“So … what would you say you do here?”
By Jim Strand, Implementations Analyst
In many organizations, it’s not always obvious as to what a person’s daily job function is. This is especially true when there are teams of people who are responsible for a wide variety of things – think “Back Office” or “Branch Support.” For most of us, we’ve had an experience in our professional careers where we needed someone to assist us but didn’t even know who to ask for help!
Combine all of this confusion with the assumptions made and biases people have about other groups – “All HR handles is disciplinary actions and new hires” or, “IT waits for stuff to break and then comes to fix it.” Teams and organizations can work better if everyone understands the roles of others and how they are helping to make the organization a success.
Then there is the situation where you help a teammate once and you automatically become their go-to for everything. You are now their all-knowing oracle for everything, and you will get a call or email whenever something arises.
There are several ways organizations can diminish the ignorance many employees have about their own places of work. Some involve structured actions by senior level teams; others require little or no structure and only a willingness of employees to learn about others. All of them are beneficial in that they will eliminate or reduce time wasted by employees searching for answers, time that could be spent on their daily work.
- New Hire Orientation. The important tour and introductions part of this function should not just be about walking a new employee from place to place and introducing colleagues, but it should be tailored to the new person by pointing out who they will likely need to ask for certain things in their time with the organization. “This is Marie; if you have a member with a credit card issue, this is the first person you should call.”
- Employee Spotlight. This can be added to a newsletter, sent as a weekly email, put on the company intranet, or posted somewhere for people to read. Choose a small number of employees on a regular frequency and share information about who they are. Information should include what they do for the organization, and it should also include some personal information they’re willing to share (like their family, pets, and/or hobbies) so all get to know their co-workers better.
- Job Shadowing and Cross Training. Being embedded in a different area or department for a period of time and learning new skills that enhance someone’s abilities is a great opportunity to grow employees. It provides growth opportunities for people interested in working in different areas, and it allows people the chance to see what others do on a day-to-day basis. It can be enlightening for employees to see how their roles at the organization affect each other and how they can work better together as well.
- Internal meetings and conferences. Put the spotlight on a particular team and give them a chance to address everyone about what they do and how they contribute to the success of the organization. You may even consider allowing them to make suggestions of other groups as to some things they can do to enhance the working relationship between the two groups. An example would be a Risk or Security group explaining their process when working with fraudulent activity and the things front line or other staff can do at account opening to make sure as much information is collected as possible.
Organizational culture is different at different organizations. For this reason, some of the above examples may work better in your organization than other examples. You may not have the resources to cross train every employee or have teams willing to present at meetings. Leaders and team members may need to get creative to come up with a solution that is right for their business. But the benefits will be worth it. The answer to the question, “What would you say you do here?” is something worth exploring.