Holding multiple roles within an organization

Should an IT leader allow a top IT performer to hold multiple jobs within the organization?

Holding multiple job titles in an organization can often pose challenges to an organization and its employees as it may create confusion over who is responsible for what task. However, allowing top IT Performers to have multiple competencies, capabilities, or roles within a job can be a key ingredient to success within an organization.

3 key parameters can influence this success:

1. The size of the team: Wearing multiple hats in a small team can be an effective means to operate in a lean and agile manner. When issues arise, team members are not left waiting for additional resources or approvals to solve the problem – they can dive in themselves.

2. The scope of the work: The roles must be related to one another – otherwise, your employees will be overwhelmed with multi-tasking or switching roles.

3. Having clear accountabilities: Ensure that roles and responsibilities are clearly defined and that you are appropriately allocating time to get them done.

What are the potential benefits?

The greatest benefit is ultimately speed. Holding multiple roles in a team allows you to make decisions faster and operate in a lean and agile manner.

Additionally, holding multiple roles within an organization can have a positive impact on the overall experience as it provides development opportunities.

What are the potential pitfalls?

Organizations must be cautious of assigning multiple jobs or roles to employees as this will undoubtedly increase the need to multi-task – which in small doses can be functional behaviour, however, in the long term it can lead to burnout and decrease the quality of work.

Subsequently, it is important to prioritize roles, clarify accountabilities and ensure the direction of the roles are clear. In addition, without strong governance in place, individuals may make decisions and mistakenly think they are accountable for things that they are not.

Are job titles really that important?

In today’s fast-changing environment, individuals may be wary of being boxed into a job title. Certainly, job titles can be general and may not give an indication of an employee’s role or experience. However, internally, job titles are important to accurately determine roles within the business. It is also important to clarify job titles when you are hiring in and trying to recruit the right people.

While increasingly, titles are playing a smaller role in this changing environment, they will not go away anytime soon as they are critical to generating accountability.