Why You Need Role Clarity to Successfully Implement Assessments

When measuring employee satisfaction and performance, employers should statistically take a look at the primary employee engagement drivers, such as autonomy, meaningful work, belonging, and professional development.  

Another primary employee engagement driver?  Role clarity.

But what is role clarity and why does it matter when implementing pre-hire and skills assessments? Keep reading to learn more.

What Is Role Clarity?

Role clarity is when an employee understands exactly what is expected of them in a job, including responsibilities and deliverables. These expectations often extend beyond what’s addressed in a job ad or description, giving employees insight into not only their own roles but cross-functional and organizational roles as well.

When creating role clarity, leaders must focus on job objectives, responsibilities, accountabilities, deliverables, processes, stakeholders, and priorities as a start. However, doing so helps to eliminate role ambiguity and duplicative efforts, allowing teams to continually refine their roles in an ever-changing workplace.

By examining the different dimensions of a role, employees have a better understanding of how their job fits into the larger picture, helping to better align teams and talent while improving efficiency and effectiveness.

What Is Role Conflict and Role Confusion?

Without role clarity, employers and employees could face role conflict and confusion. Role conflict occurs when an employee is asked to perform a job that conflicts with their personal values, creating internal conflict. 

For example, role conflict may occur if an employee is asked to perform an urgent task for two employees at the same time.

Role confusion, on the other hand, occurs when employees don’t know where they stand within their organization.  Often, role confusion appears when a new leader joins a team, a new position is created, or the organization structurally changes in some way. 

Both role clarity and role confusion create stress and undue concern among employees, creating less productive work and more workplace conflicts.

How Does Role Clarity Impact Assessments? 

When examining jobs within the organization, leaders can assess and measure role clarity with one starting question:  Does the employee understand what is expected of them in this specific role?

To get a jump on things, this foundational question can be addressed to job candidates through the recruiting process, including pre-hire and skills assessments. 

What About Pre-Hire Assessments?

One way to create role clarity is by identifying which soft skills are needed to set the job candidate up for success. Pre-hire assessments can measure soft skills in the early stages of the hiring process, helping you to surface people with the right soft skills for the job. 

Since soft skills are harder to train than hard skills, identifying job candidates with the right soft skills is imperative to employee retention, engagement, and success – especially with 89 percent of recruiters stating that when new hires don’t work out, it’s usually because of the lack of the right soft skills.

Pre-hire assessments help employers objectively analyze job candidates’ soft skills – before they take on the job.  Not only does this help with role clarity, but it also helps employers build strong, creative teams.

Additionally, pre-hire assessments serve job candidates well by being transparent about what a day-to-day looks like in this role, allowing both candidates and managers to understand whether this role is the right fit for this candidate.

Are you looking for a pre-made, bias-free hiring assessment that includes soft skills tests to add to your hiring process? Cangrade’s Pre-Hire Assessments measure 50 personality traits, including the most essential soft skills, to accurately predict which candidates will make high-performing employees (including who will stay long-term!). 

Request a demo today to learn how Cangrade can help you leverage soft skills tests.