Role clarity, defined in one study as “the degree of understanding people have of their roles, responsibilities, and processes at work,” is essential for better performance.
Netherlands-based human resource consulting firm Effectory finds team members who are clear about their roles and responsibilities are 53% more efficient and 27% more effective at work. This results in a 25% increase in their overall performance.
When people have high role clarity:
This study also finds that role clarity extends to an understanding of the roles and responsibilities of other team members. The role clarity of one affects the many. If anyone on a team experiences “role ambiguity,” it can cause confusion and stress, which affects not only individual effectiveness but the company’s overall performance.
When every person is clear about their roles and responsibilities, we're engaged with defined goals and priorities that align with our organization’s purpose. We're essentially free to find our own way to get our work done. Research shows that companies that score highest on engagement are 21% more successful at creating value for their stakeholders and score 17% higher on productivity.
Platforms like Ninety can improve role clarity within organizations by visually displaying everyone's role and responsibilities, linking each person to the processes they're accountable for, and more. Try Ninety's Roles and Responsibilities Chart free for 30 days.
Here’s what defining roles and responsibilities in a team can do for your company:
Your organization will:
The process for defining roles and responsibilities starts with determining the reason for creating any role within your organization and how the responsibilities of that role enable solutions for addressing a need or problem.
In other words, look at what you need and figure out how to get it.
What are the roles and responsibilities of a remote or hybrid team? Roles and responsibilities work together to define what a person does at work, whether remotely, as part of a hybrid workforce, or working from anywhere. Generally, a role is a person’s place, or seat, on a team. Responsibilities are the duties and tasks assigned to a role.
The standard criteria for creating a job description look like this:
However, a person’s role on a team is more than a job description. Roles are based on a team’s mission and the contributions required to accomplish it. Contribution involves:
A person’s responsibilities on a team are based on what the team requires them to do in their role to accomplish the team’s mission. Responsible engagement involves:
Setting clear roles and responsibilities for individual team members helps leaders delegate work so everyone knows what they're supposed to do.
But clear roles and responsibilities on their own won’t encourage great teamwork or sustain high performance. This leads to Step Two.
People need to know how to support each other as part of a team and the organization. Creating clear agreements about what you can count on from others will enable better teamwork, ensure accountability, and drastically improve team productivity.
Clear roles and responsibilities clarify what each team member can do to achieve success. Clear agreements give everyone a better understanding of what they can count on from everyone else to sustain success. This step will not only improve productivity. It makes it easy to keep great productivity going.
Understand how the individual strengths of team members combine to create the uniqueness of your team. This approach can motivate your teams to achieve great things. You avoid grouping people into a standardized mold and focus on out-of-the-box solutions for nearly every challenge you’ll be facing.
Think about when priorities aren’t set. It usually leads to lost opportunities, missed deadlines, misunderstandings, poor communication, and a lot of burnout. A well-run weekly team meeting can’t be beaten for effectively collaborating and agreeing on what needs to get done first.
When you allow people to take ownership of their roles and responsibilities, it shows them that you feel confident in their ability to get things done. Once they start making decisions, they’ll also be more likely to take the initiative and grow in their role.
Learning more about your team members’ short- and long-term goals will help you incorporate their passions into the unique organizational and operational goals for your team. It shows you care about their aspirations and that you plan to support their future endeavors. This enables leaders to coach team members based on individual roles and responsibilities, their performance, and how these help achieve bigger goals for themselves and others.
One defining roles and responsibilities template that can help you get the job done brilliantly is the Roles and Responsibilities Chart within Ninety. It’s an interactive, cloud-based template for defining roles and responsibilities at a company, departmental, and individual level. With it, you can create a clear way for everyone to see and understand their roles and responsibilities, how they fit into the bigger company picture, and how performance is measured.
With Ninety's integrated functionality, you can tie in roles and responsibilities, add metrics, and assign ownership and accountability — all from your Roles and Responsibilities Chart
Here are the steps to follow:
With five seats to start, all you have to do is customize the chart for your organization. You can add seats at any level and edit each seat to list roles and responsibilities in detail.
Easily assign or reassign a person to a seat. Need multiple seats with the same function? Avoid adding duplicate seats by adding multiple people to one seat.
You can move seats, change managers, and make updates at any time. You never have to feel stuck with what you got after you start building your chart.
Within each seat of the chart, you can connect metrics to specific roles and responsibilities. Easily review team members’ productivity in detail.
Share your chart with other team members and outside stakeholders. Everything prints out neatly to PDF.
Within Ninety, you’ll notice different roles like Owner, Admin, Manager, Team Member, Observer, and Coach. These roles for using Ninety tools give different permissions for viewing and editing content, inviting new users, and more. Here’s an overview.
Create a To-Do for each team leader to finish building their teams and seats in the organizational chart, where it is visible to everyone in the company.
Easily review the chart during your weekly meetings. Create an Issue so you can discuss and solve it as a team.
If multiple people have the same seat, they also have the same roles and responsibilities.
Your chart is a living document, ever-changing as your company grows and people outgrow their seats. Ninety provides tools for moving seats and changing managers, making for easier organizational changes.
Once you’ve lived with your chart for a while, you will likely find a reason to change it. Revisit and adjust it whenever you need to evolve. Fully integrated with the rest of your Ninety app, the chart is visible, accessible, and easy to change.
Get access to the Roles and Responsibilities Chart, Issues, To-Dos, Scorecards, Rocks, and more! Sign up for a free trial with access to all Ninety functions, features, and support.
Now that you’ve learned about defining roles and responsibilities, it’s time to put your knowledge into practice:
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