Staffing: Position Assignment Descriptions cont.

Why is it important to have an official, signed position assignment description? Imagine a scenario where a recovery home leaves the responsibility of checking in with each resident daily to the senior resident, who is a volunteer. The senior resident does not fully understand that this is their role, as they never received training or signed a formal agreement.

One weekend, one of the housemates does not check in. The senior resident figures that this housemate is just out and doesn’t tell anyone. There is no follow up. No one formally checks in with the housemate  until the following Tuesday, when the staff person arrives at the house and wonders where all of the residents are. It turns out the senior resident didn’t really know it was their responsibility to report such happenings, according to policy. The senior resident simply thought being the senior resident meant that they had been there the longest and got the biggest bedroom. They did not know that it was important for them to do other things within the house, such as reporting to staff that a housemate didn’t check in.

There are a multitude of adverse events that could have happened to the resident who did not check in, and what a failure to report the missing resident could mean for that person and the organization as whole.

This situation can be avoided by having a written agreement that makes it clear to each person what responsibilities they have and what exactly is expected of them.

In the above scenario, the resident leader should have known how important it was to report the missing resident as soon as they didn’t check in during the weekend.