What am I supposed to do and what results am I responsible for? These are basic questions for all employees, but some small and mid-sized businesses don’t take the time to answer these questions in writing as a part of their policy. If employees are only provided verbal descriptions of their job and are left to do whatever their manager asks, productivity can suffer. It is also expensive in other areas such as hiring costs, turnover, prioritization and work imbalance.
All businesses should have an organizational chart, whether you have a small staff or if you hundreds of employees. The next layer below the organizational chart should be job descriptions, which capture roles and responsibilities. Your strategic plan should highlight what the company is doing, how it will do it, and what goals it is pursuing. This information should flow into the organizational chart. Each unit and every worker should clearly understand their role and the accomplishments for which they are responsible. Structuring the firm in such a manner takes time and requires a bit of thought, because it should be accurately created and not require constant correction, but in the long term it helps improve the bottom line. When roles and responsibilities are defined and understood, the alignment and productivity in a business increases dramatically.
Many other benefits flow from this basic building block of an organization. Hiring new employees is a typically expensive and time-consuming process. If this work is done poorly, turnover can be high and the costs and lost time rise even more rapidly. A part of this challenge is the lack of productive communication between HR and business units or hiring managers. If the hiring manager doesn't clearly articulate the roles and responsibilities of the person to be hired, HR can't source prospective employees easily. Instead, they have to try to interpret the information they've been given and do their best. Such communication disconnects can lead to frustrating interviews, both for candidates and interviewers who realize they are wasting their time if the fit is completely incorrect. Having defined job descriptions and roles and responsibilities allows HR to craft useful job postings and vet candidates efficiently. Reducing the time to hire and turnover has a definite positive impact on the bottom line of a firm.
Many businesses monitor the performance of their workforce. Employees are typically evaluated annually and these evaluations influence decisions such as promotions, raises, and transfers. When roles and responsibilities are well defined, and goals from the plan are included, rating an employee's performance becomes more standard and rational. This process also provides an opportunity to discuss suggestions for improvement, career path, and recognition of great results. One the other side of the issue, if you need to dismiss somebody for poor performance, you have both the standards and the results documented.
As a business grows, work increases. In many instances, the productive employees, or the people who won't say "no", are given much of the new work to complete. These are the workers who are usually the backbone of a firm and can quickly get overworked or become dissatisfied with their jobs. Rather than risk losing these valuable people, use the job descriptions and roles and responsibilities to ensure individuals aren't being task saturated. When you have early notice there is more work than people to accomplish the work, you can preemptively begin the process to recruit more employees. You may also be able to examine the distribution of work,and if the balance is out of alignment, you can shift responsibilities to ensure everybody is working to their capacity, but nobody is consistently over-worked.
Here are components that should be included in a job description:
There shouldn't be any need for a description of longer than two pages to be created. It should be clear and easily understood by employees, peers, supervisors, etc. I like to keep the master copy with the current organizational chart and a copy of the updated strategic plan. This information should be transparent and available for others in the firm to review. You can also add categories on experience and qualifications needed to hold a role for employees to monitor their career path and potential for qualifying for a promotion window.
This important component of a business is frequently overlooked, but shouldn't be. Aligning your workforce, reducing your manager’s workloads, increasing accountability, and linking human resources more closely to the rest of the business are a few of the outcomes. If you don't have yours in place, today is a great time to start developing them and aiding your bottom line.
