Boost organisational wellbeing and performance by embedding role clarity across all levels of business.

Picture a proactive new hire in your organisation. One of their first projects is to audit and improve a different department’s IT process, a legacy system that’s no longer serving the team. 

They aren’t provided a clear brief – only that the system needs to be refreshed – but they hit the ground running. Two months later, they present a proposal to the department head. However, the department experiences a restructure in between that time, and the proposal is no longer aligned with the leader’s new objectives. 

In another instance, an employee reports to a project supervisor, as well as their direct line manager. They’d like to further develop their skills in a specific area and raise this with both managers. 

Confusion arises over who is responsible for facilitating this growth opportunity, and as a result, the inquiry falls through the cracks.

In both cases, the organisation loses productivity via wasted effort and may have failed to take advantage of opportunities to upskill its talent, with the individuals themselves likely to have experienced stress due to a lack of clear expectations. 

Unfortunately, these aren’t hypothetical scenarios. They’re both real situations I’ve seen in my career. 

Role clarity isn’t only important for wellbeing – it’s also a core driver of performance.

When people lack clarity, they may overcompensate in hours for what they lack in knowledge, burn out faster, or contribute less and/or disengage. When this happens over a protracted period, this might present psychosocial risk to the individual. 

Beyond an exercise in psychosocial risk management, HR practitioners have an opportunity to reframe role clarity as a leadership responsibility that’s integral to wellbeing, employee engagement and performance. 

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Costs of ambiguity

Role clarity encompasses more than having a clear understanding of duties and responsibilities – it stretches along multiple points of the employee experience. 

Ambiguity can manifest around day-to-day tasks, as well as confusion around organisational elements such as how an individual’s work fits into the bigger picture, how performance is evaluated and how their role intersects with other roles. 

Low role clarity may lead to other unproductive behaviours such as task switching and work duplication when multiple roles overlap. 

On the extreme end, it can result in competing behaviours such as gatekeeping, and potentially cause conflict (another psychosocial hazard).

Poor role clarity also constitutes a common stressor for burnout. A 2023 Leaders Lab survey of more than 1000 Australian workers found almost all (96 per cent) of those who felt burnt out lacked clarity in their role.

Meanwhile, other psychosocial risk factors such as low job control were only an issue for 67 per cent of burnt-out workers, and 64 per cent grappled with unachievable job demands. 

“Changes in processes, technologies and systems often shift priorities. If these aren’t communicated, employees may continue to complete tasks to unproductive ends.” – Anna Dawson, organisational psychologist

3 strategies to recover clarity

Role clarity can’t be a one-and-done task relegated to the onboarding process. 

HR has a critical role to play in supporting leaders and managers to establish the foundational elements of a psychologically safe environment for employees to speak up about their concerns. 

Here are three actions leaders can take to increase role clarity across an organisation:

1. Connect the dots

When employees understand how their role explicitly ladders up to organisational strategies, it can offer a deeper sense of purpose and improve engagement levels. 

Rather than rigid job descriptions, I like to co-design action plans, or work plans, with employees to establish mutual expectations around responsibilities and accountability. These plans cover an individual’s tasks and responsibilities as a job description might, and also include key deliverables, resources and stretch opportunities.

These plans offer a clear roadmap for employees to succeed, while enabling flexibility as work evolves and career development goals change.

2. Ongoing touchpoints

Create sustainable feedback systems to ensure clear, regular communication around workloads and priorities.

While managers need to own the outcomes of this process, HR can equip managers with coaching tools to encourage a two-way dialogue. 

Below is a framework I use to identify possible misalignment. In other words, to gain clarity, you need to fill in the GAPS:

• Goals: What are the broader team goals, as well as your individual goals?
• Actions: What actions are needed to achieve these goals and what actions are you currently focusing on?
• Promote: Are we promoting proactive communication and feedback?
• Stakeholders: Who are the stakeholders you need to work with? 

I encourage managers to take a consultative approach. Co-designing connection and feedback delivery structures provides employees with an increased sense of control over their work. 

3. Open leadership

Encourage leaders to role-model open behaviours with their workforce. A supportive leadership style can help build trust among the workforce, breaking down assumptions or fear that hold employees back from seeking clarity.

In addition to training leaders, HR practitioners need to pay attention to their change strategies, as poorly managed organisational change is another psychosocial hazard that frequently interacts with role clarity. 

Changes in processes, technologies and systems often shift priorities. If these aren’t communicated, employees may continue to complete tasks to unproductive ends. 

By building clarity throughout the entire employee lifecycle, employees are positioned to perform at their best to benefit both organisational performance and health. 

This article first appeared in the June-July 2025 edition of HRM Magazine.

Anna Dawson is an organisational psychologist with expertise in psychological health and safety, employee experience and workplace wellbeing. She has led projects to build leaders’ capability to foster healthy work cultures and elevate the employee experience by designing safe work.