In this article we explain the difference between positions and roles and show how this applies to your business.

Positions include collections of possible roles. A person in a position has some or all of the possible roles.
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The concept of roles and positions seems to cause confusion in small businesses. It’s time to clarify the difference.

As you may have seen in an earlier blog I love the metaphor of the Shakespeare play for a business, and you’ll probably keep seeing it here.

The Bell Shakespeare company comes to Bendigo most years. They bring about 5 actors and a new twist to the interpretation. A Shakespeare play has at least 15 roles in it and maybe more. Each actor has his or her particular skills and takes several appropriate roles in the play.

Each scene in your Shakespeare play business has prescribed roles. For example one scene in the Financial Management act could be “Manage accounts payable”. It may only have two roles in it, an Accounts Payable Administrator and a Financial Controller. By the end of the scene, your accounts have been paid. You have team members who play these roles. Which team members can play the roles? Ones that are qualified to do it, of course.

In Bell Shakespeare, they employ a particular set of actors who together can perform all of the required roles. Your business is the same.

A role description describes what the role does. A position description lists all of the roles that the team member in the position may have to play. The role has the description and the position just has a list.

Business documentation software like Way We Do makes this easy. You define all of the roles needed for the business and compile your position descriptions from them. For more information about the way we do WayWeDo, visit our WayWeDo page.

A position description, however, contains more than a list of the possible roles. We’ll write more about this later. Watch this space.