| Subscribe to the Human Capital RSS feed | What’s the proper way to define position descriptions that include roles and responsibilities? Start with a good strategic plan. The strategic plan must include the usual mission statement, vision statement, and core principles.
And, by the way, you executives and managers, whatever you define as mission, vision, and core principles, you must be committed to them and not simply put them on paper because they sound noble. Accountability starts with senior leadership. If you say it, mean it and do it. Your credibility will be shot if you say, for instance, “Our people’s safety is of paramount importance,” and then proceed to under-support safety training, tools, and time for hazard analysis with a resulting 20 incidents per 200,000 FTE labor-hours. Walk the talk.
Develop a set of tangible objectives from the vision of what the organization intends to achieve. If, for instance, one aspect of your organization’s vision is to be the low-cost producer of your product class, a related objective might be to maximize operations maintenance work management processes cost effectiveness while optimizing production availability. A set of operations and maintenance goals can be developed from these objectives.
Goals are tangible while objectives are statements of intent. Goals related to the above objectives might include reducing or maintaining operations and maintenance cost per unit produced and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) at or below a certain value. Goals should be defined in terms of measures that each level within each department and the overall organization can and should achieve.
When objectives and goals are well defined, departmental managers can be held accountable to design and document guidance (policies, processes, and procedures) used to achieve the goals. Design and documentation include flow charts, position/functional roles and responsibilities, and a narrative process guide that puts in writing how tasks are to be done and expectations for people with roles and responsibilities. These guidance documents also become the training manuals for communicating roles and responsibilities. These roles and responsibilities can then be included in position descriptions for each person.
Basing roles and responsibilities on a foundation of objectives and goals allows you to develop current employees and select new hires based on sound reasoning.
