Q: I have new employees coming on board with some specialty areas. Could you look at this or share it with someone else in LERN who might be able to assist me?
In positions for workforce specialists, should their duties/responsibilities be weighted so that they can attend to priority projects? I’m looking around for some ideas on doing this. A new specialist coming in here will be primarily finding and facilitating contract and customized training for me. She can develop curriculum (she has a PhD in this area) for many programs, but I don’t want to use her solely for development as we’ve also partnered with some great companies (like DDI) to get curriculum that’s already to go. So, I’m wondering about weighting each component:
For example:
· curriculum development 15% 12 hours/80 hr period
· marketing/sales/consultations 30% 24 hours/80 hr period
· writing proposals 5% 4 hours/80 hr period
· training delivery and facilitation 40% 32 hours/80 hr period
· open enrollment facilitation 10% 8 hours/80 hr period
Do you have any suggestions on what works best or what other WD programs are using? Thanks for any input you might have.
A: Thank you for your question. We do have information that could be useful to you.
First, you have hit the nail on the head when you suggest that staff members with specific responsibilities should spend most of their time fulfilling these duties. A sales professional, which is how you are describing this position should focus on certain responsibilities. I have attached a copy of a sample "job description" for a sales professional, and hopefully that will give you some of the information you are looking for. This information was developed by LERN, and it is what we recommend.
Some of the duties you are suggesting to be part of your new staff position are duties we would typically recommend being assigned to a program professional--someone who can write curriculum and who can understand the needs of the target audience. I am not sure what you are including in "open enrollment facilitation," but this might be something that would be better placed with an operations professional. Proposal writing is a specialized skill, and it may be that you do not have anywhere else to place this. However, this can get in the way of the primary duty of generating sales.
LERN recommends that whenever possible, jobs not be fragmented so that the staff person can devote full attention to their priority area. In practice, the time allocations for multiple responsibilities rarely work out as they are on paper, so we recommend careful structuring of staff positions.
If you would like to discuss this in more detail, let me know, and I will arrange for you to speak with a LERN consultant.
http://media.lern.org/webinars/Sales-Professional.pdf
http://media.lern.org/webinars/Program-Professional.doc
http://media.lern.org/webinars/Operations-Director.docx