Do They Know What You Want? - Job Descriptions and How to Make
Them Work
"They know what I want. We don't need to write it down." is
often the response when the issue of the dreaded job description
comes up. Most of the time, when asked, the poor employee is
left guessing as to what the boss wants.
A survey showed that the response to the question "Do you know
what is expected of you in your job?" 3% didn't know, 12% were
unsure, 44% were fairly sure and only 41% knew exactly. This
means 59% didn't know exactly what the boss wanted.
Job descriptions have acquired a less than favourable
reputation, and for very good reason. They have tended to be
long and full of activity based detail. Consequently they become
out of date very quickly and quite useless.
However, a well written, results based job description can be
useful for recruitment, performance management, identifying
training needs and determining pay levels. On top of this, an
employment contract without a related job description is taking
an unnecessary risk.
So, how can we have something meaningful, useful, short, and
that doesn't require a huge administrative effort to prepare and
maintain?
Our approach to this is to keep it simple. Here are the key
steps.
Primary Objective - This is one or two sentences that give the
overall reason for the job. eg To manage the plant within an
agreed budget to produce high quality products which meet sales
forecasts.
Key Result Areas (KRA's)- There may be up to five or six of
these. Anymore than this number and you are probably just
listing tasks. These are the end results of why we are
performing activities. Keep on asking "why" and eventually you
should arrive at a useful end result. If not, why are you
performing that task? Eg Resourcing: Ensure plant is resourced
to meet manufacturing schedule in terms of raw materials,
equipment and people.
Grouping KRA's under headings sometimes helps in the writing. eg
Planning, Operations, Quality, Reporting, Staff Development.
Measures - We need to have specific measures in place to ensure
there are no arguments as to whether the results have been
achieved or not. Eg Downtime due to shortage of resources is
less than 2%. If there is a planning element in the job, the
measure may be to gain agreement to the plan from all
stakeholders. The next measure may then be to implement the plan
in line with the criteria identified.
Typical qualifications and experience - This section gives an
indication of the background required to carry out the job. It
does not have to be the background of the current job holder.
Other relevant information - This area can take care of other
elements relevant to the job such as shift work, travel or
dealing with certain types or people.
With these areas carefully completed you should have a useful
document that is only one or two pages long.
If it is written by the jobholder, they will have some ownership
of it and it is more likely to get used.
If the KRA's are broad they will not become out of date too
often and the measures should make them meaningful.
Specific goals for the year can be extracted from each KRA for
performance management and development. Where there are
anticipated resource or development needs to meet the goals
these can be addressed.
If you would like an example of a job description in this
format, you can download one free of charge from the website
shown below with the author's details.
If you want to train your employees to write their own job
descriptions, and this is the best way of achieving a long term
outcome, a complete program is also available from the same
website.