The Importance of Accurate Job Descriptions

Creating and maintaining effective job descriptions is a highly complicated responsibility borne by the human resources team of a given organization. In my experience, even if employees have the same job title, often their strengths and weaknesses will make it so within their area, they become specialized. This can become complicated if unaddressed as two people who were hired for the same job could end up having very different day to day responsibilities. As stated by Dr. Michael Kannisto, a director of talent management for a large organization, there are very few organizations that actually have a system in place that supports regular analysis and updates to existing job positions (Tyler, 2018). I have experienced this lack of modernity in job descriptions become problematic first hand at my current place of employment.

I currently hold a position working for a local health center that is undergoing major managerial changes. One of the major negative impacts of unstable leadership is a lack of uniformity amongst guidance from superiors. In a recent instance, there was a young woman hired for a position as a front desk receptionist. She was hired under someone who is currently out-of-office and spent the first few working weeks receiving training from, for lack of a better word, random employees. After this initial training, this new hire felt uncertain about her exact responsibilities, so she reached out to her superiors. Three people took it upon themselves to explain, in their own words, a description of her job. All three gave very different answers. This disorganization and lack of cohesiveness was enough to prompt the new hire to leave the organization, wasting time, pay, and training services. If there were to be an updated job description that all leaders could refer to, this unfortunate series of events would have been avoidable. 

Tyler, K. (2018, April 11). Job worth doing: Update descriptions. SHRM. Retrieved April 28, 2023, from https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/Pages/0113-job-descriptions.aspx