Companies are losing money by neglecting a task that is fundamental to almost every aspect of HR. Is it time to review how your organisation handles the creation of position descriptions?
Companies are losing money by neglecting a task that is fundamental to almost every aspect of HR. Is it time to review how your organisation handles the creation of position descriptions?
With the modern workplace in a state of constant disruption, there is an increased need for clear and concise HR policies and procedures.
Employers need to ensure that all employees are aware of their roles and accompanying responsibilities in the workplace to facilitate a smooth-running and productive environment. A key but often overlooked part of this is ensuring that each employee has a clear position description (PD) with their tasks clearly communicated to them from the commencement of their employment.
Yet while companies are adept at building business cases for other areas of operation, the PD is often thought about – and documented – in a much less rigorous way. The resulting poor-quality PDs can lead to problems right through the employee life cycle, leading to:
“In a nutshell, poorly written PDs don’t deliver what the business needs. They make managers’ jobs harder,” says John Egan, founder of Workforce & Governance and Egan Associates.
With so many organisations professing that their people are their greatest asset, Egan says it is inconceivable to see so little care go into role design. He adds that this can also be put down to the way organisations view writing PDs as an administrative task, as opposed to a business case for a significant spend.
Clearly, it’s time for a rethink.
What goes wrong?
Paul Adams, senior associate at Workforce & Governance, says employers typically go wrong in three key areas when it comes to job descriptions:
Indeed, if not ‘nipped in the bud’ there’s a danger of poorly written PDs being copied from the same template (or being generated fresh each time) and then spreading across the organisation. Adams sees this “all the time” and suggests that often the first thought a manager has when they need to write a PD is ‘where can I find a PD that I can copy?’ “Copying a poor PD virally reproduces it, with repeated copying spreading the damage through the organisation, infecting more and more roles and their incumbents,” Adams says.
Another misconception is that the PD is only useful during the recruiting and onboarding stage of an employee’s life cycle with a company. In fact, for most roles a PD should be an ongoing statement of how the role contributes to the organisation at a fundamental level.
“It should outline expectations across the spectrum, including leadership, planning, financial, governance, customer and other stakeholder relationships,” says Adams. “It can provide useful links to strategy and major programs, such as how the role will contribute to transformation, including cultural change.”
Together with performance plans, it can also provide ongoing clarity of purpose between managers and employees, as well as a reference for performance reviews.
“The ripple effect of a well-written PD can be felt throughout the entire employee life cycle, from recruitment, engagement, and employee development to better relationships, teamwork and effectiveness in the role,” says Adams.
Steps to improvement
What steps can be taken to ensure PDs are created in a more effective manner? Firstly Egan suggests that organisations must stop viewing PD writing as an administrative task that line managers simply outsource. “Pitch it as a business case to justify the creation of a role that will entail significant expenditure,” he says. “That should ensure it is treated more seriously.”
Managers also need to be made aware of the benefits they will see from an effective job design process. “Help them understand how it will make their roles easier by improving hiring decisions, clarifying relationships and expectations, enabling clearer development paths and authorities, reducing role overlap, ensuring accurate grading of roles and boosting staff effectiveness and engagement,” Egan says.
Another tip is to describe how the role contributes to team, division or corporate strategy – this is fundamental for staff engagement.
“HR practitioners should consult with line managers to create templates and a framework that will help them design roles comprehensively,” Egan says. “HR can also advise on ways to make the role clearer and easier to evaluate or grade.”
As for who should be involved in the process, Adams suggests line managers should have prime accountability for the creation of PDs, with input from HR.
“Line managers are accountable for the performance of their teams in delivering against corporate strategy and annual plans. They are the most knowledgeable about the strategy as it relates to their teams and what their teams’ capability gaps are that may need filling through additional roles – it just makes sense that they should write the PDs,” he says.
He urges employers to again think of the process in terms of a business case. “Advice would be available for managers to help write the business case to contract out work, but it would be a rare organisation indeed where a business case would be delegated to HR.”
Not locked in stone
Importantly, given the constant state of flux most businesses operate in today, the PD should be fluid and evolve as the job changes. This will ensure that it always reflects what is needed from the role at a practical level, and allow it to keep pace with changes to organisational, divisional or team strategy. “Holding the document in an online database can facilitate ease of review and change as required,” Adams suggests.
Indeed, technology can be a boon to job design. Databases allow easy access to data, including standard PD templates that enable roles to be clear and consistent inside and outside the organisation, saving time and improving quality.
“These templates become a reference library for writing new PDs from scratch. As the company completes new PDs they are added to this library, increasing its power. And instead of wasting time trawling through cluttered file systems to find relevant PDs, the database of PDs can be searched in an instant. When changes are made, the updates are available to the organisation instantly,” Adams says.
Standard forms can be created for new PDs that will avoid the smorgasbord of formats present in many organisations and ensure key sections of the PD are not neglected. Yet flexibility hasn’t been lost, as customisation of these forms to accommodate company or role-specific sections is only a click away.
When teams have a large number of PDs to write, PDs can be automatically generated using templates that can then be customised for specific roles. Preview functions allow teams to see at a glance how PDs are progressing. Finished PDs can be exported in professional formats – no time-consuming fiddling with Word. When updates are made, responsive formats change to fit.
As position descriptions are added, they can automatically populate organisation charts, which can be viewed in their entirety or in sections such as job families, divisions or business units. Exporting charts for use in reports or documentation becomes as easy as clicking a button.
“The right software can make child’s play of creating organisational charts. And with cloud technology you can access a database of corporate and template PDs on any device at any time,” Adams says.
A worthy investment
The PD can be an effective way for your employees to clearly understand their roles and accountabilities. They can also provide them with a clear indication of your expectations and give them the confi dence they need to do their job well – most would agree that’s a payoff worthy of investing some time and energy in upfront.
WORKFORCE & GOVERNANCE
Workforce & Governance provides cloud software that automates position description documentation, job evaluation and pay analysis, drawing on 14,000 accountability statements across 25 job families. It saves HR time and enables consistent and reliable outcomes. For more information, contact us on 02 9225 3225, or at [email protected] or www.workforceandgovernance.com.
