Developing and maintaining job descriptions is integral to defining an evolving job role within a company. Ensuring that job descriptions are easily understood and contain an accurate explanation of the line of work being depicted is also part of maintaining job descriptions. According to the article “Job Worth Doing: Update Descriptions”, “If [a company has] an up-to-date job description, you can use it for recruiting, performance management, and compensation.” (Tyler). Not only is it useful to have job descriptions for ensuring that a company’s employees are knowledgeable about their responsibilities, but it is also used to be utilized as a general business tool. Something that could help companies with developing and maintaining job descriptions would be viewing it as a vital tool for pushing the company forward. Using job descriptions as an integral piece of job marketing and a project performance management tool will incentivize companies to keep job descriptions up to date.
Another way to overcome some of the struggles related to developing and maintaining job descriptions is having quarterly touch-base meetings with employees and supervisors to evaluate any position-related task differentiation. Ensuring that there is an open and frequent line of communication about any changes in task operations or levels of responsibilities for a position is important for a company to stay on top of specific role responsibilities. Also, supervisors and experienced employees are able to collaborate on identifying what tasks deem as appropriate or inappropriate for the position at hand. At the end of the day, feedback from experienced employees can improve specific role efficiencies and the quality of work being done by the workers.
By Zach Crawford
Work Cited
Tyler, Kathryn. “Job Worth Doing: Update Descriptions.” SHRM, SHRM, 11 Apr. 2018, https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/Pages/0113-job-descriptions.aspx.
