Assignment Of Tasks According To Bands And Grades- What In Case Of Exception?

Project Management / By

Before getting into the discussion of correct assignment of task according to bands and grades, let’s first understand various levels in a large or medium sized organization.

  • Level 1 – This level includes junior members like trainee, data entry operator, call center operator, helpdesk staff, analyst or level 1 support staff.
  • Level 2 – This includes operating consultant like associate, developer, data base operators, management consultant, and consultant. The operating consultant is the front-line professional generally work at the client’s organization.
  • Level 3 – This includes supervising consultant like team leader, project manager, senior manager, senior project consultant, and manager. The main responsibilities of these consultant include team leadership, managing project teams and supervising operational activities of the organization.
  • Level 4 – This includes executive management like Associate Vice Presidents, Head of the department Lead consultants. Consultants at this level are the responsible for the entire department. These members are actively involved in various business strategies.
  • Level 5 and above – This includes Leadership team members like director, partner, managing partner, senior vice-president, president, CEO. Senior and top management responsibilities prevail at this level, including strategic initiatives, pre-sale work with important clients, and may be in charge of critical assignments. 

Now you can place yourself in one of the above levels. A task cannot be categorized as big or small, what matters is how it is done. The idea is to focus on the objective at hand and the current situations. Assume you are the project manager of the most critical project of your company. And the next day is a do or die day for you, as it is a go-live date of your project. You are sitting in the data center with your team for final project uploads. At this hour no member would say a no , no matter how small task he is assigned like bringing water for a colleague, dropping a female employee safe, delivering/picking up packages at a freight carrier and several other ‘low level tasks’. Here, these were ‘incidents’ and not ‘patterns’. There are times when senior technical managers are asked to do coding, which at times is difficult for those who were not in touch of programming for a longer period.

Actually, it’s not really a good idea to unilaterally assign anything to anybody at any level. They should have the opportunity to accept the task or responsibility. Tasks could and sometimes even should be assigned to senior managers if

  • they are holders of unique knowledge
  • they are unique who have enough organizational authority (power) to solve the problem

Assume a junior level task is assigned to a senior manager. If the company wishes to pay a senior manager to perform low level tasks, that is their choice. But this is not a good business model if done on a regular basis, and company needs a major improvement in its processes. Industries are filled with a lot of arrogant people for whom there is no room for any kind of exception. At times what matters is the ability to understand people and work with them, convince and motivate them. A dedicated employee or resource would love to do anything assigned to him.

The characteristics of employee who would take this in good spirit are

  • Intellectual and emotional maturity
  • Self-control in all situations
  • Flexibility to work in every condition
  • Courage, initiative and perseverance in action
  • Genuine desire to help others

The characteristics of employee who would not take this in the right spirit are

  • Immaturity
  • Lack of self-control
  • Designation conscious
  • High ego
  • Lack of flexibility and adaptability to changed conditions
  • Over confident

An important chapter of PMI-PMP, common ethics and code of conduct can be very helpful in this direction. PMP certification develops some such qualities in the individuals that they starts taking everything in the right spirit and respecting others irrespective of their bands and designation.

About Aditi Malhotra

Aditi Malhotra is the Content Marketing Manager at Whizlabs. Having a Master in Journalism and Mass Communication, she helps businesses stop playing around with Content Marketing and start seeing tangible ROI. A writer by day and a reader by night, she is a fine blend of both reality and fantasy. Apart from her professional commitments, she is also endearing to publish a book authored by her very soon.

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