for when a staff and client are scheduled together but their departments miss-match
- Turn on or off the department filtering of available funding sources to your clients, making just some funding sources available to some departments
- Permissions to restrict viewing of staff or clients so they can only see staff or clients within the same departments as themselves
- Filtering and reporting by department
- Exports by department
Regions
A Region, like a department is a lower level / layer that exists within an organisation. It exists in parallel to a department, so roughly the same level. Regions are always location based, and are often aligned to the Statistical Location Areas level 2 and 3. A Region can be set up with reference codes and reporting codes, and you can also choose to make departments mandatory on your clients or staff profiles.
The major difference between Regions and Departments, is that a client can only be part of one region, while staff can be part of multiple regions. Consider the client as having a Home Region, while staff may be open to or wish to work across multiple regions.
There are a few settings available relating to regions:
- Make regions mandatory on on staff or client profiles
- Turn on scheduling alerting for when a staff and client are scheduled together but their Regions miss-match
- Filtering and reporting by Region
- Exports by Region
How do Organisations, Branches, Head Offices, Departments and Regions Relate to One Another?
Departments and regions belong to Organisations. An organisation can belong to a head office, and when it does it can inherit the departments or regions from the head office as well as have its own unique departments and regions. This is shown in the diagram below, where the people in Branch 3, have access to departments 1 - 4 and regions 1-4, while the people in Branch 2 would only have access to departments 1 - 3 and region 1-2.
What is Single Branch with Departments and Regions?
Single Branch with Departments is a less complicated organisational structure. Departments in this structure could be based on locations within the state, e.g. Townsville Department, Toowoomba Department, Brisbane Department, etc.
The Departments can still be orgnisational functions based, e.g. Home Care Department, NDIS Department, CHSP Department, etc; or Care Administration Department, Care Delivery Department, Marketing & Sales Department, etc.
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