From which tasks do we carry out to why this expertise is essential
A back office is often seen as the place where administration is handled. In reality, these teams had specialised case knowledge, insight into complex regulation, and a unique position between policy, execution, systems and external partners. It was a matter of different teams side by side: help desk, case handling, work-based learning and process support. The question therefore went beyond redrawing a structure: what value does this operation create, and how do you organise that expertise so it becomes recognisable and future-proof?
Managers described their own operation as a bin: everything that got left elsewhere came over the wall, and they wanted to be rid of that feeling. Two movements ran at the same time. The existing back office wanted to evolve into an expertise centre, while a new team was being formed from employees and task packages from two existing teams. As long as it was not fixed what the core mission was, for whom the operation created value, and what set it apart from classical administration, every division of tasks stayed arbitrary. Moreover, employees could not recognise themselves in an identity that did not yet exist, so every structural decision was up for discussion again.
The starting point was not job titles or existing structures, but the actual contribution to the organisation. The repositioning started from two questions: who are we as a team, and who needs us. For the first, work went on the team identity, with the distinctive, the values and the pillars of the operation. For the second, stakeholder analyses came. Together with employees and team leaders, it was mapped which complex questions and files the team handled. Alongside that: which knowledge was not obviously present elsewhere in the organisation, and where the team safeguarded quality, prevented risks or ensured continuity. Finally, which partners and processes depended on that expertise was made visible.
For the new team, the existing tasks were ordered into five end-to-end workstreams, each with a complete task package. Each task was tested against clear criteria: the necessary case and regulatory knowledge, the impact on financing, rights, privacy and quality, the need for full process knowledge, the vulnerability of the audience involved, and the question of whether centralising really added value. Alongside that, an analysis of the overlap between the task packages of the merged teams, of the workload, and of roles and responsibilities. Knowledge safeguarding and team agreements got their own place, and scenarios for the most workable team structure were on the table.
The whole trajectory ran in co-creation, with weekly to fortnightly work sessions with employees, team leaders and the manager, and periodic progress reporting. That way, the questions beneath the structure also came onto the table: what connects these employees, what do they want to stand for as a team, where does their mandate lie, and how do you prevent an expertise centre from being seen as administrative back office again?
The moment when the conversation shifted from which tasks the team carries out to why this expertise is essential. Employees started describing their operation from the value they add instead of from the tasks they complete. That also tipped the self-image: the department spoke about itself as an expertise centre with its own story and a recognisable point of contact.
A sharper core mission and a recognisable positioning, both for the department as a whole and for its underlying teams, a formed process support team, five logically built workstreams and a first end-to-end process picture. There are clear criteria for what does and does not belong in the team, and a common language with which employees and management speak about the operation. The department is no longer described from processing and support, but from its contribution to quality, expertise safeguarding, risk management and process improvement.