Daniel Rose’s top five tips for effective Job Descriptions

Devel­op­ing posi­tion descrip­tions is never an easy task. Doing it cor­rectly involves research, nego­ti­a­tion, organ­i­sa­tional knowl­edge and care­ful plan­ning. If you break it down into steps, how­ever, it becomes much more man­age­able, and your results will be improved.

To help make the process eas­ier, I’ve made a list of my top five tips for cre­at­ing effec­tive posi­tion descriptions.

1. Com­mu­ni­cate to staff

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is absolutely crit­i­cal. Before any­thing else, it’s essen­tial to com­mu­ni­cate with staff. This applies whether you are review­ing all posi­tion descrip­tions within an organ­i­sa­tion, or a sin­gle position.

Cre­ate a clear and hon­est line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Inform them why, when and how the descrip­tion is to be reviewed. Keep the com­mu­ni­ca­tion up through­out the process, both ways. This ensures that employ­ees have a feel­ing of own­er­ship over the new descrip­tions. With­out this line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, you’ll have trou­ble even gain­ing a basic under­stand­ing what the posi­tion does.

2. Deter­mine roles

Under­stand who is respon­si­ble for each part of the process. Usu­ally the human resources func­tion of organ­i­sa­tions will coor­di­nate the entire process. How­ever, a large amount of the respon­si­bil­ity must fall to line and mid­dle man­agers, who have spe­cific tech­ni­cal and con­cep­tual knowl­edge of the tasks performed.

Often, though, pro­fes­sion­als need to be engaged to ensure the descrip­tions are writ­ten and recorded in a method that is con­sis­tent. This assists in things like job eval­u­a­tion, where it becomes dif­fi­cult if word­ing varies across the organ­i­sa­tion. Com­mu­ni­cate with the rel­e­vant par­ties, and record the responsibilities.

3. Gather information

A large por­tion of the process of devel­op­ing a posi­tion descrip­tion involves gath­er­ing a much infor­ma­tion about the posi­tion as pos­si­ble. This is nec­es­sary to gain a full insight into what the posi­tion does.

Don’t fall into the trap of writ­ing a posi­tion with­out gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion from man­agers, incum­bents and peers first. You may think you know the posi­tion well, but you prob­a­bly don’t know it any­where near as well as you think.

Con­sider all the options for gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion. There are pre­vi­ous descrip­tions, other work doc­u­men­ta­tion and work prod­uct, in addi­tion to inter­view­ing staff involved with that func­tion. Don’t limit your­self to one area.

4. Start at the end

When it’s time to begin writ­ing your descrip­tion, always start with the actual deliv­er­ables. What must this posi­tion actu­ally deliver for the organ­i­sa­tion? What are they account­able for, and what does good per­for­mance look like?

Once you’ve got the objec­tives and work tasks defined, you’ll be bet­ter able to define the lev­els of expe­ri­ence, knowl­edge and skills required. It’s very likely you’ll have a much bet­ter under­stand­ing of the qual­i­fi­ca­tions needed doing it in this order.

If you choose to start with expe­ri­ence and qual­i­fi­ca­tions first, the result­ing posi­tion descrip­tion will be mis­matched. How can you know what expe­ri­ence you need if you don’t under­stand the work tasks?

5. Review and update

Per­haps the area over­looked most often is the review and update of posi­tion descrip­tions. An organ­i­sa­tion isn’t set in stone. Jobs and tasks change, and the descrip­tions need to change too.

Set a sched­ule for review, and stick to it. Per­haps it’s help­ful to review posi­tion descrip­tions dur­ing your annual per­for­mance review process. It doesn’t mat­ter when, as long as you do it.

Do you have tips for cre­at­ing effec­tive job descrip­tions? Post a com­ment and let us know!