Organizational Wellness

Essential Organizational Development Tools for HR Success

Last Updated Feb 28, 2025

Time to read: 11 minutes

Change is inevitable — in life and in business. As your organization grows, adapts to shifting markets, and sets new goals, even the most solid foundations can shift. The question isn’t if change will happen but how your team will navigate it.

That’s where organizational development (OD) tools come in. These tools help align your team, streamline strategies, and sharpen your competitive edge. When used effectively, they don’t just manage change — they help you thrive in it.

Ready to turn challenges into opportunities? Discover actionable ways to leverage OD tools, boost team synergy, and stay ahead in a constantly evolving landscape.

What Is Organizational Development (OD)?

Organizational development is a systematic process for managing change. Leaders use it to find and implement winning business strategies. That could involve updating your culture, changing internal procedures, or aligning employees’ behaviors with evolving organizational strategies.

OD is not just about change — it’s about enabling an organization to thrive amid change. It often involves diagnosing current challenges, designing interventions to address them, and continuously improving systems to meet evolving needs. These interventions might target leadership development, employee engagement, team dynamics, or organizational structure.

Your goals determine the focus of your OD plan, but you may want to look at:

Strategy
Structure
People
Processes
Values

Taking a top-down approach to organizational development is often helpful. This means considering everything that could impact your company’s performance. Then, creating a comprehensive OD plan to optimize and refine.

But you can also start small. You might want to optimize sales or marketing, for example, instead of the company as a whole. Both methods are valid, but you’ll probably find more opportunities for synergy with a comprehensive OD plan.

What Role Do OD Tools Play in Organizational Development?

Organizational development tools play a foundational role in the success of organizational development initiatives. These tools provide the structure, insights, and strategies needed to diagnose challenges, implement improvements, and sustain growth. Their contributions include:

Diagnosing Challenges

OD tools like surveys, SWOT analyses, and employee feedback systems help organizations identify issues that hinder performance, such as low engagement, inefficient processes, or misaligned goals. This diagnostic phase ensures interventions are targeted and effective.

Shaping Strategy

Tools like strategic planning frameworks and process-mapping techniques guide leaders in designing solutions that address specific needs. They provide clarity and direction, ensuring that development efforts align with the organization’s overall goals.

Driving Change

Change management tools — such as Kotter’s 8-Step Process or ADKAR — help organizations implement initiatives smoothly, reducing resistance and ensuring buy-in from employees. They turn abstract plans into actionable steps.

Building Capability

Leadership development programs, team-building exercises, and training modules equip employees and leaders with the skills needed to adapt to new strategies and challenges. These tools enhance the capacity of the workforce to sustain growth.

Measuring Progress

Metrics and evaluation tools ensure continuous improvement by tracking the impact of OD interventions. They allow organizations to refine their strategies based on real-time feedback and data.

In essence, OD tools act as the bridge between vision and execution. They help turn ambitious development goals into practical, measurable outcomes.

Why Are OD Tools Essential for HR in 2025?

The pace of business change has skyrocketed — rising a staggering 183% since 2019, according to Accenture. Tech advancements are at the heart of this change. With AI now reshaping industries faster than ever, the pressure to adapt is only intensifying.

Without the right OD tools, the speed of change can quickly outstrip your ability to respond. Processes slow down, opportunities slip by, and your organization risks falling behind in an environment that waits for no one.

OD tools ensure you’re not just keeping up with change but thriving in it. They give your team the clarity, agility, and confidence to stay ahead of the curve no matter how fast the world moves.

Critical Types of OD Tools (Including Examples)

Organizational development plans are too complex to manage singlehanded. Tools help to automate the job for HR professionals while offering deeper insights into the organization and its needs.

Here’s a look at the most commonly used types of OD tools and what they do.

Tools for Assessing Organizational Needs

Every development plan needs a method for assessing needs. Otherwise, any strategies you put in place will be too general to have a meaningful impact. There are a variety of tools that make this easier. Examples include:

Employee engagement surveys

Employees have an on-the-ground perspective leaders lack. It’s worth soliciting their input with surveys as part of your game plan. Qualtrics and SurveyMonkey are two of the most popular tools for doing this. Using them will broaden your OD perspective while showing employees you care about their opinions and experiences.

