Being on the same page as your employees about what it means to do a ‘good job’ can help set your relationship up for success.
Establishing job expectations for employees is one way to support good working relationships with your employees. A job description is important, but so is setting and communicating your expectations for the job.
Setting and sharing job expectations can:
- support conversations about what’s going well and what might need to be improved
- help you manage any employees who aren’t working at the expected standard
- help employees develop the skills they need for the job, and
- support decisions to promote people.
An effective way to support the working relationship with your employee involves:
- Setting job expectations — these are your expectations of how well the employee should be performing their work, including to what standard or level
- Sharing your job expectations with the employee.
- Deciding how you will check that your employee is meeting expectations.
- Applying those expectations when reviewing your employee’s work.
1. Set your job expectations
Job expectations are your benchmark for what you consider to be ‘a good job’. It is what you, as an employer or manager, would be satisfied with.
Setting job expectations means focusing on what a ‘good job’ would look like. You can focus on things like:
- what outcomes you expect from the job — for example, that the finished project results in greater brand awareness, new audiences or ticket sales
- to what standard you would like the work performed — for example, that a design is to meet particular specifications for a client order
- how you would like the job performed — for example, that the person is to work collaboratively with others, or is to follow a certain procedure that you have explained to them.
Being clear on your expectations for the job will help you to know whether someone is doing ‘a good job’.
When setting job expectations:
Framing expectations: what’s needed, realistic and fair
When setting job expectations, they should be framed around:
- what you need as a business or organisation, and
- what is realistic and fair for an employee to achieve.
Make them practical
It is important that your job expectations can be translated into practical action for the employee.
Job expectations that are vague or purely aspirational are unlikely to help the employee or support the outcomes you want as an organisation.
Consider diverse needs and special circumstances
In setting job expectations, it is important to consider any special circumstances or diverse needs of the employee.
For example, under disability discrimination law, employers can be required to make reasonable adjustments to the job so a person with a disability can perform it. Learn more about reasonable adjustments.
Consider cultural safety
Cultural safety means creating environments where people feel respected and safe to participate without pressure to minimise or hide their identity, culture or lived experience.
In setting job expectations, it’s important to consider that people may experience work differently and that barriers to participation may exist.
Learn more about creating a culturally safe workplace and other respect and inclusion essentials.
How you set job expectations, and what expectations you set, are likely to be influenced by a range of factors, including:
- how big or small your business is and what resources you have in managing the expectations you set
- the nature of the work or role the employee is engaged in — your expectations may reflect the level of seniority of the role, or the impact on your organisation if the role was performed successfully or not
- what obligations you have to others — for example, to clients, funding partners or members of the public that may require job expectations to be specific and regularly enforced.
In practice:
Setting job expectations in a small business
Suzie runs a small charitable business providing art therapy classes at her local community youth centre. Suzie wants to grow her business and provide new and different types of art therapy classes to reach people of different age groups in the community. She decides to hire an employee in a fundraising role to help make this happen.
Suzie thinks about the tasks she would like the employee to do and prepares a job description.
She then thinks about her expectations of how she would like someone to do the job. She then thinks about what her business needs, and what is fair and reasonable to expect of a person in this job.
She sets the following job expectations:
- To securing two new fundraising partners each month
- To engage with potential fundraising partners directly (not just through intermediaries)
- To independently resolve problems with any fundraising campaign
- To provide Suzie with weekly updates on fundraising progress
Setting job expectations for a specialised role
Ishan runs a media production business. Ishan understands that good financial management is critical for the company to grow sustainably but he doesn’t have the specialist knowledge of a finance manager.
He employs a finance manager to manage the finances of the company and to support the company’s growth.
After preparing a job description for the role, Ishan sets job expectations that reflect the importance of the role and the level of specialist skill required.
He sets the following job expectations:
- To meet with him weekly to discuss weekly sales and revenue
- To reduce the total number of company debtors
- To produce financial information and records that can be audited by financial accounting standards
- To manage investments that support a financial return for the company.
Turning job expectations into performance criteria
You can use your job expectations as the basis for establishing performance criteria.
Performance criteria is generally a set of standards, or benchmarks, that help you determine whether an employee is working to your expectations.
Effective performance criteria lets you objectively observe or measure how an employee is going in their job.
Setting performance criteria can help you:
- know what an employee is doing well in their job
- know where they might need to improve, and
- have conversations with these things.
Using performance criteria to objectively measure how an employee is going can also help you make unbiased decisions about promoting, recognising and rewarding employees.
Like job expectations, performance criteria can be framed around indicators of what a ‘good job’ looks like. These indicators are sometimes called ‘key performance indicators’ or ‘success indicators’. Performance indicators can be useful for organisations that:
- may not have direct or visible supervision of all work performed
- want a fair and standardised approach to job expectations for groups of employees (for example, where a group of employees perform the same or similar work)
- provide jobs that require a level of independent decision-making, including professional or creative judgement
- want the job linked to the success of the organisation or business.
When developing performance criteria, it is useful to think about:
- the purpose of the job — you may already have thought about this coming up with their job description. Learn more about how to prepare a job description.
- how the purpose of the job translates into particular job tasks
- how those tasks can be measured or observed to support the job’s purpose.
In practice:
Formalising job expectations into performance criteria
The job expectations of an events co-ordinator in a live music promotional business could be formalised into the performance criteria below.
