Critical Role

What a critical role is

A critical role (الدور الحرج) is a job whose vacancy, or weak performance in it, has a large effect on the organisation, and which is difficult to fill again quickly. Where the job sits in the organisational structure does not decide whether it is a critical role.

The definition joins two conditions. The first concerns effect: if the job falls vacant, or if the work in it is performed poorly, the consequence for the organisation is large. The second concerns replacement: the job cannot be filled again quickly. A job that meets both conditions is a critical role, whatever its grade and whatever its place in the reporting lines.

A critical role is not necessarily the highest in the structure

Critical, in this sense, is not another word for senior. A critical role is identified by a different test, which asks two questions: what would stop if this role were absent tomorrow, and how long would it take to replace?

The first question looks at the work that depends on the role. The second looks at the time the organisation would spend before the role is filled again. Neither question asks about the title, the grade or the reporting line, so the answer to the test need not follow the organisation chart.

A single technician who runs a system that nobody else knows can, on that test, be more critical than an administrative post for which ready alternatives exist. If the technician is absent, whatever depends on that system has no one else to run it. The administrative post may stand higher in the structure, but there are people ready to take it on, so its absence does not leave the work without someone to carry it.

Three criteria for identifying a critical role

1. The effect of absence: what stops or is delayed, and at what cost.
2. The scarcity of replacement: whether an internal substitute exists, and how long hiring from outside would take.
3. The concentration of knowledge: whether what the role knows is documented, or lives in the head of the person who holds it.

The first criterion asks about two outcomes. Some work stops when the role is absent, and some work continues but is delayed. For either outcome the criterion also asks what it costs, so the effect of absence is stated together with its cost, and not only as a description of the work that is missed.

Two parts make up the second criterion, one inside the organisation and one outside it. Inside, the question is whether a substitute already exists who could take on the role. Outside, the question is how long recruitment would take. That length can be expressed as time to fill, a count of the days from the opening of a requisition for a role until the role is filled.

Where the knowledge of the role is kept is the subject of the third criterion. Where it is documented, it exists in a record that someone other than the holder can consult. Where it lives in the head of the person who holds the role, it exists nowhere else, and it is not in any record that a successor could consult.

Of the three criteria, the third is the one that an organisation can change quickly. The first two are slower to change. The effect of a role’s absence and the scarcity of people who could replace the holder do not move at the pace at which knowledge that was never written down can be documented.

What follows once a critical role is identified

• Documenting what has not been documented. It addresses the third criterion directly.
• Building a replacement through job rotation or job shadowing.
• Including the role in succession planning, with a written plan and not an intention.
• Reviewing the position of the role on pay and on career path. A critical role whose pay is not competitive is an unresolved risk.

Building a replacement responds to the internal part of the second criterion, the question of whether a substitute exists inside the organisation. Job rotation and job shadowing are the two routes named for building that substitute.

Succession planning is the identification of the critical roles in an organisation and the preparation of ready replacements for them before they fall vacant. Including a critical role in it means that the preparation for that role is set out in a written plan. An intention to prepare someone for the role, with nothing written down, does not meet that condition.

The last action concerns the terms attached to the role: its pay and the career path it offers the person who holds it. Where the pay for a critical role is not competitive, that is a risk which remains open for as long as the pay stays where it is.

What to avoid with a list of critical roles

Announcing the list of critical roles can be taken as a classification of people, not of jobs. It can leave those whose roles were not included asking what they are worth.

The safer course is for the list to remain an internal planning tool, and for its effect to appear in actions, not in an announcement: documentation, the preparation of substitutes and reviews of pay.

How a critical role differs from a high potential employee

High potential is a classification that concerns a person and that person’s capacity to grow. A critical role is a classification that concerns a job and the effect of the job’s absence. A critical role may be held by an employee who is not classified as high potential, and there is no contradiction in that.

The difference lies in what each classification is attached to. The high potential classification is attached to the employee and describes what that employee may grow into. The critical role classification is attached to the job and describes the effect on the organisation when that job is vacant or performed poorly, whoever holds it. Capacity for a larger role is one of the two axes of the 9 box grid, which places employees where that capacity crosses their performance in the current role.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.

Related terms

• Succession Planning
• 9 Box Grid
• Acting Assignment
• Job Specialization
• Retention Bonus