Creating Position Outlines

Now we'll pull it all together. Each position in your company should have a position outline including a job title, performance objectives, authority level, work listing and, if appropriate, salary charts. The position outline informs each position of their duties and expectations.

There’s no magic formula here. Do what ever makes sense for your business, but try to organize your positions without regard to the individual currently occupying that position. That’s not intended to be disrespectful; it’s just that you’re looking for the best way to organize your business.

Create Position Outlines for each employee in your company using the steps outlined below.

Step 1 – Determine the objectives for the position. Remember that your Strategic Objectives cascade down to your departments and ultimately to your employees. Consequently, your Manager’s Objectives will be tied directly to your overall Strategic Objectives, and your employees Performance Objectives will directly be tied to and support your Manager’s Objectives. For example, if your company has a Strategic Objective of making a $2 Million profit for this year, your Sales department will have an Objective that will bring in enough revenue to support it. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say that your net profit is projected at 20%, therefore your Sales Manager would have an Objective to bring in $10 million in sales revenue to support the goal of $2 Million in profit. If there are five sales employees that are all responsible for an equal amount of sales, each sales employee would have an objective of $2 Million in sales revenues. Ensure your employees' Performance Objectives are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time Bound. For objectives like training, career growth, or even employee satisfaction, which are more difficult to quantify, you may need to create milestones and then measure progress toward them over time.

Step 2 – Determine the authority level that the individual in the position holds according to the boundaries you set up in the authority section of this chapter.

Step 3 – Determine the work listings for the position. These are the tasks that you expect your employee to be responsible for. How will you know which tasks to put on your employees' work listings? Look at their Performance Objectives. Your employees work listings are the tasks that they must perform to achieve their Objectives. In general, a good rule of thumb is that if they are often performing tasks that do not result in progress toward their Objectives, either you have not fully defined their Objectives, or your employees are wasting effort.