3 Steps to Help Your Employees Excel in Their Jobs

January 15, 2015
Category: Achieve Consistent Business Success,Build an Accountable, Self-Sufficient Team,Eliminate Problems and Fires,Techniques and Solutions

Do you ever watch team sports like basketball, soccer or football? If you do, you’ll know that every position has a particular way of creating value and contributing to the overall success of the team. Take football, for example. How the quarterback creates value for the team (running the offense, completing passes, etc.) is different from how the kicker does (making field goals, extra points). And each position has different measures of success, like passer rating for a quarterback, yards per carry for a running back, and number of receptions for a receiver.

The same is true for the different positions in your contracting business. Every job in the company has its own unique way of creating value and its own measures of success. Each position should contribute to the overall success of the business by helping it grow and be profitable. That’s why you pay your employees to come to work every day, isn’t it?

Yet when I talk to management or field team members in virtually any position at my clients’ companies, most are unclear about how their role adds value to the company. When I ask, “What do you do that makes your boss willing to pay you at the end of the week? How do you contribute to the success of the company?” the most common answer I get is a shrug and, “I’m Just a… (painter, estimator, office manager).” Even when I probe, they really can’t describe how what they do on their job every day contributes to the company’s success. And this confusion about their roles usually results in wasted or duplicated efforts and subpar performances across the company.

Now you might be thinking, “Aren’t our job descriptions supposed to tell our employees what their jobs are?” Yes, that’s what they’re supposed to be for, but most job descriptions tend to be a long laundry-list-type hodgepodge of duties and responsibilities that don’t really help your employees understand what they need to do to contribute to your business’ success.

So instead of having my clients write job descriptions, I find it much more effective for them to write what I call Job Value Propositions, which clearly explain the specific value that each job creates for your company, the key actions employees in that job must take to create that value and how you will measure their results.

Below are three simple steps you can take to create a Job Value Proposition for any position in your company. You can use these steps yourself to write the Job Value Propositions for your employees or use them as a template to have your employees write their own Job Value Propositions. I’ve had many of my clients let their employees write their own. It’s an eye-opening experience to see how your employees think they add value to your company.

Step 1: Create a job purpose statement for the position

Most employees don’t seem to know that the ultimate purpose of their job is to help the company grow and make a profit, so begin every Job Value Proposition with this statement:

“The purpose of this job is to help the company grow and make a profit by…”

By stating this at the beginning of each Job Value Proposition, you focus and align each employee in the company on delivering the same ultimate results. Then list the three to six major ways that the job creates value for the company. For example, a Marketing Manager helps the company grow and make a profit by:

• Creating market awareness
• Building your brand image
• Developing and implementing a marketing plan to generate leads
• Keeping in touch with prior customers to build repeat business

Step 2: List the key actions that an employee must take to maximize their value

Each of the areas listed in the Job Purpose Statement would be further expanded with a few bullet points to explain what the job holder should do to maximize effectiveness in that area. Taking our Marketing Manager’s role of “Developing and implementing a marketing plan to generate leads,” he/she must:

• Research and develop a marketing plan to generate leads
• Manage company’s marketing campaigns
• Evaluate the lead flow relative to goals and adjust marketing tactics
  to ensure sufficient lead flow
• Evaluate and refine their lead generation techniques
• Manage the lead follow-up system

Step 3: Define the most important measures of success

The success measures define how you will measure the success of this job. For example, the Marketing Manager’s measures of success might include:

• Sales relative to goals
• Number of leads generated for each line of business
• Return on investment of marketing dollars

Job Value Propositions are a great productivity tool for your business. For your employees, a Job Value Proposition creates a clear success formula for how to excel in their job. For you and your management team, it becomes a great training tool, the basis of your employee development plans, and the outline for your annual employee reviews.

The results you’ll see in developing Job Value Propositions for each of the positions in your company is well worth the effort – a cohesive team with a common focus on your goals, profit and growth.

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