Focus people on clearly defined tasks

It is a common complaint / excuse: “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do”.
 
People need clear direction to perform their job roles correctly. This includes the areas they are responsible for, the tasks they need to complete and what the output / result from these tasks should be. You need to:

• Make job roles clear
  
• Make good / bad performance clear
  
• Reduce duplication / wasted effort
  
• Ensure skills / knowledge gaps are identified and filled

What you can do

Part 1

• Review job roles and the skills / knowledge required for each
  
• Then review the job descriptions you have for each role
  
• Update them if necessary
  
• Now look at the people in the job roles
  
• Do they have the skills and knowledge you think is required for the role?
  
• If they do, great, move on
  
• If they do not – how can you up-skill them to meet the requirements of the job role?

It is important that you give people a chance to up-skill. Remember, how you handle this type of situation sends a message to everyone in the organisation.

• If you take the time to up-skill someone people will be see you as an organisation that values its people and provides opportunities. This improves the culture of your organisation.
  
• The person you up-skill will be better at their job, will have increased loyalty to the organisation and will have a great story to tell others within your organisation and to those who may potentially join it.
  
• You will have retained valuable corporate knowledge and saved yourself time and money. It is far more expensive to recruit and train a new employee than it is to up-skill a current one

To up-skill someone you can you:

• Provide mentoring (either yourself or from someone else) to give them guidance in the role to improve their skills and knowledge
  
• Arrange training (as discussed in the previous section)

Part 2
Review the key performance measures for the job roles

• Do they focus on the important aspects of the role?
  
• Are they kept to a minimum?
  
• Are they measureable, measured and achievable?

KPI’s focus people on what is important and should be used as a fair way of proving:

• If a person can not be up-skilled that they can not do the job
  
• If a person can be up-skilled that this is happening
  
• That a person is under or over performing, so this can be either rectified or acknowledged
  
• Pay rises / bonuses are justified