One of the things Nina and I did to help our company run without depending on us too much and build value in our company was to create a manual for almost every position in the company. Here's how we did it:
Create job descriptions. This will be the basis for deciding what else goes in the manual. Ask any employee in your company who works in the position you are focusing on to keep a list, over the course of several weeks, of the activities that he or she does more than once. You do the same thing for that position as things occur to you.
Collate the results. See what occurs more than once. See what you had no idea you thought was supposed to be a part of the job. You might be surprised about some of the things your folks are doing!
If you have an office manager he or she would be the best person to do the collating and all the processing work that it takes to develop a manual. If you don’t, then set aside at least one hour a week of your time so that the work will get done.
Fill in the gaps. Once the input has been sorted and edited to get rid of what you don’t think is part of the job then add to it what you think are the activities which might have been missed.
Clue in the others. Make copies for all the people in your company to review and comment on. Have a meeting, shortly after distributing the draft job description to your folks, to get their comments. By asking for their comments you are helping to create buy-in.
Book it. Incorporate any comments you feel are appropriate and then publish the job description.Now you can make that the first couple of pages in your manual for that position! Keep a loose leaf binder so you can mark things up and add additional pages with ease. And keep a computer file of the manual, too.
By the way, if you would like to see job descriptions for a number of positions consider joining Remodelers Advantage University. It's is an inexpensive way to get outside input on so many remodeling business-related topics.
In the next article in this series we will talk about turning the list of activities into a short list of results the position is supposed to accomplish.
