How to Improve Role Clarity in the Workplace: A 14-Step Guide

In the world of work, business outcomes are heavily influenced by how well your employees understand their tasks and responsibilities. Role clarity in the workplace is essential, enabling workers to take ownership of certain tasks and turn to the best people for support.

If roles in your organization are somewhat fluid or ambiguous, this guide covers 14 steps to improve role clarity. You’ll learn how to tighten the boundaries and scope of each role in your org chart and overcome any common obstacles.

Step 1: Define and document roles and responsibilities

Your employees must understand their objectives to perform at their best and meet wider organizational goals. To achieve this type of role clarity, create clear, well-documented job descriptions and performance goals for each role in your org chart. These should include:

1. A job title, department, location, and who the role reports to
2. A general overview of the role, summarized in a few sentences
3. A main summary of responsibilities, including the primary duties and tasks
4. Preferred skills, including qualifications or experience as required

Role clarity is vital for new employees going through onboarding and existing employees who must understand how their roles link to company goals and objectives. Check this clarity by conducting a team or company-wide clarity survey, which asks your employees to respond to the following statements: Strongly disagree, Disagree, Neither agree nor disagree, Agree or Strongly agree:

• I know what my job description is
• I know where my position sits in the wider company organization
• I have clearly defined goals

Job descriptions need to be updated regularly as roles evolve over time. Involve your employees and their managers in the process by:

• Asking them to document their responsibilities
• Keeping a work diary to track their daily tasks
• Conducting a skills analysis to pinpoint the specific skills they have and need

Step 2: Implement competency models

Competencies are the skills, behaviors, and abilities employees bring to their roles. Documenting these supports role clarity and ensures your incumbent employees are equipped to achieve your company’s strategic goals. They’re also useful in performance evaluations and can inform promotion and compensation decisions. Develop a competency model that includes:

• Core competencies: These foundational skills and attributes are required across the entire organization, regardless of specific job functions. They reflect your company’s values and culture and are essential for all employees—for example, strong communication skills, adaptability, teamwork, etc.
• Job-specific competencies: These are the unique characteristics required for success in that role—for example, a computer programmer may require advanced knowledge of Python
• Leadership competencies: What does a successful leader require within your organization? For example, strategic thinking, critical thinking, the ability to inspire, etc.
• Behaviors: Clarify how you expect employees to carry out their responsibilities; for example, you might require them to behave collaboratively and demonstrate resilience

Step 3: Conduct role clarity exercises

Make time to carry out one or more of these exercises:

• Role mapping sessions: Organize workshops where team members outline their responsibilities. This ensures everyone understands their and others’ roles, leading to clearer boundaries and better collaboration
• RACI matrix discussions: List your team’s tasks, then discuss who is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed about each. This is a useful starting point for noticing overlaps or redundancies where several people appear to be doing the same work
• Scenario-based role discussions: Use hypothetical scenarios related to your business to discuss each team member’s actions. This reinforces understanding by clarifying responsibilities in different situations, such as conflict, disaster, or if someone is away on PTO. Incorporate an element of role-play to act out these scenarios

Step 4: Develop and communicate career progression frameworks

A detailed competency framework is the starting point for developing clear career progression frameworks across your company. The Achievers 2024 Engagement and Retention Paper found that 65% of employees are open to looking for a new role this year (41% are actively looking), and 1 in 4 highlight career progression as a reason to leave.

To avoid job-hopping, employees must see a clear pathway to progression within the existing organization. A career progression framework supports their long-term development in a structured way.

Some simple steps to follow here are:

• Look at your organizational chart to ensure you have a clear hierarchy and structure in place. This should be visible and shared across the organization
• Clearly define the levels within your roles. You might have multiple job levels within your organization, such as associate, team leader, manager, director, etc.—within each of those levels, you could have sub-levels, such as junior, advanced, and senior
• Mark the skills and competencies required for each level or sub-level
• Create structured growth pathways so employees always know how to progress from their current role to future opportunities. For example, it should be clear how a junior sales associate can progress to Team Leader, Sales Manager, and Sales Director

Step 5: Communicate expectations during onboarding

Onboarding is a crucial time to set expectations. Get it wrong, and as many as 29% of your new hires could quit within 90 days of starting. Strong communication is key from the offset, so do the following to welcome your new starters into the fold and set them up for success:

1. Provide detailed job descriptions with an overview of their role, tasks, and expectations from day one
2. Conduct team introductions so team members understand each person’s role and responsibilities, including reporting structures, and who to approach with questions
3. Create an organizational overview to illustrate how their role fits into the broader company structure and objectives
4. Outline clear performance metrics to explain how you’ll measure and evaluate success in their role
5. Assign an onboarding buddy to guide them through their first few weeks and answer questions
6. Schedule frequent 1:1 meetings with the new hire’s manager and HR to provide feedback, clarify doubts, and reinforce expectations

Remember: While these should form part of a successful onboarding program, role clarity isn’t a one-time activity. Open feedback loops are the key to clarity.

