That office bullshit: Part Four

For the sake of clarity, this is part four of a little series of posts I've been doing about workplace red flags and if you want some clarity on what's in the previous posts they're all on my feed.

Unclear job roles and responsibilities

If a workplace cannot clearly and definitively describe job roles the workforce including management is left floundering inside of and outside of the boundaries of their own, and other's, job functions...a clear way towards chaos, lack of productivity, poor results and an unhappy workforce.

It can lead to nothing (or very little) getting done, or them being done inefficiently and ineffectively, and also to workers having jobs piled upon them that they're incapable of doing or have insufficient time for. This is not a condition reserved to smaller and family run businesses either, I've seen it in at least two global companies I worked for who failed to clarify job roles effectively or made their "clarity" so difficult to understand and comprehend that no one knew whether to shit or go sailing. This situation had predictable results.

In one of those companies, the waste of time and loss of revenue was incredible and the morale wasn't very good either; of the six people I worked directly with, none work there anymore and the people they've replaced us with have turned over at least twice. All of us were senior people in the company, all experienced and talented, and all have taken their skills elsewhere. There's multiple reasons for that of course, but lack of clarity of job roles was a big factor.

Have you had any experiences in this scenario you'd like to share or any general comments? Feel free to do so in the comments below.