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Managing human capital is complex. If you run a smaller firm, wearing multiple hats is the norm. One person might act as your senior advisor, associate advisor, operations manager and client service specialist. This makes it especially difficult to create job descriptions and run your firm as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Baseline job descriptions will simplify how you manage your employees. By writing baseline job descriptions, you’ll have a clear description of each position in your firm, and you’ll be able to break down exactly how much time each multitasking employee is spending on each duty.
You’ll also build better teams.
Here’s how baseline job descriptions work. Suppose one employee spends 20% of their time working as a client service specialist, 40% of their time as a lead advisor and the last 40% meeting new clients and working as a senior advisor/partner. When you have firm descriptions of each individual position, you’ll be able to build Diamond Teams™ (if applicable) and see what you can or should change to optimize each employee’s performance.
Step 1: List all of the positions in your firm
Make a list of all your employees and their titles. As mentioned, there may be an overlap in duties, but most likely your employees have a specific title like “receptionist,” not a long, dissected title such as “receptionist/client service specialist/operations manager.”
Step 2: Write an overall description of each position
Choose a position, and in one paragraph, describe that job. For example, for a director of financial planning, your paragraph might be as follows:
Directors of Financial Planning are used in large advisory firms that do very detailed, complex and comprehensive financial planning for clients. The position requires a detailed and highly experienced Certified Financial Planner™ (CFP®) practitioner who has had over 10 years of financial planning experience. Directors of Financial Planning work with and assist Senior and Lead Advisors in the creation of recommendations and presentations of complex financial plans to clients. They have extensive knowledge in estate, retirement, tax, education and insurance planning.
Step 3: Add “typical duties” bullet points
List out some of the core duties of each position. For your director of financial planning, here’s what the duties list might look like:
- Working as a team with lead and senior advisors to update, create and make sophisticated recommendations on complex financial planning topics
- Training, supervising and managing paraplanners and sometimes assisting in the development of associate advisors
- Conducting client meetings with lead and senior advisors and/or on their own to ensure the quality and integrity of the client financial plan
- Carrying out the process to create an initial plan for new clients and updating client financial plans, quarterly, semiannually and annually
This list, even with specific duties, works as a broad outline of the position rather than a step-by-step description of everything your director of financial planning does.
Here’s another example. Suppose you have a receptionist. One of the receptionist’s job duties is handling all your firm’s mail. You could list out mail-related tasks like this:
- Picking up and opening mail
- Scanning mail
- Filing mail
- Distributing mail to employees
- Buying stamps and other supplies
Or you could simplify the description with a single bullet:
- Scanning, filing and opening incoming mail
Step 4: Break down each employee’s duties by percentage
How much time is your chief operations officer spending on operations manager duties, such as preparing invoices and reading and analyzing incoming memos? If they’re spending what you consider to be too much time, you can split those duties between employees.
The outcome!
Once you’ve completed your baseline job descriptions, you have a starting point for your organization’s structure. You’ll be able to better distribute tasks and build an organized, efficient set of employee teams.
Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc. owns the certification marks CFP®, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™, CFP® (with plaque design) and CFP® (with flame design) in the U.S., which it awards to individuals who successfully complete CFP Board’s initial and ongoing certification requirements.
Kristen Luke is co-founder and chief innovation officer of Kaleido Inc., a practice-growth agency helping financial advisory firms break through growth barriers to build brilliant businesses. For more information, visit www.kaleido.net.
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