Step 6: Regularly review and update job descriptions

Competency and career progression frameworks should remain living, breathing documents to maintain relevance in an era where change is the norm. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report highlights that a quarter of global jobs will change in the next five years, with AI and green transition strongly linked to the disruption.

Schedule job description reviews in the following scenarios—some can be diarized, others are ad-hoc based on current business conditions:

1. Annually: Reserve some time each year to maintain your job descriptions
2. Following a merger or acquisition: Organizational changes often lead to role shifts, making it essential to reassess job descriptions
3. Following organizational restructuring: Any changes in reporting lines or department focus may impact individual roles
4. During recruitment: Before posting a job vacancy, review and update the job description to reflect the current makeup of the role
5. Following new technology or process implementation: New tools or workflows may require additional skills or a focus shift within certain roles—for example, if you now lean on AI to handle a repetitive task previously part of the role
6. Due to role misalignment: If performance issues or role clarity problems arise, reviewing the job description can realign expectations
7. As part of your succession planning program: Updating leadership job descriptions is a best practice to prepare successors for the future scope of their work

Step 7: Encourage open communication

Create an open environment where employees feel trusted and empowered to address areas of concern in relation to their job role. 1:1 meetings between employees and managers are a great starting point for these discussions. Use them as a chance to ask clarifying questions, like:

• How do you feel about your current responsibilities? Are they aligned with the job description you were hired for?
• Have there been any new tasks or responsibilities that are not reflected in your job description?
• Are there any areas of your role where you feel overextended or underutilized?
• Do you think your current job description accurately reflects the skills and competencies you use day-to-day?

Step 8: Use team meetings to align responsibilities

Effective team meetings, either in person or virtually, build stronger, more collaborative relationships between your people. They’re also an opportunity to promote knowledge sharing and brainstorm solutions to any problems.

Dedicate regular time to check your teams feel aligned on their roles and responsibilities. Ask the following types of questions to dig deep into team alignment:

• Can everyone briefly explain their key responsibilities in the current project or workflow?
• Does anyone feel unclear about who should be handling a particular task or responsibility?
• Has anyone taken on new responsibilities we haven’t discussed as a team?
• Are there any tasks you’re handling that don’t seem to align with our team’s goals?
• Is there anything we can do to ensure a clearer connection between individual tasks and the organization’s strategy?
• Are there any areas where responsibilities are overlapping between team members?

Step 9: Provide continuous training and development

Ongoing training programs connect the dots between what your employees know and what they need to know to thrive in their roles. Using your competency models as a base, create clear training and development materials to plug any knowledge gaps. You might use a mix of the following to support their professional development and improve performance:

• Formal in-person or virtual training courses
• Self-paced learning
• Internal workshops tailored to specific role-related challenges
• Mentorship programs
• Microlearning programs, including gamification
• Networking events or industry conferences

Step 10: Incorporate role clarity into performance reviews

Performance reviews are a chance to reflect on your employees’ growth and ensure they’re in sync with your expectations of their role. Far from being an annual exercise, effective performance evaluations should happen throughout the year, in 1:1s, 360-degree reviews, and informal catch-ups.

They’re also an opportunity to revisit the connection between job descriptions and employee development. Ask questions like:

• How does your current role help you develop the skills you need for your career goals?
• What new skills would enable you to perform better in your current role or prepare for future opportunities?
• How can we support your professional development through stretch projects, training, mentoring, or other learning opportunities?
• Would you like us to incorporate any new responsibilities into your formal development plan?
• Do you see any areas where additional training or resources could help you excel or grow in your role?

Step 11: Make role clarity a theme in feedback surveys

Quantitative and qualitative data from your employee feedback surveys will reveal if roles are clearly defined and aligned with your team and organizational goals.

Incorporate Likert-scale question formats such as the following as an example of quantitative data:

“I have a clear understanding of my work objectives.” Do you Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither Agree or Disagree, Disagree, or Strongly Disagree with this statement?”

You should also use open-ended questions to extract more meaningful, detailed information from your employees. They may take longer to comb through, but this type of data provides excellent context. For example:

“Which aspects of your role could be more detailed? Please explain.”

After analyzing your data, it’s imperative to act on it. Share survey results with your team or company-wide staff, and explain what you plan to do with it. Here’s a sample message you might send out:

“Our recent employee feedback survey reported a 15% drop in employees who clearly understand their roles and responsibilities. In response, we’re committed to the following steps over the next quarter:

• Conducting role clarification workshops
• Updating all job descriptions
• Implementing monthly 1:1 meetings with line managers

We also plan to roll out training areas to support employees in areas where they’re unclear about their tasks or contributions.”

