Roles and Responsibilities is a swear word when managing people

The following piece is not out of a Management Textbook, but rather the result of the cumulative years of experience of a few consultants working with companies trying to improve their work practices

One of the most surprising and overlooked management practices is the work protocol of having Roles and Responsibilities (R&R). Many would feel this one is an outlier, but unless addressed this omission could wreck a perfect functioning company. You should be suspicious of your R&R when you start experiencing the following symptoms.

• Work responsibilities falling through the cracks – “I thought you would do it and you thought I would do it”.

• Duplication of work – Person completes the work just to discover that someone else has already done it.

• Resources conflicts – Conflict about who is responsible for a specific task.

• Inferior/sloppy work due to the worker believing it is not his/her responsibility to do it.

• Incomplete RAM (Responsibility Assignment Matrix) in Project Management, since

• the project leader cannot find who is responsible for what.

We can learn and borrow a lot from the Resources practices used in Project Management. Successful Project management is heavily dependent upon the successful assigning and execution of resources spread across the organization. We also learn from Project Management that if resources are not managed expertly and professionally the result is escalating costs and timelines

So, let’s borrow a few practices from Project Management (PM) and see how we could import this into normal management practices successfully.

• In PM nothing takes place, and a project does not get started unless the Mandate Giver (Person or Department paying for the project) and Project Sponsor is identified. We should use the same practice in managing operations in our own companies, which would do no harm and would only be helpful.

• Identify Roles and then Responsibilities. In a few cases you might have to identify the responsibilities first to give you a better indication which role should perform them.

It would be useful doing the following.

• Make sure the Job Function and Role is aligned, if they are not you are going to have major difficulties with identifying responsibilities

• Always good to have the job incumbent present, because at certain stages grey areas needs to be discussed and then assigned in the most logical place.

• If incumbents want to negotiate certain responsibilities, then let that happen if it makes sense. Rather make sure that we do not have a gap/crack than worrying who should technically be responsible for it.

Client Success Story

A Global Service Integrator in the UK had difficulties getting their Service Staff to meet the service requests from their clients. The data or service the clients normally asked for was not in the Service Officer’s job description and they had to make an extraordinary effort to deliver the requested service through cross-functional colleagues.

We got the various parties together and presented the dilemma the service officers were experiencing. The difficulties mentioned was an eye-opener to many staff members. We used the clarification of roles and responsibilities matrix, which resulted in a few changes to “joint responsibility areas” of the appropriate parties.

This small change made an immediate difference and improved the morale of the service officers drastically.

WHY Meetings are the root cause of so many inefficiencies

The following piece is not out of a Management Textbook, but rather the result of the cumulative years of experience of a few consultants working with companies trying to improve their work practices

“Meetings Bloody Meetings.”

We are amazed at the number of meetings our clients must attend daily. We see them go out of one meeting and going directly into the next. We always wondered when they are doing their daily work responsibilities. I don’t think we need to say more about this other than if we could find a magic wand that could reduce the daily meeting program it would be a major win-win for all involved.

BEHAVIOR​	IMPACT	UNDERLYING REASONS
Wrong people attending	Waste of time for most attendees and many will have to revisit it	Poor stakeholder analysis and sometimes not reaching out to other departments
Too many people attending	Too many interruptions and focus is poor during meeting activities	Habit of inviting “everyone’ instead of identifying the appropriate information sources per situation
No lead person or facilitator	Need someone that knows how to run a meeting professionally	No facilitation available when we really need problem solving facilitators.
Too many meetings	Attendees are tired, resentful, forgetful, overworked and stressed.	Company meeting protocols are out of date. There are other ways of collaborating than simply having a meeting
Meetings running over time	Late for next meeting and rushing decisions without recording meeting actions	Someone, preferably a facilitator to conduct and control the meeting. Also a new meeting protocol is needed.

The conclusion we draw based on the responses in the above table, is that the negative effects and meeting fatigue add costs to the bottom line. Not only that, but it also detracts from the motivation and effectiveness of your best people, because they are the people needed in most meetings. This situation cannot be good for any organization’s productivity, which adds further costs to operations.

If you look at the “Underlying Reasons” column you will notice that most of the meeting problem could be resolved by addressing three issues:

· Use of a facilitator,

· Invite the correct people to each meeting

· Use more modern meeting protocols and technology

Our contention is that meetings are an everyday occurrence and if not managed professionally it could add “exponential invisible” costs to your company at a time when the companies cannot afford it. Therefore, doing a few things differently to fix this situation should be relatively easy and hugely effective.

Client Success Story

An international medical equipment company could not understand why their staff complained about company working conditions. All the “exit” interviews confirmed that most employees resigned, because they found the company working culture punishing. When we got involved, we could not talk to the staff that resigned, but set out to investigate why the current staff were complaining about working conditions.

We started with the “working conditions” statement and asked for examples. More than 80% of the examples cited were meeting related. We went deeper and got our interviewees to give us what they thought were wrong with the meetings, which represented most of the items listed earlier.

We requested management to help us with realistic and workable solutions to address the listed examples. Eventually a joint team of managers and specialists created a new set of meeting protocols. After six months our sponsor reported back that the number of face-to-face meetings had dropped by 40% and meetings were lasting less than 45min. Our sponsor also reported that the general feedback from the previously abused specialists were very positive.

What to Expect from the Future of Employee Retention in 2023

In 2023, employee experience is expected to be a major focus for organizations around the world. Companies are striving to create engaging and meaningful workplace environments that foster loyalty and commitment from their teams. There has been an increasing emphasis on creating positive experiences for employees; from recruitment, onboarding, training and day-to-day work activities, companies are investing in strategies designed to improve employee engagement and retention levels.

One of the core components of employee experience is Communication. In 2023, this will involve using technology to enable more effective interactions between employers and employees. This could include utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as chatbots or virtual assistants for routine tasks, enabling employees to communicate quickly and efficiently with their bosses without having to leave their desks.

In addition, employers are expected to be more flexible with the types of job roles that they offer to accommodate people’s personal needs and schedules. This could include offering remote working opportunities or shorter working hours for certain positions. This can help improve employee morale and commitment as it gives them a sense of autonomy and trust from their employer.

Organizations must also recognize the importance of providing employee feedback and recognition programs to create a positive work culture. Regular feedback has been shown to increase productivity, motivation, and engagement levels as employees feel appreciated for their efforts. Furthermore, offering rewards such as bonuses or extra vacation days for high-performing employees can provide an incentive for others to strive towards excellence in their work.

By creating tailored solutions for each employee, companies can ensure that they are providing a positive working environment that encourages loyalty and commitment from their teams. This will ultimately result in improved employee engagement and retention levels, leading to better business performance.

The future of employee experience is an exciting one – with technology continuing to evolve, employers have more opportunities than ever before to create an engaging workplace culture where employees feel valued and appreciated. As such, it’s important that businesses stay ahead of the curve when it comes to employee experience initiatives to ensure success in 2023 and beyond.