MGMT 453 – Week 4

If you’ve ever scrolled through a job posting site like LinkedIn or Indeed, chances are you’ve seen a variety of job descriptions – freshly updated, highly detailed ones and vague, uninformative ones. Creating a useful job description can be a challenging task because the nature of most jobs is that they are highly adaptive and constantly changing and evolving. Further, many other facets of employment, such as recruitment and training, compensation, performance goals, and benchmarks, all stem from the job description, so its importance is not to be overlooked (Tyler, 2013).

One of the biggest challenges in creating job descriptions is maintaining and updating them. If your company’s job descriptions are out of date, they will be useless in recruitment, performance management, and evaluating compensation. HR professionals recommend that job descriptions be updated at least annually with performance reviews, but if the nature of the job is changing more rapidly, the description ought to be updated more frequently as well (Tyler, 2013). If job descriptions are not updated for accuracy, companies may experience inefficiencies due to lack of planning or even face legal implications for lack of clarity in essential functions. In order to ensure the accuracy and comprehension of a job description, many individuals should be involved in the process. Employees should provide input on their daily tasks, essential functions, and job responsibilities because they have the most knowledge about the job itself, managers should keep informal descriptions up to date, and HR professionals should be in charge of facilitating the job analysis and formalizing the job descriptions (Tyler, 2013).

While creating job descriptions may seem like a hassle, there are risks and challenges that come with having an outdated job description or no job description at all. Without an effective job description, it is difficult for an employee to understand what is expected of them on the job, and it becomes difficult for managers to provide effective feedback (Brannen, 2016). Additionally, they help justify an employee’s exempt status, ensure reasonable accommodations are being provided for disabled workers, and help facilitate communication for performance evaluations between managers and employees (Brannen, 2016). Finally, a vague or nonexistent job description may sway potential candidates from applying because they are unaware of the skills or abilities necessary or the essential functions of the job.

References

Tyler, K. (2013). Job Worth Doing: Update Descriptions. [Online]. Available at: https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/Pages/0113-job-descriptions.aspx

Brannen, A. (2016). Why You Should Have Job Descriptions. [Online]. Available at: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/pages/why-you-should-have-job-descriptions.aspx