I think we can all agree that structure within a company is crucial to its success. But when an organization gets bogged down in managing growth, it’s easy to ignore making a plan for the roles and people you need. A team of talented employees thrown together on a long-term project is not sustainable if their tasks and purpose within the company are not clearly defined. While it will take some time, starting from scratch and clarifying roles and responsibilities within the workplace will lead to increased financial performance, a healthy corporate culture, and an advantage over competitors.
Where Do I Start?
To gain clarity and accountability for who is responsible for which task, you must first identify:
Overlap, confusion, and conflict
What’s falling through the cracks
Over- and under-utilization
Better ways of organizing work
Hang ups, drag, wasted time
Work the current team is not equipped to handle
The most efficient and inexpensive hiring
If this seems like a big task, don’t worry. I broke down the process into just five phases that you can easily implement within your own company.
Phase One: Capture
The preparatory stage focuses on asking your team members to identify the roles and tasks they are responsible for. You are capturing their answers to determine the best way to move forward. This phase prompts employees to ask, “What am I not doing that I want to do?” and “Who do I report to for each task?”. Have workers catalogue their day-to-day tasks for at least a full week. By writing down everyday responsibilities, excess or unnecessary work will reveal itself, as well as tasks outside of the employee’s primary role. PRO TIP: Compare results from Phase One with your most recent job description.
Phase Two: Consolidate
Next, you will consolidate individual results into a single spreadsheet. Clean up assigned roles by reorganizing tasks, deleting repetition, and adjusting the level of abstraction. At this point, considerations should look like: Are any tasks/roles missing? Is there overlap? Who can handle more? Who is handling too much? What roles/tasks would fit better elsewhere? Then, meet with team members as needed to fill in the gaps. Meeting one-on-one with your team members will increase employee satisfaction by addressing problems such as avoiding burnout from too much work or feeling unsatisfied from too little work. PRO TIP: Start with the ideal: if we had limitless resources, who handles x? Work backwards from there.
Organize new tasks and responsibilities under each department for a more efficient workflow.
Phase Three: Cuss & Discuss
This phase is intended to get the feedback you need to finalize the updated roles and responsibilities. Schedule meetings with key people who can help you answer questions that came up in Phase 2, specifically team members who will experience a significant shift in their role moving forward. Additionally, discuss plans with department leaders whose responsibilities and tasks are similar to yours to cut down on overlap. And finally, meet with people above you who need to approve the plan. PRO TIP: Remind employees that roles and tasks are not ‘in a perfect world’ assignments—these are ‘what works for the next quarter/six months.‘
Phase Four: Commit
As you begin to implement the new plan, review these ground rules with your team:
Everyone will have responsibilities they don’t love.
No job is permanent — we will review every six months.
Our goal is everyone doing more of the work they love that falls within their strengths, and less of the work they dislike.
We believe our team is capable, and therefore each member deserves to have a domain they can own rather than a list of unrelated tasks to complete.
At this point, have a full team meeting to catch everyone up to speed. Provide each team member with their own responsibilities agreement to review and sign. PRO TIP: Address any concerns that arise from the full team meeting.
Meet with your team members to get feedback on improving your plan.
Phase Five: Continue
The last phase is an ongoing one. Check in with team members on a weekly or bi-weekly basis to see if the plan is working well. Determine a system of accountability. For example, a person ‘responsible’ for activities should coordinate with the person ‘accountable’ to confirm the frequency of communication for each task (ie once a week, ‘never tell me unless’, etc.). At the six-month review, include an area on the spreadsheet where individuals can add random tasks they took on between the semi-annual reviews. PRO TIP: Confirm with your manager decisions you own and decisions that need input.
Ready to Begin Clarifying Roles and Responsibilities?
I believe in this foundational principle: We are not infinite. We must carefully protect each person’s attention by not sharing info and asking for time on things that don’t need their attention. If you’re ready to make this change a priority, you can download the roles and responsibilities templates for free on the Focuswise website. You can also check out my podcasts, infographics, TED Talk video, and more at focuswise.com/free.
Workers are quitting their jobs at rapid rates. Employees leave because of job dissatisfaction, perceived low worth due to minimal salary increases, and rigid return-to-office plans, among other reasons. As an employer, how do you develop an employee journey map that invests in your workers so they will want to stay?
Let’s think about a model companies use as a common marketing tool: the customer journey map. Customer experience is a top priority using this model, and its main goals are to assess the customer’s needs, exceed their expectations, and develop an ongoing positive relationship with them. The five main steps are awareness, consideration, conversion, user experience/loyalty, and advocacy. A prospective customer is carefully guided through each stage until they become forever loyal to the company. What if a new employee joining a company was treated the same way?*
What Is Employee Journey Mapping?
