Lambton College Departmentalization

Lambton College of Applied Arts and Technology is a post-secondary institution serving over three thousand students annually in Ontario. The operation of an educational institution is vast and has a lot of components. One of the main operational areas is academic programming, but there are a number of other services to assist the delivery of these programs and other operational goals.

Lambton College uses a functional departmentalization approach for organizational structure. This form of departmentalization is used so each individual has specific knowledge and training in their individual position. As outlined in the organizational charts attached, there are three main areas I'm assessing. The office of the president and chief executive
All of these roles are designed to assist a particular department in meeting their operational goals. Once the need for a job is identified a position description form is created for that role. This document outlines the exact duties and responsibilities of that role and how time will be used to achieve the functions of that particular role. Some roles are more operationally focused, and some are more student driven.

For example, my role as an enrolment advisor is highly student driven with fourth five percent of year is spent working to achieve specific enrolment goals

Another big part of the college's job design process is the performance review phase. Every year all full-time staff members have a performance review with their direct manager. This process is in place to allow for job enlargement and enrichment. One is of this process is for staff to identify how they would like to grow in their job and then management will work to identify the feasibility of these ideas and begin to implement the changes on the position description
One of the main disadvantages to functional departmentalization is the lack of cross-department coordination and communication. I see many examples of this on a daily basis, especially within the student services division, because these roles are separate but have similarities and we often find ourselves referring students to multiple departments to solve one problem, this frustrates students and can also reduce productivity in some instances. One recommendation to solve this problem is cross-department training. Enlarging one person's role in each department to have knowledge of all operation can increase the service level provided to the student and allow for added productivity for the