05/ 18/ 2006
by Charles R. McConnell
Do most businesses need job descriptions? Are many job descriptions cumbersome documents that have little practical value because they're long and complicated? Is it possible to generate job descriptions that are lean, concise, and useful?
The answer to all three questions is a resounding, yes. Businesses that have more than a few workers employed in several different positions need job descriptions. Yet, too many job descriptions are impractical because business owners have tried to make them suitable for every conceivable need. It’s possible, however, to generate lean, practical job descriptions that fully serve their purpose.
One academic source counts more than 100 management uses for job descriptions. This same source describes most job descriptions as simplistic and lacking detail and suggests that the number of circumstances and requirements that must be covered make it impossible to write one shorter than seven or eight pages. At the other extreme, Robert Townsend, author of Up the Organization (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1970, updated as Further Up the Organization, Knopf, 1984), concedes that job descriptions are suitable for jobs where turnover is high and work is repetitive, but are “insane” for jobs requiring the exercise of judgment.
Still, there are sound reasons for having job descriptions. To be practical, though, a job description shouldn't account for every task that might ever be done or try to fulfill every obscure need that could arise. Trying to do so will only make it so long and complex that it’s too clumsy for any practical use.
We might be able to come up with most of the 100 uses of a job description while brainstorming. However, it’s doubtful that many first-line supervisors and middle managers could come up with as many as 10 of those uses offhand. Most companies use job descriptions for the following reasons:
- Job analysis and classification, primarily setting pay level or grade and determining exempt or nonexempt status
- Recruiting, developing advertising and conducting preliminary screening of applicants
- Selecting employees, advising applicants of a job’s contents and focusing interview questions
- Orientation and training
- Performance evaluation
Although content can vary according to the nature of the business and the kinds of work done, the lean, practical job description might include:
- Heading information : job title, pay grade or range, department, reporting relationship (by position, not individual), designation of hours or shifts and likelihood of overtime or weekend work
- Summary statement of the job: condensed responsibilities and overall description of key tasks and their purpose; relationships with customers, coworkers and others and results expected of incumbent employees
- Qualifications: the education and experience necessary for entry into this job, often expressed as a two-level requirement, including minimum acceptable and desired education and experience
- Special demands: any extraordinary conditions applicable to this position (for example, heavy lifting, exposure to temperature extremes, prolonged standing, etc.)
- Job duties and responsibilities
Many job descriptions go overboard in describing duties and responsibilities. You don't need to capture everything an employee is likely to encounter on the job (unless the person performs the same task over and over, as on an automated assembly line). Only two features of job responsibility are important: identifying tasks that comprise about 90 to 95 percent of the work done and listing tasks in order of the time consumed (or, sometimes, in order of the importance) of each. The first task listed should be most important or time-consuming one, and so on. Using a single sentence description, you can cover 90 to 95 percent or more of most tasks and responsibilities in 10 or 12 statements.
When a job description considers how much of each task must be done and how well it should be done, it can directly support performance evaluations. The strongest and fairest evaluations are based on how well an employee performs duties outlined in a job description.
