This time of year, there is so much air-time used in discussions about building the competency model for position management and getting the right job description defined for compliance purposes, that often the true essence of what’s best for the team and the individuals gets lost when it’s time to open a new position.

I’ve talked about this subject before, but now is the perfect time to bring it up again.If you
want to increase retention of your existing employees as well as for the new hire, here are my suggestions for building the best job description or responsibility matrix possible.

How to optimize position management

1. Inform the manager that a new position is now budgeted. They’ll have the time to better outline what that position will do.
2. Put the manager’s position description on the shelf for awhile.
3. Talk to the employees in that department, especially those with similar duties to the proposed new position, about what gives them energy in their job and what zaps them to exhaustion in their day-to-day routine.
4. List the “keeper tasks” to make sure people get to keep doing those things that add value and give them energy.
5. Compile the “I would rather go to the dentist than do these tasks” list.
6. Review the tasks getting in the way of employee engagement (your list from #5), and look closely for a full-time job description. Throw away the preconceived notion that you “must have another analyst” or whatever the position originally required. If your current employees can be more productive by giving away the things that eat away at their time and energy – you can keep them happy by hiring somebody to do the things they find draining or not a good use of their time.
7. Modify the manager’s original definition for the new position, working with the manager to create a new job description based on the list from #5.
8. Go out and hire a very upbeat person who likes to do the things in the altered job description, who will be well-loved in the department because they saved people from their dreaded tasks.

Now you can do this process before step 1 if the new position must be clearly defined before
budget approval. If you’re thinking to yourself , “that would never work here, that’s not how
things are done,” SHAME ON YOU. Make a change. If you’re thinking, for example, “but nobody likes to compile customer comments into a report,” you’re wrong and need to remember the saying, “It takes all kinds.”

Trust me, this works. I have done it. If you must back up this theory with proven research and align it with a great professional employee development trend then refer to anything recent by Marcus Buckingham and friends: Strengths Finder, Go Put Your Strengths To Work.

Some of this can be done with existing teams, too, even if they’re not adding a position. Discuss what each teammate would love to keep or prefer to give away then see if any tasks can be swapped within the team or reassigned to a different, more qualified department.

As Buckingham demonstrates, letting individuals be the judge of what they do best is truly effective position management.

Cheers,
Lois

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Posted in position management
Tags: job description, position management