The jobs nobody owns: how to turn unassigned work into a real role

Ask a business owner which tasks in their business don’t belong to anyone and most can answer straight away. The stock that needs rotating. The paperwork that piles up. The prep that gets done badly at four o’clock because someone finally has ten spare minutes.

These tasks aren’t in anyone’s job description. They get absorbed by whoever’s nearest, which usually means they’re done late, done poorly, or not done at all.

What it’s actually costing the business

The obvious cost is the work itself. The bigger cost is who’s doing it.

When a qualified tradesperson spends an hour a day tidying the yard and chasing invoices, you’re paying trade rates for admin. When your chef spends two hours a morning on prep, that’s two hours not spent on the work you hired them for. Multiply that across a team and the numbers get uncomfortable.

There’s also the drag on everyone else. Work that belongs to nobody creates small daily frictions. Something’s run out. A form didn’t go in. Someone spends fifteen minutes looking for a thing that should have been put away. None of it shows up in your reporting, but your team feels it every day.

Try this for a fortnight

Keep a list. Every time someone in your business does something that isn’t in their job description, write it down. Ask your team to do the same, and be clear you’re not checking up on them.

After two weeks, group what you’ve collected. Most employers find between fifteen and twenty-five hours a week of unassigned work sitting in the same handful of areas. Preparation. Cleaning and resetting. Stock and supplies. Basic admin and data entry.

That’s not a list of annoyances. That’s a job.

Building a role out of what’s already there

The formal name for this is job carving, and it’s common in disability employment, but there’s nothing specialised about it. You’re taking work you’re already paying for at the wrong rate and giving it to someone whose job it is.

Two things tend to surprise employers who do this. The first is that the tasks get done properly for the first time, because someone owns them. The second is that these roles hold onto people. A job built around consistent, well-defined work suits candidates who want exactly that, rather than someone treating the role as a stepping stone to somewhere else. You’re not competing with their plans to leave.

It also opens your hiring to people you might not have reached otherwise. Plenty of capable, reliable candidates get filtered out of standard recruitment because their CV has gaps, or their experience doesn’t map neatly onto a job ad, or they need set hours. A carved role often fits them precisely, and you get the benefit of someone who wants the work rather than tolerating it.

Getting help with job carving

CoAct Connect works with employers to do exactly this. Our employment consultants will walk your site, look at how work actually flows, and help you identify tasks that could form a role. Through Workforce Australia and Inclusive Employment Australia, we then match you with candidates suited to it, at no cost to your business.

If you think there’s a job hiding in your business, get in touch with our team.