The definition of a job description is “a formal account of an employee’s responsibilities.” The main purpose of a job description is to document essential job functions and the skills, knowledge, abilities, and other characteristics needed for satisfactory performance of the job. Having a job description is extremely important because the employee and even the employer know what duties they have working in their position.

A couple challenges with job descriptions could be how often does the job description is reviewed and updated. Jobs might change and they need to update the job description to make sure it is up to date. In the job description it talks about how everyone has a role, but responsibilities do/could overlap with other jobs. Another challenge is that if you don’t have job descriptions people can be confused on what responsibilities are theirs and what are others. We also learned this in our special decision this week and people might start saying “this isn’t my job,” when it could or couldn’t be there responsibility.

I personally have been in a situation at my past job that they didn’t update my job description. I was a seasonal worker that was doing traffic work. At first, I was doing everything in my description, but towards the end I was doing an actual person’s job. I didn’t mind but I was getting paid a seasonal worker when I was doing responsibilities of an actual city worker. I was doing these responsibilities for about 2 months and I started to get upset because I was doing more work that wasn’t apart of my description. I didn’t say anything because I was scared, and I was learning extra information that most people don’t the opportunity to do.