Do Your Employees Understand Everyone's Job Description?

Generally, every employee that's hired to do a certain task fully understands what that task is by the time they start work, including how much authority they have and what their responsibilities are. If they don't understand this, obviously their effectiveness will be sorely lacking. This problem is even more troublesome if they don't understand the roles of those around them, or even the roles of employees in other departments.

Why is this knowledge helpful to employees? In many industries (and most pronounced in companies whose field lies in customer service) it's very helpful to know exactly with whom your customer should be speaking. If you have to transfer a call several times over simply because your staff didn't know which department should be handling the customer, you only agitate the client and frustrate your workforce. Simply put, an underinformed staff calls the competency of your entire company into question when you handle situations like this poorly, and when your competency is questioned it can have an unpleasant impact on your bottom line at the end of the year.

It's a rare case that an employee's job description keeps them isolated from the rest of the workplace. Most of the time, the task requires the manpower and/or other collaborative effort of several employees at once. Teamwork is essential, and to accomplish this teamwork both you and your staff members need to be acutely aware of just who is in charge of what, and where the limits of each member's authority lies. A business whose staff understands these things will be seen as more trustworthy and efficient over a business who doesn't take the time to educate their employees.

How can you help in this education process? Start with the newest employees and work your way up. Along with giving them their company account's username and password, take the opportunity to let them understand the boundaries of their job description, and tell them exactly where they should refer clients that fall outside of that jurisdiction.

Make sure that management is on board with the education plan and is doing their part to keep the workplace abreast of role changes or other information that may affect someone's job description in the near future. If you're part of that management, don't slack in your own resolve to strengthen these lines of communication.

Lastly (but no less important), let every employee know there's no shame in asking for clarification regarding their own job description or that of other staff members. Some employees may hesitate to ask such things out of fear of being reprimanded or seeming foolish, but if you let them know up front that you're counting on such questions to help keep everyone on the same page, that hesitation will soon vanish.