Position management begins with evaluating how each role aligns with the agency's overall mission and goals. Assessing position structure involves analyzing job duties, required skills, and how roles interconnect across the organization to support productivity and strategic objectives.
Key Insights
- Assess position structure by examining overlapping duties, job uniqueness, skill requirements, and alignment with the organization's mission.
- Supervisors play a central role in designing positions that support organizational goals through careful planning and periodic evaluation of duties and responsibilities.
- Organizational productivity depends on the clarity and effectiveness of individual positions, making structural evaluation a critical management responsibility.
This lesson is a preview from our Federal Position Management Course and Certified Federal HR Business Partner (cFHRBP) Level III Certificate Program. Enroll in a course for detailed lessons, live instructor support, and project-based training.
Another step in defining the position's purpose is evaluating the position's structure. And so when you evaluate the position's structure, you want to consider the agency's mission as it relates to the structure. You want to define the problems using the symptoms.
You want to define the purpose of the position. And you want to identify reasons for the position, the materials needed, and how the position fits into the unit. And so when we look at this, in addition to looking at the symptoms found in problems in organizations, you also want to take a good look at the existing jobs and how they're structured.
And so some questions that are good to determine how the positions are structured are: are the duties of each position unique? Do the duties of several positions overlap? Do different jobs have different duties? Do like jobs have like duties? Do the job grade levels really reflect the work and the complexity of the work? Are the knowledge and skills required really necessary for a successful performance? How well do positions fit together to accomplish the overall goals and the purpose of the unit? And so you want to make sure that you understand that agencies are responsible for managing positions, just as they are responsible for managing other resources. And so anything you do involves planning, setting goals, choosing the path of action, and checking on progress. And so managing positions is no different.
When positions are managed properly, the supervisor plans or designs them to achieve the goals that are consistent with the mission of the organization. In changing the duties and responsibilities of a position, the supervisor is actually judging whether the changes support progress towards the establishment of the goals. And so remember, it is always the mission of the organization that we want to accomplish by creating positions and determining their structure.
And so the duties that are assigned to positions should be evaluated in light of the organization's mission as a whole. An organization cannot be any more productive than the individual positions that exist within it. And so evaluating the structure of the position is essential.
And so now I want you to review the next question found in Exercise 3-3. Are there other questions you would ask to determine how jobs are structured? I gave you a few questions a moment ago, and so now I want you to think of some other questions that you could ask that will help you determine how a job is structured.
