And now let’s make job descriptions another BFF
Last month I talked about making your “To-Do” list your Best Friend Forever.
Let’s include job descriptions as another BFF that you need to have. Once you know what needs to be done (using your to-do list), you have to figure out who is going to do it.
Let me tell you a story that demonstrates the importance of creating and using job descriptions:
I am working with Margaret Cassidy at American Leak Detection in Spokane/Coeur d’Alene. She has just started implementing job descriptions and has agreed to try my top down/bottom up approach, which I outline below. After one week she noticed that all her technicians were spending time almost every day running to get supplies. That’s 6 employees all spending an average of 5 hours per week doing something that should have already been done by someone else. Now there are a lot of reasons why certain supplies might not be on the right truck at the right time- but it is clear that if Margaret were to centralize the buying of supplies and institute a program for making sure the right supplies were on the trucks each day, she could save most of those 30 hours per week of payroll. You do the math.
This is just one of what I expect will be many examples of areas in which she can easily improve productivity and eliminate inefficiency.
I am not exaggerating when I say that good job descriptions are one of the most powerful tools in a business owner’s tool box, with the ability to totally transform your business. If you master the skill of creating and using job descriptions well in your organization, then running your company will become a joy and your employees will love you. If you don’t use job descriptions, your company will not run well and you will struggle to grow. Period.
Benefits for Your Company
The benefits to your company of having good job descriptions are many. The first thing it does for you, is that having job descriptions ensures that nothing is slipping through the cracks. You no longer have to keep track of every single item on your to-do list- instead, every task and function is assigned to someone on a job description.
Another big benefit to creating job descriptions is that, like Margaret, you may discover inefficiencies in your company. These kinds of inefficiencies can creep up on you as you grow your company and add more people into it. You want every single dollar you spend to be working for you in your business, and you want to eliminate any spending that is unnecessary and wasteful.
How to Create Job Descriptions
So, how do you go about creating good job descriptions? Job descriptions are actually quite easy to create. I like the slow and organic approach to building job descriptions. Here are the steps:
Start with a blank piece of paper for each employee. Every time you ask her or him to do something, put it down on the paper.
Meanwhile, have each employee keep track of everything he or she does. Within a few weeks you will have a rough idea of what everyone is doing.
Meet with each employee regularly to make sure that he understands what you are asking him to do (what you are writing on your paper) and she is not doing anything that you don’t want her to be doing (which you should be able to see by what she is writing on her paper).
Benefit of Using This Process
There are so many benefits of creating your job descriptions in this way that I could fill up a whole book. Here are just a few of them:
Your employees are able to take part in the process. This a big deal- if you include your employees in this process, they will be able to take more ownership in and be more enthusiastic about their work.
Creating job descriptions in this way is not very much extra work- it’s a more organic approach. You just keep track of everything an employee is working on and put it all in one place, and then organize it. This becomes a job description. It doesn’t need to be a big extra effort to create good job descriptions.
This process promotes dialogue between you and your employees. At the very least, it presents the opportunity to discuss what they’re working on, what’s expected, what’s going well and what’s not going well.
The most amazing thing about this process is that in every case with my clients, the employees love doing this. They will like coming to work- and you will find managing them one heckuva lot easier.
