After this week’s lectures and readings pertaining to job analysis and workforce planning, I’ve taken a moment to reflect on a few positions I’ve held. I was employed during college for a company(about 30 people) in the refurbished medical imaging industry. I initially was hired in as a receptionist. As I recall, I was given the run of the mill standard job description for this type of position. After 9 months, I moved positions within the company into a newly defined role as a Sourcing Specialist. As I became more experienced, I also took on additional responsibilities such as training new hires and partnering with the Purchasing Manager in negotiations. I enjoyed the added complexity and challenge of these new tasks, and can relate to what was mentioned in the lecture about job redesigning as a way to decrease boredom. I think the main challenge in keeping each job description current for this company, was the rapid growth it experienced. When I began at the company it had one HR Manager, after 5 years, it had quadrupled in size and had developed more of an HR department of sorts. As mentioned in Job worth doing: Update descriptions, even in growth a company should not put the task of keeping job descriptions current by the wayside. By not keeping the job descriptions current, the company increased its risk of potential lawsuits, probably didn’t have as high performance and efficiency, and also, may have had increased employee turnover due to lack of proper compensation or raises (Tyler, 2018).
In a different experience, I was hired into a very small business that had its office out of the owner’s home. It was the owner and basically a team of six men for a landscape business. I was hired to take over some of the office work that the owner was finding he didn’t have as much time for due to the demand of appointments, landscape designs, quotes, and helping run the teams. I was hired with a job title as an Administrator and no clear job description, as this position was becoming something as I learned the role. Over time, as I learned the business, the owner’s preferences, and the daily tasks needed to keep the office running, I basically wrote my own job description. I reviewed it with the owner, and we revised it together. This allowed us to define my role, discuss expectations together and really get a better view of the tasks needed on a daily basis. In addition to this, I also wrote job descriptions for the team leaders, as a way to bring clarity to their role and help us to work more cohesively as a team. As time went by, I began designing, quoting, and selling landscape designs in addition to my Administrator role. This led to a significant raise and opportunity to earn commissions. Thankfully, I had a positive experience stepping into an unclear and undefined role, this was probably due to the fact that I had an established personal relationship with the owner and his family. However, I can see how confusing it could be to be hired into a position without clearly defined tasks or entering into a position where tasks are very different due to an outdated job description. I experienced firsthand that everybody has a role in creating a job description and how keeping them current can help increase performance and efficiency for a company(Tyler, 2018).
Tyler, K. (2018, April 11). Job worth doing: Update descriptions. SHRM. Retrieved April 22, 2022, from https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/Pages/0113-job-descriptions.aspx
