Part 10: Job Descriptions and Employee Handbook

by | May 24, 2021

By: KHA Consulting Team

The following is part 10 of a multi-part series on The KHA Way, KHA Management Consulting’s Integrated Service Offering. This blog series includes the benefits of using KHA Management Consulting Services and the components included.

Now that your organization wide metrics have been defined, your leadership team has been formalized, and lines of authority clarified, what about everyone else in the organization? We defined their roles, but what do they do and how do we clarify expectations, accountability, and opportunity to them. We now need to formalize every role’s job description and publish them accordingly.

So how does KHA define and develop job descriptions? Our process is context dependent but typically involves:

  • Sitting with the employee in that role (unless the role is a complete redesign).
  • Through inquiry and observation, we developed a job process narrative accompanied by a walkthrough of those job processes. Understanding what the role should be from prior project work, we tie this information together to vision cast and further cement what the role should be or the ‘criteria’ for the role.
  • Begin drafting the job description, roles, and responsibilities. For these job descriptions, they cannot be overly long or hard to follow. We generally allow two pages in length to appropriately capture the role. Drafting of these job descriptions goes through a few iterations, including clarification discussions with various levels impacted and those that oversee this role, to ultimately arrive at a finalized job description.

Of course, the job description is only as good as actuality. If we alter the role to the person we have in that role or if we do not enforce the roles and responsibilities for that job, we only hope that this error is found soon and imminently corrected. Trust us, you are not helping your people by abdicating or relaxing the expectations that have been defined. This only creates confusion, further pain in the future, and a lack of congruency across the organization.

Typically, we prefer our clients to include job descriptions in a published format available to all employees. The employee handbook is a great place for this publication. It can serve as a resource guide for employees asking who handles what and who to approach with certain asks or needs. Since your employee handbook is evaluated annually as it is, it can be a good place to maintain job descriptions, so they are forced to be visited on a regular basis. It is expected that after the first big iteration, minor updates will be needed annually as the market and organization shifts.

Our last installment for the personnel positioning area will include compensation benchmarking, which we recommend is only done once the organizational chart is well defined, job roles and responsibilities have been finalized, and titles are commensurate with activities being performed.

At KHA Management Consultants, we work with mid-market industry leaders to identify what makes the organization, its stakeholders, and its’ employees tick. We facilitate the Personnel Positioning process with your organization’s key constituents to ensure buy-in, ownership, and a new way of thinking about the organization and its stakeholders amongst all levels. From a resource perspective, we primarily use our unmatched experience but also tap into the top-level resources such as those made available by Harvard Business Review, Relevant Strategic Management Authors, and MentorPlus. Some of those materials, frameworks, and lessons have been used in authoring this series.

KHA Management Consultants, the consulting department of KHA Accountants, PLLC, based in Flower Mound, Texas, is always looking for opportunities to work with key clients ready to take their organization to the next level. If you have a desire to improve, take the first step toward success with the strategic management experts, and contact us at 972-221-2500.

Questions or Want to Talk?

Call us directly at 972.221.2500 (Flower Mound) or 940.591.9300 (Denton),
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