In our last post, we discussed what can go wrong if you don’t have the proper role profiles. Today, we turn to best practice principles in role profiling. In our more than 15 years’ experience in the field of job and role profiling, we’ve learned several valuable lessons about what to do, and what not to do.
Some core principles that you can use to measure role profiles and the profiling process against include:
- Extensive consultation is key. Role profiles are ultimately only as good as the conversations you have when creating them. Therefore, extensive consultations are vital. Make sure that every staff member that may have important knowledge about the role is consulted.
- Have a digital backbone. The days of pen-and-paper role profiling are gone (or at least should be). It makes no sense to go to the trouble of profiling all the roles in the company only to have them be lost somewhere in a filing cabinet. Make sure that profiles are warehoused in a secure, searchable database. At Omnicor, we’ve developed just such a system. We call it Profile Express.
- Profiles should be assessment-ready. All too often, role profiles are constructed without thinking about how the role will eventually be filled. Ensure that the profile is aligned with competencies that are measurable. Especially by up-to-date psychometric and skills assessments. That way, you can select the right people for the right role.
- Profiles are organisational data. Individually, profiles have multiple uses (some of which we’ve already discussed in previous posts). But, taken as a collective, role profiles reveal the shape and structure of a company. That’s why we use organizational theories like Stratified Systems Theory (SST) when constructing our profiles. HR professionals can use frameworks such as SST to generate powerful insights into organisational design and development.
If you’d like to know more about how we can help you align your profiling to best practice, why not visit our role profiling page and drop us a line?
