Benefits of defining roles and responsibilities

Defining roles and responsibilities for your employees offers several benefits, including:
 

 Task delegation: Having clear roles and responsibilities ensures all tasks are delegated
efficiently.
 Task completion:  Assigning task completion ensures all required tasks get done
without confusion over who should do them, which can prevent things from falling
through the cracks. This can increase the team’s success on major projects.
 Improved collaboration: Clear roles and responsibilities allow for greater cooperation
when there’s no conflict over who does what. Team roles are well-defined, so everyone
understands how they work together and what to expect from their teammates.
 Greater efficiency: Employees can work more efficiently when there’s less time wasted
on disagreements over roles or trying to figure out who should do tasks.
 New hire expectations: A roles and responsibilities template establishes clear
expectations for new hires to make the transition easier. A new team member can also
refer to the document to see how the roles work together and where they can go for help
with different tasks.
 Reduction in overlap: Your team has fewer redundancies by eliminating unnecessary
overlap. This can make them more efficient.
 Improved hiring: You have clarity on what to look for in job candidates when
you’re actively recruiting if you’ve defined clear roles and responsibilities. The roles and
responsibilities template helps you spot gaps in skills to determine when you need to
hire.
 Detailed job descriptions: When you have the roles and responsibilities clearly defined,
you can use the chart to improve your job description template. Roles and
responsibilities are a major part of job descriptions.

How to define roles and responsibilities

The most difficult part of completing roles and responsibilities templates is often clearly defining
those elements. Collaborating with other managers and people who do those jobs can give you
a better idea of what to include in the roles and responsibilities template. A team approach
gives each person ownership over their tasks and helps team members better understand other
roles.
 
Here is how to get the team involved in defining roles and responsibilities:
 

1. Schedule a meeting with all team members in a conference space or virtual meeting
space using your favorite video conferencing program. If you’re working virtually, use a
shared whiteboard or similar tool to share information easily. 
2. List all of the roles within the team, but only add each role once, even if you have a
number of people in that position. For example, if you have multiple software testers, list
that position only once. However, if you have software testers and senior software
testers, list those roles separately because they likely have some differences in
responsibilities.
3. Have each person write down their responsibilities in their role. They don’t need to
include every little task they do, but they should hit the major responsibilities.
4. Then, have them write down what they perceive as the responsibilities of the other roles
on the team.
5. Discuss each role and have everyone share what they think the responsibilities are for it.
Start with the person or people in that role, so they can share what they understand
they’re responsible for handling. Then, have others share what they think the
responsibilities for that role are. Record all of the answers.
6. Ask the person in that role if they agree or disagree with the ideas of others on the team.
If the person in that role doesn’t agree with a responsibility, move it to an unassigned
section for now.
7. Look for overlap in the responsibilities. Determine if more than one role needs to handle
the same responsibility. If not, determine who will handle it going forward. Assign a
primary person if any responsibilities need to overlap. You can assign others as
additional owners of the task or backup owners if the primary person can’t complete it.
8. Look at gaps in who’s covering responsibilities. Consider if you can add the responsibility
to a current role or if you need to add a position to the team. 
9. Use this information to complete the official roles and responsibilities template. It’s
ultimately the responsibility of the manager to define the responsibilities for each role.