Spans & Layers Project Summary
Background:
The 2009 Bain report included a section on found issues with UNC’s Organization Structure. Bain found
the UNC reporting structure to be “too complex” with an excessive number of both “management
layers” (up to 10) and “supervisors with too few direct reports” (50% of Managers have 3 or fewer).
These findings would lead to both operational and informational inefficiencies for the university that
would be both costly and have a negative impact on employee communications and morale. However,
these issues could be addressed over time with a basic organizational strategy to reduce excessive
management layers and adjust supervisor spans to appropriate levels.
Spans & Layers- 2010:
Carolina Counts has undertaken a project a few months ago to research the current UNC Reporting
Structure and to document the resultant spans and layers. The key deliverables for the project are a set
of formatted charts (one for each of the top 50 department studied) that will provide concise and clear
visual representation of management layers and supervisory spans. Carolina Counts is focusing this
2010 activity on administrative support staff. We are doing this by checking the reports-to data in the
HR system against the unit organization charts and verifying those with the unit HR facilitators.
Follow-up:
Subsequent work will be done in the individual departments to explore the opportunities to make
appropriate adjustments. To document a historical trend, this work will be repeated every summer.