Step 12: Use organizational charts and role mapping

An organizational chart is an essential visual tool to aid employees in understanding their place within the overall organization. If you’re struggling to see the wood for the trees, this framework allows us to zoom out and see the bigger picture. An org chart:

• Provides a clear reporting structure, with an overview of where each role fits, who they can go to, and who heads up other departments. This is increasingly important as companies grow and expand
• Illustrates career path opportunities through the org structure and job levels. Other areas, departments, and roles are mapped out, which opens up the possibility of promotions or lateral moves without leaving the company to progress
• Enables seamless collaboration as all departments, functions, and key stakeholders are visible, making it easier to complete cross-departmental projects
• Boosts the onboarding experience by allowing new hires to settle in quicker to the organization and learn the names and faces of team members and key players
• Makes future planning easier by understanding the potential workload of employees and how many people they might have reporting to them—you can allocate resources or visualize necessary changes more quickly

Step 13: Ensure leaders have the skillsets to foster role clarity in their teams

Leaders play a key role in establishing and maintaining role clarity within their teams. They must understand the scope and purpose of their own role and be knowledgeable of their direct reports’ roles and responsibilities, too.

Step 14: Track role clarity improvements

Monitor your role clarity strategy to ensure how effective it is and how it relates to other initiatives like employee satisfaction and performance. Some key performance indicators (KPIs) you might track include:

• Employee net promoter score (eNPS): How likely your workers are to recommend your company as a place to work
• Absenteeism: Role ambiguity may result in disengagement, frustration, and even burnout. Check your absentee rates to understand if role clarity initiatives reduce unplanned time off as an indicator of better employee wellbeing
• Turnover: Monitor voluntary turnover rates, especially among new hires, to determine if role clarity improvements retain talent
• Productivity: Track productivity metrics such as project completion rates or individual performance metrics to look for links between clearer role definitions and higher output and performance
• Collaboration: Survey employees on how effectively they work with colleagues and whether role overlaps or gaps still cause challenges. Positive changes in collaboration scores indicate better-defined roles and responsibilities

Benchmark your preferred KPIs before rolling out your new role clarity strategy, then conduct periodic reviews to spot any trends and make adjustments.

Common mistakes to avoid when improving role clarity

Any role clarity strategy can present some common problems as you seek to make improvements to your organizational lineup. Be aware of the following pitfalls:

Overloading job descriptions

Job descriptions should be clear, articulate, and easy to understand. Although you may be tempted to list everything that could arise, stick to the essentials to avoid overwhelming your employees.

Strike the right balance by noting the details down, then be ruthless as you edit.

• Check for redundancies—where did you say the same thing?
• Look to reduce the content of your description by at least 50%
• Get a second pair of eyes on your descriptions (preferably the incumbent employee) to spot anything unnecessary

Ignoring the need for flexibility

Not all tasks or responsibilities are black and white; some require nuances or adaptability based on circumstance. Build flexibility into your job descriptions to allow for this. For example, instead of stating, “Responsible for handling customer inquiries via email,” you could phrase it as, “Responsible for managing customer interactions through various communication channels.” This allows for growth into new methods or technologies while keeping the role’s core focus clear.

Lack of communication as roles evolve

As roles shift due to market changes or internal restructuring, some employers will make the mistake of updating job descriptions and org charts without following through on the crucial next step: communicating changes to their team members.

While individual employees are often involved in the process of clarifying their own roles, they may not be aware of changes to the roles around them.

Close your feedback loops by updating internal documentation and announcing any changes in team or company meetings to keep everyone on the same page.

Quick strategies for addressing role clarity in remote and hybrid work environments

While role clarity might seem straightforward in traditional office environments, remote and hybrid settings present new challenges. Follow these tips to gain visibility on team members’ responsibilities without sitting side by side:

1. Set clear expectations: Be detailed about communication protocols and performance metrics in a remote or hybrid setting
2. Host virtual check-ins: Frequent communication identifies challenges early and keeps everyone aligned
3. Store role clarity documentation in the cloud: Enable team members to reference their roles and responsibilities 24/7 and from any location
4. Use collaboration platforms: Internal communication tools make it easy to track task deadlines, ownership, and the latest updates, so everyone knows what part of the puzzle to work on next

Establish role clarity at all levels of your organization with Deel Engage

Role clarity takes time. But you can radically speed up the process of employees gaining focus with Deel Engage. Here’s how to use our platform across all roles, levels, and teams in your organization:

• Define role expectations with competency mastery, cultural values adherence, performance metrics, etc.
• Establish transparent career pathways to motivate and inspire your employees
• Set relevant goals tailored to role and level-specific expectations
• Understand role clarity better with recurring surveys
• Collect feedback from multiple sources and share it with your people to reinforce role expectations
• Develop targeted training programs to equip employees with the necessary skills and knowledge to perform their roles effectively
• Deel HR, our truly global HRIS solution, is always included for free

Ready to see our platform in action? Request a Deel demo today.