5 Steps for Defining Roles and Responsibilities
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. We broke down the process into just five phases that you can easily implement within your own company.
Phase 1: 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 2: 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 3: 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 4: 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 5: 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?
Remember 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 out roles and responsibilities templates for free.
You can also check out Focuswise podcasts, infographics, TED Talk videos, and more at focuswise.com/free.