Similar to the customer journey, an employee journey map progresses through different stages to achieve total employee loyalty and an overall positive experience with the company. HR teams should begin crafting a long-term plan for the employee as soon as the hiring process begins.
Stage 1: Employee’s Discovery
The employee journey starts with your job listing. Potential candidates view the job application and make judgements about the company based on the information given to them. They then conduct subsequent research on the company to determine its remote work flexibility, salary, and values. To attract the best candidates, companies need to put their best foot forward —as publicly as possible. HR leaders should provide straightforward information on the job listing and clearly communicate the company’s vision on their social media channels and website.
Attract top candidates with a compelling job description that emulates employee values.
Stage 2: Employee’s Evaluation
At this stage, potential new hires are deciding whether the company and job position is worth their long-term investment. Throughout the interview process, the prospect is critically observing the company just as much as the company is determining the prospect’s own compatibility and potential. To solidify a good match, the company should show candidates why their values align and be open to addressing the candidate’s pain points.
When we talk about prospective employee pain points, we’re really talking about companies finding ways to offer solutions to a variety of prospective employees’ concerns. These can range anywhere from a negative opinion of applicant screening software, to being seen as an individual (especially within a large company), to a necessity to work from home, and a compelling salary that matches their worth, intelligence, experience, judgment, ingenuity, and contribution.
*P.S. On a personal note, I’ve heard from many employees over the years who grew tired of being viewed as interchangeable commodities, were frustrated by the perceived indifference of their employers, and felt discouraged by their company’s lack of interest in anything they tried to communicate upward. With time to think about it (courtesy of the pandemic), they’ve reset their priorities. So now, anything less than a personalized approach to their future won’t go far enough to encourage millions of Millennials to rededicate themselves, sustain employee engagement, create genuine employee satisfaction, and support the retention levels companies need. Again, you’ll find more on this in my Forbes column (link above).
My team and I have spent the past year researching the best new ways to work. Thanks to a series of conversations with Erica Volini, Senior Vice President of Global Alliances & Channel Ecosystem at Service Now, we began to consider, and ultimately put together, what I believe is a landmark white paper detailing workplace solutions for the post-pandemic corporate workforce.
(Want to skip the blog post and download the white paper directly? Click here.)
In my opinion, this is an important paper for any corporate leader to read because it addresses two very timely questions:
Why isn’t work working?
How do we fix the many problems facing the workforce today?
Key Questions for Leaders
What should businesses learn and do when recovering from the pandemic?
Companies should not return to their former working model. Working from home opened many eyes to the possibilities of accomplishing tasks without commuting to a brick-and-mortar office. It proved that much office work doesn’t require an office at all. Consequently, leaders should listen to their workers to learn what they need to be productive — not necessarily what they need to return to the office.
How will these dramatic shifts affect workers’ views of the workplace?
Workers have been experiencing serious levels of burnout for three or four years now, and the pandemic has only exacerbated the problem. According to the 2021 Microsoft Work Trend Index Report, 54% of employees feel overworked, and 39% say they are exhausted. As a result, workers are looking for flexibility within the workplace. Leaders, this is your chance to improve your employees’ perspective of the office by implementing a hybrid workflow, converting office space to new and better uses, getting rid of artificial engagement activities, banning unproductive over-connectivity, and more.
A hybrid work model increases productivity levels and job satisfaction by giving workers maximum opportunity to focus in the comfort and quiet of their homes.
What framework can leaders use to shape productivity in the future?
At Focuswise, what we call (as shorthand) “the four C’s” (clarity, capacity, curiosity, and community) provide a framework for a healthy, focused, and productive way to work. Our white paper explains these concepts and offers manageable workplace solutions for each one.
How can businesses re-engage office workers without also reigniting their dissatisfaction with working in the company’s offices?
Job satisfaction is crucial to avoiding burnout. If workers aren’t satisfied with current working conditions, productivity will diminish. In the long run, corporate leaders need to find sustainable ways to re-engage office workers on their terms without sacrificing company culture. It can be a tricky line to walk, but engaging your workers as fellow human beings (and not merely as metrics) is the most effective way to move forward.
Download Our White Paper for Workplace Solutions
The questions (and answers) I’ve highlighted above only begin to scratch the surface of our comprehensive white paper. Additionally, you’ll find wonderful insights from Erica Volini, such as the concept of the “internal talent marketplace.” I thank her once again for the inspiring series of discussions we had.
You can download the white paper here: Work Isn’t Working: New Solutions for Leadership and Productivity.
Let me know what you think of it in the comments below! I encourage you to pass this link to other leaders who could benefit from the solutions we have identified.
