The senior most members of the administration are the directors. They make all the important decisions that affect the performance of the company. They are the highest authority in the company and only the positions of CEO, Chairman and President are bigger than the directors. However, they too are directors of the company.
In most hierarchy formats, the company is run by the board of directors. There are a certain criteria that one has to fulfill to be eligible to become the director. This is the senior most position in the company. Each director does not have the same duty as the other. They have many different duties and each director is assigned to a particular task or a department. Their main job is to ensure their assigned duties are done and they have to report to the other directors.
Directors mainly have to make decisions to improve performance. They have the authority to assign duties to anyone in their department. They also have a number of employees like assistants and secretaries assigned to help them with other simple tasks. They only have to focus on administration.
In a public ltd. company, the directors are answerable to the shareholders. The shareholders are the real owners of the company. The directors too are the owners because to be able to become a director, they need to have a certain number of shares. Therefore, they are also owners of the company, but the major parts of the shares are with the shareholders. In the annual general meeting of the company, they have to present the final accounts of the company to the shareholders and inform about any significant news of the company. This is the one of the few important tasks of the director in a public ltd. company.
Directors of private ltd. companies also have similar duties but many of their duties are different from public ltd. company director. Also, the title of director is not necessarily given to people who are a part of the board. In fact, some privately owned companies do not even have a board. They have sole proprietors who are the complete owners of the company. In such companies, some departmental heads are given the title of directors. Their functions are similar to that of a departmental head. Information on these functions is available in the director responsibilities section.
There is another director position that is not permanent in nature; project director. As the title suggests, this position is of a director for a particular project. Companies have projects that carry on for a certain amount of time; therefore, their heads appoint a senior person from the management to be the director of that project. This way, the company heads can fully concentrate on other permanent operations of the company. Once the project is done, the director goes back to his original post. The duties of a project manager are clearly stated in the director responsibilities section.
Directors are probably the most important entity of any company. They have the qualifications and the experience to run a company. That is the main reason why they are so high up in the management. Though, the management does not have any physical work, they have a lot of stressful situations to handle. While, employees are not held responsible for the poor performance of the company, it is the directors who are answerable to the shareholders and owners. Therefore, being in a director position is a responsible job.
The directors are the highest paid employees of a company. They get paid quite an amount as fees. They are also entitled to get stock options. Stock options are shares to the company. The directors also get the best benefits of the company. Therefore, money wise, the directors are in a comfort zone. However, it is not easy becoming the director of the company. It takes a lot of hard work and experience. Therefore, read the director responsibilities section to know all about the director positions.
Here is the list of different types of director job responsibilities: