What are roles?

Roles in People aligns current and future roles in organization to performance metrics & responsibilities.

Role planning in an organization is commonly referred to as "organizational role design", "role architecture".

This process involves strategically structuring and defining the roles, responsibilities and performance outcomes within the organization to align with its goals, objectives, and operational requirements.

This is done to ensure clarity, efficiency, and effectiveness in how work is distributed, executed, and coordinated across teams and departments. 

Roles in Waymaker's People section is the databased of roles your current or future organization needs.

Use roles to organize roles and teams to align on performance metrics and responsibilities. 

In Waymaker database table is called 'Roles & responsibilities'. 

How do I create a role?

Create a role to organize and align the kinds of roles you need to execute your plan. 

Do the following.

1. Go to People > Roles. 
2. Click '+Role'. This will open the role editor. 
3. Complete the following fields. 
   1. Title - enter the title of the role. 
   2. Status - Active puts the role on the current org chart, draft on the future state org chart, and archived on neither. 
   3. Purpose - Write a short purpose statement of this role. E.g., 'This role exists to .... '.
   4. Reports to - choose the role this role will report to. Note: It's best to build roles from the top down.
   5. Team - look up the team this role belongs to. Note: Roles are exclusive to one team, users are not exclusive and can be in one or many teams. 
   6. Metrics - add the metrics this role will be working on. Note: Metrics become outcomes when a role description is related. Leave blank initially if you want to use the Role Description builder to drive these. 
   7. Responsibilities - add the responsibilities this role has. Note: Responsibilities are overwritten when a role description is related. Leave blank initially if you want to use the Role Description builder to drive these. 
   8. Role description - look up a role description from the role description library to relate to this role. Note: When relating a role description the following fields will be updated by the data within the role description; purpose, metrics, responsibilities, role description. 
   9. Incumbent - look a user to relate that user to this role. Leave blank if there is no user yet for that role. Once a user is related the Org Chart will populate with the users name. 
4. Click 'Update role' to save. 

Best practice tips

Here are some best practice tips to apply. 

1. Create roles from the top down. It will be much easier to create reporting lines. 
2. Create a role before adding a user. When creating the user in Admin > Users the role will be available to select in the look up field. 
3. Create a role with just the role name and then create a role description. Use the smarts in the AI powered Role Description builder to get the right performance outcomes and responsibilities. Then, relate the role description to the role and it will auto populate the role data. Edit fields like metrics and responsibilities to simplify.