What is Organizational Development? | Meaning & Definition | HR Glossary

Organization Development

Organization Development is the systematic application of behavioral science knowledge at various levels, such as group, inter-group, organization, etc., to bring about planned change. Its objectives is a higher quality of work-life, productivity, adaptability and effectiveness. It accomplishes this by changing attitudes, behaviors, values, strategies, procedures and structures so that the organization can adapt to competitive actions, technological advances and the fast pace of change within the environment.

What is meant by organizational development?

Organizational development refers to putting procedures in motion that would cause changes on an organization-wide level. These could enlist a whole gamut of procedures and policies that are to be implemented or have been implemented, bringing about a complete organizational development.
What are the five stages of organizational development?

The 5 stages of organizational development involve the following 5 steps:
1. Entry: Exploring the problems and opportunities.
2. Diagnosis: data collection, getting the problems and opportunities down to tangible numbers.
3. Feedback: analyzing the metrics and outlining a plan for the change solutions.
4. Solution: Working on problems actively, enhancing performance, and improving on systems.
5. Evaluation: Collecting data and tracking whether the organizational development plan is actually working out for you.
What is the purpose of organizational development?

Here are some of the most prominent purposes of organizational development:
- It brings about continuous improvement.
- It helps build a stronger connection between employees by easing constant communication.
- Causes the development of the employees on the individual level as well as the team level.
- Helps condition out the talent and skills of employees.
- Enhances the kind of services and the quality of product that the organization produces.
What are examples of organizational development?

Here are some of the most common examples of organizational development:
- Create a project management system.
- Automating task management.
- Using an HRMS tool to ease out the HR functions.
- Introducing a training module for every employee.
- Changing an organization-wide policy.
Why is organizational development important?

Organizational development is important because of the following reasons:
- It causes everyone to improve in terms of skills, performance and efficiency.
- It helps people become more cross-functional as a team and work collaboratively with ease.
- It helps the organization improve its processes, and this, in turn, helps bring in more revenue and credibility.
- It improves the workflow functioning causing about a highly positive change in the team efficiency.