9 minute read
Ensuring that jobs and skills go hand in hand
Ensuring that jobs and skills go hand in hand
How role-based descriptions instead of position and tasks can achieve this
WANTED! Employees urgently needed! In addition to an increasing shortage of suitably qualified people, there is another, and equally fundamental reason why positions remain unfilled: many jobs are defined too rigidly in terms of the tasks to be performed. And, as ever of course, one is always looking for the “jack of all trades” – with years of experience. The consequence is, that those with the right talents – as this is not only those at the beginning of their career who are often more willing to change – do not apply. So, it is time for the advantages of horizontal, agile ways of working to replace the more hierarchical structures traditionally favored by the personnel department. By Timm Urschinger
If we are talking about Human Resources (HR) 2023, we are also talking about how to develop horizontal structures and autonomous teams. How to open up lines of communication between team members in different departments and how to break down barriers.
How to help employees develop their skills and work out how they can best contribute their talents and strengths. And how to use all these techniques to drive innovation and productivity in an organization forward.
We should not overlook the fact that in doing so, HR professionals can – indeed probably have to – improve and revitalize some of their key processes, such as performance management, succession planning or recruitment and talent acquisition by taking a more agile approach. This article, however, will focus particularly on the challenge of formulating job descriptions in horizontal systems, combined with agility and taking responsibility for one’s own work.
A key step which HR departments can take in this direction is to replace rigid job descriptions by a set of roles which a company is looking to fill.
Position-related work and recruitment
When a position is to be filled in an organization around the world, advertisements contain familiar details such as the formal title of the job, details of the position, a list of responsibilities and duties (usually already outdated by the time of hiring), and the name of the department to which the position reports.
Although this has long been the practice, finding people for rigidly defined positions in a hierarchical or vertical structure leads to unnecessary bureaucracy and challenges in many if not most companies – particularly if they are truly committed to agility and autonomously operating teams.
Often the job description does not accurately reflect what the person is expected to contribute to the company. A social media community manager, for example, can do more than communicate with people on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.
He can also help organize events or design promotional materials. Perhaps the sales department can turn to him or her for ideas on how to acquire new customers; or the communications department may need his or her skills to develop an internal social media platform. If HR were now to expand the scope of the job description to include what the community manager can actually do, the description may become too wide-ranging or vague, so that it is of little use for performance evaluation or the hiring process.
It will probably require a review of the function or salary level and certainly raise additional questions on the administrative side. Worst of all, even if the job description reflects the reality, it will soon become out of date, as projects come to an end or the expertise is needed elsewhere.
The challenge
A job today and in the future may require tasks and responsibilities that a single person cannot fulfill. Thus, the job description will become too idealistic.
HR managers therefore have to look for people with skills that match as many of these areas as possible – without assessing what a candidate could contribute on an overall basis, or bring to the company through one particular strength.
In a nutshell: What is “role-based working”?
Instead of defining job vacancies in terms of rigid positions, recruiters and/or HR managers should post a role description which includes the title of the role, e.g. community coordinator, the purpose of the role, and a list of tasks that fall entirely within the scope of that role and team or group.
Based on the example of the community manager, the last task on the list – helping with company-wide events – could be split off into a new role: event coordinator.
In this way, the person a company hires to connect with people on social media can also take on tasks such as organizing a major event – or not, as the case may be – depending on their skill set.
One key indicator that roles offer more flexibility and innovative opportunities is that – unlike positions – they do not match 1:1 with team members; which is also the biggest challenge when hiring in such a system.
So what does this look like in practice, if we don't have a clear 1:1 relationship? The employee with the community coordinator role does not have to worry about events; they can focus on social media engagement or something else – training, for example. What is critical is that more than one team member is capable of taking on the community coordinator role.
Rather than having overlapping roles and responsibilities, leading to boundaries that have to be crossed and weaken decision-making and hierarchy, roles can help team members to complement each other and act more decisively.
Three best practices for transitioning to role-based hiring and working
The process of breaking down rigid hierarchical positions into roles takes time and effort. Drastically changing the structure of an organization this way makes it more complex, especially when you consider that one person can hold multiple roles; but multiple people can also hold the same role.
This gets even more complicated when employees take on new roles or leave them, or when new employees are hired. On the other hand, it is worth the effort of focusing on the transparency and flexibility that these roles provide within the company. The following three tips will facilitate the transition to role-based hiring and working:
1. Identify key roles
One way to incorporate roles into the hiring process, without creating too much confusion and complexity for candidates unfamiliar with this type of organization and role-based working, is to identify a number of key roles.
These key roles take up the majority of new employees' time when they start their new job, and help to familiarize them with the idea of flexible and agile role-based working. The key roles are similar enough to the positions they might have expected, that they shouldn't cause applicants too many problems, while at the same time affording HR the opportunity to explain how role-based working really works.
If the key roles take up about 60-80% of the new employee´s time, they still have time to take on other roles, as they get to know the structure of the company. During this acclimatization phase, HR – or even better the hiring team – should explain how the roles work, how they may change over time, and how team members can best manage their time to fulfill them. It is also a good idea to share the role-based organizational chart with new employees. It is likely that looking over the non-key tasks may actually stimulate interest and motivation. After all, we all want to learn and develop further!
2. Separate the definition of roles and remuneration
Another way to make an organization's role-based structure work smoothly in the labor market is to simplify remuneration and avoid tying salary to the number or complexity of roles a candidate is assigned. This would make administration more cumbersome, as organizations not only have many different roles, but also specific roles that particular people hold. One also wants to avoid people taking on roles simply to get into a higher pay grade.
To get around this, organizations should define grades and functions for hiring, and set the remuneration accordingly. In practice, a job posting would include this or that pay grade, and applicants' salaries would be determined based on this. Of course, the interview would focus on how well the applicant fits the role they are applying for, not how close they are to a particular pay grade or range.
3. Hire on a truly role-based approach!
Organizations should advertise all vacancies that need to be filled. This should not just be on a “once-a-year-for-three-days”basis. If vacancies are posted in Peerdom or Holaspirit (software platforms that provide clarity and transparency at all levels, to help companies on the path to self-organization), additional information should be included such as: how much work on average it is expected this position will involve – or even better, how much work it requires today.
Candidates can then choose to apply for a specific role, perhaps a part-time position with all the benefits this implies both for the employer and the employee. Or candidates can choose to apply for a range of roles, a sort of “role package”. This package could then take up 80-100% of their time and will likely reflect their interests and hopefully their strengths.
The additional complexity is that organizations will have a multitude of role packages and combinations to offer, potentially making it more difficult to decide on a candidate because it could mean tradeoffs regarding other positions and their hiring processes. The major benefit, however, is that candidates who truly embrace a role-based approach to work will come forward, and organizations will genuinely find candidates that others failed to hire because the job descriptions were too inflexible. Thus, companies open themselves up in the labor market to highflyers and people who want to make a career change – with all the benefits that entails.
Role-based working holds an enormous potential to boost a company’s agility. While it is important to focus on defining these internal roles clearly and getting the organizational structure right, one should not forget how HR can apply these practices to hiring and other functions like remuneration – and the challenges associated with these.
Trailblazers already exist that are doing a great job demonstrating how this can work, helping companies solve the challenges of finding the right talent to fill vacant positions. ◆
Picture: Andrey Kiselev/stock.adobe.com
