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My Experiences and Ideas Associated with Job Descriptions
At the company I work for adding to or deleting context on a current job description is painful. It has to go through layers of approval for the most simple change. I know that deters managers from even pursing this process. This can easily put a team in the predicament of being designated in updating the description resulting in the outdated ones being “relegated to dusty three-ring binders or long-unopened test documents.” (Tyler, 1)
One of my employer’s favorite lines in EVERY job description is “other duties as assigned”. They use this as a way to get people to do what they need at the time, but not necessarily add it to anything formal. While I am a firm believer in jumping in and assisting wherever I see a need I have received much feedback from others that this rubs them the wrong way and is used to get people to take on the duties of others that aren’t excelling at their assignments.
An additional pain point is that many times those that don’t do the job they are writing the description for are writing the job description. This seems backwards. Feedback from frontline team members about what they do and the reality of their day as well as if other things could be added in a collaborative way or possibly some duties should be moved elsewhere would be advantageous. We need to adapt to the times and the new generation. They want to be heard and instead of keeping “hiring practices that are haphazard at best and ineffective at worst” it would be great to flip the script! (Groysberg, et al., 2)
References:
Groysberg, B., Nohria, N., & Fernandez-Araoz, C. (2009) The Definitive Guide to Recruiting in Good Times and Bad.
Tyler, K. (2013) Job Worth Doing: Update Descriptions