of agreement between people as to what their output areas are. It is the process of discussing and agreeing on output areas that is critical for effective working relationships, job design and ultimately organisation structure, not the piece of paper that the PD ends up on.

PDs should not be written in isolation by one person, nor should they be written by the HR Department. The HR Department's (or HR person's) role in PDs is to coach, train and facilitate the writing of the PDs by the people who will be doing the actual work.

How do you write effective Position Descriptions that are expressed in output terms? One way is to convert existing PDs. For example, look at the following list of duties from the Supervisor's PD at a large main frame computer centre:

1. Supervise and direct the operations of the computer room in a large scale, multi-mainframe operations environment.

2. Provide on-the-job training aides for operating staff to ensure the standard operations procedures are maintained.

3. Provide assistance in the analysis and correction of systems hardware, software and production failures and/or notify appropriate personnel.

4. Maintain computer usage records and operational logs.

5. Deputise for the shift manager.

All of the above are expressed as "inputs" rather than "outputs" In output terms they could be written as:

1. Supervise and direct the operations of the computer room in a large scale, multi-mainframe operations environment. Would be rewritten as . . .

• Mainframe down time is minimal

• Quality output standard of data is maintained

• All staff meet their performance standards

2. Provide on-the-job training aides for operating staff to ensure the standard operations procedures are maintained. Would be rewritten as . . .

• Standard operating procedures followed

• Errors are minimised

• Problems solved within specified time and quality standards

You may like to try your hand at rewriting 3, 4 & 5!

As you do, you will notice that outputs start to repeat themselves fairly frequently. That's because outputs focus on the results not "how " the job is done. Although "how" is important, it can be stated in terms of standards that must be met and maintained – overstating the "how" and breaking it down to a small number of tasks, leaves people with no room for initiative nor decision making and often leads to role overlap or underlap which eventually ends in conflict.

How do we arrive at outputs? Very simply. Just add " . . . so that" to each input and complete the sentence. Or, ask "Why?" of each input and keeping asking "Why?" until the answer becomes an output. For example, "Supervise and direct the operations of the computer room in a large scale, multi-mainframe operations environment . . . so that . . . Mainframe down time is minimal . . . so that . . . Quality output standard of data is maintained . . . so that . . . All staff meet their performance standards" Most PD's written in output terms will have no more than 5 or 6 outputs. For lower level roles, this can rise to as many as 8 – 10 (although be careful that none of these are or become inputs). The more senior the role, the less number of outputs a manager should have until ultimately the CEO has only one – "Stakeholder expectations managed effectively"

Remember as I said earlier, it is the process of discussing and agreeing on output areas that is critical for effective working relationships, job design and ultimately organisation structure, not the piece of paper that the PD ends up on. So make sure the people doing the work are involved in writing the PDs.

Oh, by the way, you may be wondering what eventually happened between my colleague and I. He applied for a role elsewhere in the organisation – his old role was not refilled. I and the organisation had learned about "outputs" by that stage. Happy output development!

Copyright (c) 2006 The National Learning Institute

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Bob Selden has experienced conflict in the workplace on numerous ocassions. As MD of The National Learning Institute, he has written this article in the hope that it helps you prevent workplace conflict.

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