360-degree feedback tools

Your plan should also assess individual employee strengths and weaknesses. You can use 360-degree feedback tools to do that more accurately. They consider data from different parties employees interact with instead of just their direct managers. SurveySparrow and Peoplebox are two of the most popular solutions.

Organizational culture assessments

Understanding your company’s culture today is a critical first step for change. Culture assessments like the Denison Model and OCAI reveal shared values, beliefs, and behaviors. These details can help you understand which buttons to press when trying to improve engagement, enhance productivity, or achieve other goals.

SWOT analysis

Your development plan should also reflect your company's position relative to its peers. Completing a SWOT analysis is a good way to figure that out. It examines your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This can help you focus your OD efforts in the areas where they’ll have the greatest competitive impact.

You can use tools like MindManager and Lucidchart to complete your SWOT. There are also free online SWOT tools that may have enough features to suit your needs.

Tools for Fostering Teamwork & Collaboration

Your company's performance comes down to the quality of its people and how effectively they work together. These tools facilitate better teamwork and collaboration to move you closer to your goals. You might use:

Team-building activities

Start by bringing your people together for more than just work. Team-building activities help employees learn about each other and grow closer. That can pay dividends in productivity.

In-person teams can bond over brief trips, games, and ongoing challenges in areas like fitness. Remote groups can bond over online games, book clubs, and virtual happy hours.

Communication platforms

Platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams make collaboration easier. They offer channel-based communication, thread conversations, customizable reactions, and shared workspaces for remote teamwork.

Project management tools

Asana, Trello, Monday.com, and other project management tools can also enhance teamwork. They help teams stay on the same page with project-based task boards. These make it easier to track progress and collaborate in real-time from remote locations.

Tools for Driving Leadership Development

There’s no better time than today to start training your organization’s leaders of tomorrow. These tools can help you do it more effectively. You can consider:

Leadership training programs

You can enroll promising employees in leadership training programs online or in person. Many of the world’s top business schools offer online courses, including Harvard, Yale, and MIT. Some classes focus on specific elements of leadership, while others are more generalized professional development support.

Mentoring and coaching platforms

Helping future leaders find mentoring from experienced industry professionals can push their development forward. Online platforms like MentorCruise, Qooper, and MentorCliQ make this easier to do.

Leadership assessment tools

You can also create internal processes for identifying potential leaders. Personality assessments are great for this. Some popular options include MBTI, DISC, and StrengthsFinder.

Tools for Managing Change Effectively

Getting proactive about change management is smart. It'll prepare your organization to evolve quickly without losing its culture or connectivity. OD tools that can help you do it look like:

Change management models

First, follow a ready-made change management model. These tend to be science-based and proven effective. Popular options include Kotter’s 8-Step Process and ADKAR. Following one of these will ensure that you’re not skipping over any key steps as your organization evolves.

Communication strategies for change

You should also create a communication strategy for change. Try to be transparent with your employees and clear about your intentions and expectations. You want workers to know why changes are happening and how they fit in.

Tools for gathering feedback during change

Finally, you want an on-the-ground perspective when changing. Employee feedback tools like Qualtrics and SurveyMonkey make this easier to do.

Tools for Measuring OD Success

As these changes take place, you need ways to measure progress objectively. Here are some ideas to kickstart your strategic planning:

Key performance indicators (KPIs) for OD initiatives

You can start by identifying the most relevantKPIs to your OD goals. You can track these over time to verify progress. Popular options include:

Employee turnover and satisfaction rates

Team collaboration scoring

Diversity and inclusion metrics

Results for custom employee surveys

Other employee wellness metrics

Data analysis and reporting tools

HR analytics platforms make it easier to monitor the KPIs that matter most to your OD efforts. Options like Tableau, Zoho Analytics, and BambooHR can provide deeper insights and more robust reports in less time.

