Role Playing: Why Assigning Roles at Work is Essential

While Abbott & Costello coined the phrase “Who’s on first, what’s on second?” in their famous baseball-themed skit, nowhere is this question more relevant than in the workplace.

We’ve probably all been in a job at some point in our careers where roles and expectations weren’t clearly defined. The result is often chaos — some people doing too much (and feeling overwhelmed), some people are doing too little, and lots of people stepping on each other’s toes.

Defining roles and clearly designating people to handle certain tasks is vitally important to ensuring a smooth work environment and culture. Let’s take a look at a few reasons why that is, as well as why roles are so important when you’re partnering with WorkHound.

The Importance of Clearly Defined Roles

As we touched on briefly above, not having responsibilities clearly laid out for each job within your workplace can lead to chaos. That chaos, in turn, can ultimately lead to employees getting frustrated and burnt out — and even leaving for new opportunities.

That’s because defining roles and their associated responsibilities helps clarify for everyone what needs to be done and who needs to do it. A workplace where each employee has a clearly defined set of job parameters has several benefits:

• Every person knows what to do. This is the most obvious, but also the most important. Every employee will know from the get-go what he or she is responsible for and what needs to be accomplished.
• All the work gets done. No matter what business you’re in, there are often lots of little pieces that make up the bigger work puzzle. Some of those pieces can easily get lost or neglected if they aren’t under the purview of a specific employee. When a task is specifically designated to someone, it’s less likely to be overlooked.
• There’s more collaboration. This is a big one! When roles are clearly defined, people simply work together better. That’s because each person understands what he or she is supposed to be doing, as well as how their work contributes to the business’s overarching objectives, creating an opportunity to collaborate and achieve a unified goal.
• There’s no overlap on work. On the flip side of what happens when no one’s assigned to a task and it gets overlooked, all too often, more than one person tries to complete a task when work goes undelegated. This can lead to wasted time and frustration between team members. Clearly defined roles ensure that everyone knows what they should be doing and prevents unnecessary duplication of efforts.

Why Roles Matter When Working With WorkHound

Circling back to that “who’s on first, what’s on second” discussion, knowing who’s responsible for the various pieces of partnering with WorkHound — from reviewing employee feedback to determining and approving employee-facing messaging — is crucial.

Even with things like broadcasts, the communications we send out to team members after a company takes action on feedback, it’s important to have clearly defined roles. If the person tasked with developing a broadcast isn’t aware of all feedback elements that need to be addressed, a broadcast could be delivered without mentioning certain crucial pieces of the intended message. This can lead to frustration from employees who have shared feedback (as they may feel their voices are going unheard), as well as a lack of confidence for the employee creating messaging.

“This scenario is an example of the type of ‘chaos’ that defining roles can help us avoid,” says Max Farrell, WorkHound CEO. “Assigning roles makes us better collaborators. It allows for a smoother process, and each employee can feel a sense of control over responsibilities in the big picture.”

Have you defined all the roles within your company and still need some help with employee retention and feedback? Let us go to work for you. Contact us today for a demo!