The column marked Indicator sets out the expectation and helps you objectively assess whether the employee is meeting the expectation.
| Purpose | Task | Indicator |
|---|---|---|
| Help performances attract new audiences | Organise and schedule live performances for musical acts being promoted | At least 2 new venues in 2 different new cities |
| Contribute to safe and comfortable audience experiences | Select appropriate venues for live performance | All venues have suitable amenities for each event, including emergency evacuation procedures |
Recording job expectations
Whatever your approach may be to setting job expectations, we recommend that you write your job expectations down.
Putting job expectations in writing:
- can help keep your work standards consistent – over time and across employees
- can reduce the risk of misunderstandings with your employees about your expectations, and
- are a good reference point for conversations with your employee about their work.
Writing down what you expect from a job can also help with business planning and help shape your professional relationship with your employee.
You can include your written job expectations in a written job description, if you want to. Or you can discuss job expectations separately with your employee and keep a separate record that you have done that. Or you can do both.
Choose the approach that is right for your organisation and the employee’s job.
When documenting really matters
Some work tasks may have to meet certain standards by law. For example, certain quality standards or a standard product specification.
Documenting these standards for your employees can help you and your employee meet these legal obligations.
Work standards required for work health and safety reasons should always be documented.
Not sure where to start? Try going back to your employee’s job description. A job description sets out what an employee needs to do for the job they are employed in. The job expectations describe how well they need to do it.
If you haven’t already got a job description for your employee, learn how to prepare a job description.
2. Share your expectations with your employee
It’s important to share your job expectations, as well as any performance criteria, with your employee.
Your relationship is much more likely to succeed if your employee knows what you expect of them and how their work will be viewed.
Transparency can also give employees confidence that you will be objective when you are assessing their work.
How you share your job expectations with employees will be based on what works for your business, the employee and the kind of work you have engaged them to do. You can give them a copy, and also take the time to explain the expectations and criteria in training, in a meeting or by having a conversation.
Remember that if you are sharing job expectations as part of work health and safety (WHS) requirements, you need to keep a record that you have done so.
In practice:
Sharing job expectations at a large creative arts organisation with professional staff
A large creative arts organisation provides each employee with a document of what ‘success looks like’ in their role when they start working for the organisation.
This document is attached to the job description for each role.
The organisation also has key performance indicators that identify:
- the expected work outcomes and
- the type of data the organisation will look for.
The organisation makes sure that employees have an opportunity to ask questions about the performance indicators to make sure they understand what the organisation expects of them.
Sharing job expectations at a small performing arts centre
A small performing arts centre provides an in-person training and induction session for new theatre ushers who also work behind the bar.
As part of the session, the arts centre gives employees a written checklist that they need to follow when operating the bar.
The arts centre tells the employees what it its expectations about having positive interactions with patrons and audience members – but also about what to do if patrons complain or display disrespect or aggression.
This training also forms part of the arts centre’s obligation to provide a safe workplace. The centre makes sure it:
- documents the instructions given to the employees
- keeps a record that it has provided this training to new staff.
The arts centre makes sure that employees have an opportunity to ask questions and raise concerns during the induction.
3. Know how you will check that expectations are being met
Once you’re clear about job expectations and you have shared them with your employee, you’ll need to think about how you will check that the employee is meeting them.
You can do this in different ways. Some examples include by:
- Directly observing or supervising the employee
- Regularly catching up with the employee about their work and progress
- Reviewing data about their work outcomes, such as through weekly or monthly reports, or information you collect, e.g. sales data, ticket sales, patron numbers
- Providing opportunities for patrons, customers or other workers to give feedback
- Applying a performance development framework that includes periodically discussing how an employee is working against the job’s performance criteria or ‘success indicators’.
What you do will depend on:
- what is feasible for the size and nature of your organisation and
- what you have engaged the employee to do.
For example:
- Where there is close supervision: The owner of a creative micro-business may be able to directly observe what their employee is doing because they work closely alongside each other each day. The owner may be able to know whether an employee is meeting job expectations by their direct and ongoing observations of the employee’s work.
- Employees working remotely: An organisation with employees working remotely may rely on organisational data and completion of expected job outcomes during their regular check-in meetings where they discuss work progress and how the employee us going.
- Standardised approach for consistency and fairness: A senior people manager may conduct six-monthly meetings with an employee as part of the organisation’s performance development process. These are structured meetings to discuss how the employee is tracking against formal performance indicators for their job. The indicators tell the organisation how the employee is using their professional skills in practice. The employee is given the opportunity to share information that shows they are satisfying those indicators. The use of indicators and a structured process offers fairness and consistency across groups of employees in the organisation.
Employees should know how their work will be reviewed, and how you will check that they are meeting expectations. It’s important that you communicate your chosen approach with your employees.
4. Apply job expectations in practice
The next step is to think about how you will apply your expectations in practice.
You might:
- give feedback based on expectations
- use job expectations to proactively identify learning opportunities to further develop your employee
- come up with an improvement plan if you identify that an employee us underperforming.
Your organisations may decide to:
- implement a structured and documented process for applying job expectations (including formal performance criteria) to how employees are going
- take a less formal approach, if you think that will be more effective and relevant to the type of working arrangement.
Explore related:
Supporting good working relationships with employees
There are things your creative business or organisation can do to make it easier for employees to do their job well. Good planning and clear communication can help set your employees up for success and support a relationship that works for everyone.
How to: Apply job expectations in practice
Once job expectations have been established for employees, there are a number of ways your business or organisation can apply them in practice — and in ways that positively supports your employees to perform.
How to: Have difficult conversations at work
Difficult conversations are rarely comfortable — but if you manage people, knowing how to have them is an important part of maintaining healthy and productive working relationships.