Methods for evaluating ROI on OD programs

Next, consider the ROI of different OD programs. You want the money you invest to do as much good as possible. Tracking relevant KPIs is the most effective way to do this. They’ll tell you how much progress you’re making relative to the cash you invest.

Tools for OD with Remote Teams

Remote teams need organizational development, too. Tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams help these groups stay in touch so they can grow.

Zoom can also facilitate remote team-building exercises, like virtual coffee hours. These platforms all make it easier to maintain a connected culture despite the distance.

Choosing the Right OD Tools for Your Organization

With so many organizational development tools to choose from, finding the best options for your business can be tough. This three-step process is a model you can follow to get there.

Needs Assessment

You have to know which forms of organizational development your company needs to find the right tools. You can answer that question with employee surveys and feedback, KPIs, and high-level directives from the C-suite.

Budget Considerations

Next, consider how much of your budget you can allocate toward organizational development. This will influence which tools you can afford and may force you to make some tough decisions.

If you can’t afford tools to address all of the needs you identified in the previous step, list your goals by order of importance. It'll help you get as much done as possible with limited funds.

Note that many OD tools can accomplish multiple goals. For instance, you can use Microsoft Teams for remote communication, project management, team-building exercises, and smoother collaborations. You may be able to accomplish multiple goals with a single solution.

Implementation and Evaluation

The final step is to implement your chosen tools and evaluate their effectiveness over time. The best way to do that is by watching the KPIs you identified when assessing your needs. If they aren’t improving at the rate you want, you may need to change some elements of your performance management strategy.

Organizational Development Tool KPIs to Measure Success

Data should always inform your OD plan. Otherwise, it's tough to objectively measure whether your efforts are succeeding. So, which KPIs you should be tracking? That depends on your goals, but here are some ideas.

Leading Indicators

Leading indicators provide a first look at your OD plan’s effectiveness. They show whether your changes are working before they impact your company’s bottom line.

This helps you see whether you’re on the right track and allows for early adjustments. Some popular leading indicators for organizational development include:

Employee engagement rates
- Participation rates in training programs
- Usage of collaboration tools (e.g., active users on Slack)
- Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)
- Internal communication platform engagement (likes, shares, comments, etc.)
Leadership development
- 360-degree feedback scores
- Number of mentoring relationships established
- Completion rates of leadership development programs
Team performance
- Improvements in team project completion rates
- Increases in cross-functional collaboration (as measured through surveys or observation)

Lagging Indicators

Lagging indicators provide a later look at whether your OD efforts have been successful. They tend to have a direct connection to business outcomes. Common examples for organizational development include:

Employee retention
- Reductions in employee turnover
- Increases in average tenure
Productivity and performance
- Improvements in KPIs for different departments, such as sales or project delivery timelines
Profitability
- Increases in revenue or profit margins, though you may need more sophisticated analysis to connect these to your OD initiatives
Customer satisfaction

Tips for Measuring and Reporting

Choosing the right KPIs is just one aspect of measuring your OD plan’s effectiveness. Here are some other tips to help you maximize value:

Establish a baseline: Measure a KPI’s starting point before implementing OD tools so you know how much they’re helping.
Use data analysis tools: Leverage HR analytics platforms and other visualization tools to present data clearly and efficiently.
Review and adjust: Analyze data regularly to identify trends and make early adjustments when necessary.
Tie KPIs to business goals: Connect the KPIs you track to high-level business goals to show how organizational development has supported them.

Employee Wellbeing Fuels Organizational Development

Organizational development is a systemic approach to improving performance as the business landscape changes. OD tools make it easier to implement your plan and track its effectiveness over time. But ultimately, it’s your employees who will determine how effectively your company changes.

That’s why wellbeing programs are worth investing in as a part of organizational development. They keep employees happy and healthy so they remain engaged for whatever the future brings.

Speak with a Wellhub Wellbeing Specialist to learn how our cost-effective approach can help to fuel your organizational development plan.

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[*] Based on proprietary research comparing healthcare costs of active Wellhub users to non-users.