Latest / The Healthy Church Staff Podcast / "Other Duties as Assigned" Ate the Job

Transcript

"Other Duties as Assigned" Ate the Job · The Healthy Church Staff Podcast

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: You hired a worship master, but here's the thing, you've also got a facilities director who also leads worship sometimes.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: And at the bottom of the job description, everybody's job description, it still says other duties as assigned.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's the bottom line, and everybody just laughs at that because it's that line, other duties as assigned, that sometimes actually swallows the actual role.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Your kids director was hired as a kids director, but now does kids and communications, and nobody updated the title.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody named what they can stop doing.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: They just have extra stuff to do.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: If that sounds familiar, you're in the right place.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about that today, here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: My name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders at Chemistry Staffing.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you're here.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this we're not going to talk today about rewriting every PDF job description that you've got in your drawer or in your filing cabinet or on your computer.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is about what I call the sentence that ate the work.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And most job descriptions have something like this at the very bottom, almost in small print, something like perform other duties as a sign.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you and really, if you're the one doing the hiring, you put it on there so you don't get trapped, right?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was supposed to be the exception to the rule, hey, things change.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: We might have you do some other things.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And if we need you to do some other things, we'll ask you to do other things.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: But over time, that exception became the job or another job.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: The top of the page is a title, the bottom of the page is what they actually do.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And you can see it in two chairs on your team right now: the worship pastor and the building person.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Same person, you hired them to lead worship, and then the facilities guy left, or there was no one to do it.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: So guess what?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: They got the facilities keys.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: They're now locking up on Saturday.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: They still have the worship title, but now they run the building as well.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: And you assign the building to the person that's already there on Saturday, and it just seems to make sense.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Other duties as assigned.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: But the songs still have to happen, and the roof still leaks.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And guess who's getting the voicemail?
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's the person with the worship pastor job description.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Kids ministry is running the same play with a different hat.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Kids director, now doing communications, started with a little bit of communications, but now is the full-bone communications director.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: You hired him for check-in and curriculum and volunteers and parents.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then the communications person left.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: So now your kids person is writing the newsletter and they post the Instagram reel.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: The job description still says children.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: The salary still says children.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: The week says captions and Instagram reels.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody really sat down and said, This is now two jobs.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: You just added stuff on.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Additional responsibilities request.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: They cannot do both at the level that you still expect from the title on the website or on the job description.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: You still expect that they're going to do both, right?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now you didn't dump the building and and the grid on them to be cool cruel, talking about the worship guy.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: You were in a pinch.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it happens.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you asked the person who wouldn't let Sunday fail.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that's decent.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: That makes sense.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: But it's also how a really good hire becomes the leftover work.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: They said yes because they love the church.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: You heard yes as capacity.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can take care of some of the facility stuff for a while.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And capacity is not love.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Love will keep saying yes until the role you hired is a hobby that they do after the real job.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you never changed what you put in their job description, the work changed, the title should have changed as well.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: What they can stop and should have changed as well.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can't expect a full-time children's person to be a full-time children's and a full-time communications person and not have both of those suffer from having one person full-time in both of those.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this is not a math episode.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm not asking you to open the budget tonight and say we need to hire four more people because we've changed job descriptions.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not asking you to do that, but I am asking you to stop pretending that the job description is still true.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: If they run the building, stop introducing them as only the worship pastor.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: If they own communications, stop acting surprised when kids' follow-up slips because it will.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: A title that lies is not humility.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a cover for work that you won't name.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: If the pay stays the same, at least stop adding new things.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: The cruelty is the extra task that you put on top of someone without taking anything off of the task list.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the gut chat.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Sit with one person this week, not a review, just a list.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Three things that they do that are not in the job description or not what you hired them for.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: It might be the building, it might be the newsletter, it's the leftover, it's the other tasks that put at the bottom line of that job description.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Write them down and where you can actually see them, and then pick one that they can stop doing this month.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Not we'll get to it, just stop.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Someone else, maybe a vendor, maybe a volunteer, maybe it's you that takes that off of their plate.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Or the church lives without it for a month and finds out that it was never really the hill that we thought it was.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can't name a stop, you're not managing a role, you're managing a big fat pile.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Other duties as assigned is the sentence you hide behind when that pile grows.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, here's your bottom line for today.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Other duties as assigned might be eating your whole job description.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: You hired a worship pastor, you got a facilities director who also leads worship.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Update the work or name what they can stop.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: I know this is a hard one, but I also know that you actually hired them for a real job, not a leftover pile.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we saw this happen all the time during COVID.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: People doing jobs that weren't their own, and they started and they knew, hey, this is a tough time.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: I gotta chip in, I gotta do it.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: But guess what?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's six years from there, and they're still doing that same job.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Their salary hasn't changed, their job description hasn't changed, their title hasn't changed, their pile has just gotten a lot bigger.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: I know it's tough, but that's why you're listening to get advice on how to make things better.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope that this helps you rethink some of those things.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you're a staff person that's had a lot piled onto you, and you're just, man, you're tired.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: You're almost burned out because there's just more and more things that happen.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: More and more things.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Another person leaves, and something else gets put on your plate, and they put it on your plate because you're a good staff member, you love the church and you're very competent, but you can't continue to do that.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe you need to have a conversation with your supervisor.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a tough one, too, because you don't know how those conversations were gonna go, but maybe you need to have a conversation with your supervisor.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: And say, I love my job, I love my church, I love my community, I love my small group, I love everything about being here.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: However, I've got a lot of stuff on my pile right now, and I don't think I don't feel like I'm doing any of that well.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Most supervisors, most pet most pastors, most bosses in the church are gonna understand that and see what they can do to help you.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And if they don't, there's your sign or a sign.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: I hope this has been helpful for you today.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: You're listening to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, we just started our Healthy Church Staff Assessment.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: I guess it's really called the Church Staff Health Assessment.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's absolutely free.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love for you to take it right now over at churchstaffassessment.com.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's absolutely free.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Your input helps us as we write our report in early 2027 on the state of church staff in America.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it'd really help, would really help me out, be a great favor to me.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: I would love it if you could take that church staff assessment.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you never need to reach out to me for anything, podcast at chemistry staffing.com.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: All right, that's it for today.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Hope you have a great day.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be right back here.