Online Organizational Charts

High-quality online org chart programs, such as SmartDraw, allow you to create organizational charts without needing to download and install software. This means instant access on any computer or mobile device. All you need is an internet connection. It doesn't matter what type of machine or operating system you're using, because the program is web-based. It also means that you don't have to worry about device or compatibility issues when sharing your org chart with anyone else.

As the number of positions in your organization grows beyond fifty or so, it becomes difficult to print your org chart on a single page and still be able to read the text, no matter how tightly you format it. You can print the chart on a larger sheet of paper, or on multiple sheets, but this becomes cumbersome.

The size of your online org chart is not a problem. You can view it at any magnification. Zoom out to view the entire chart. Zoom in to read the details. You can scroll different parts of the chart into view.

Organizational charts are often used as a company reference or directory. If you want to know who the assistant to the VP of Finance is, you can find out from the org chart. But an online org chart makes contacting her much easier. With a printed chart, you can locate her name, but then have to look up her email address. With an online chart, her name can be linked directly to her email address, so that clicking on it in initiates an email to her automatically. Positions can also be hyperlinked to other documents stored on your internal portal or other locations on the web, and show job descriptions or records in the employee database.

People come and go, and organizations change frequently. Using a paper chart means you have to print and distribute new copies with each change. It's much easier to keep an online organization chart up to date. Just update the one copy and it is immediately viewable by everyone in the organization.

A very large chart is cumbersome to view, even online. An org chart showing every employee of a large company like GE is impossibly big and too complex to be useful. A more manageable approach is to break the organization up into smaller organizations, each with a reasonably-sized chart, and then link them together. For example, here is GE's top-level org chart:

Each of the presidents heads up a different company or division within GE. Their positions can be linked to a separate org chart for that division or company. For example, the box for Healthcare links to the org chart for the GE Healthcare Company.

The healthcare company chart itself is so large each of these positions links to separate charts for the CIO's organization, the Business Development organization, and so on. Each sub-chart also links back to its parent. This makes it easy for anyone using the org chart to navigate throughout the layers of the organization.