For us HR Professionals, keeping job descriptions up-to-date is a really important aspect of ‘organizational design’.
Organizational design is the plan we create to ensure that you have the right resources in place to achieve your business goals.
Up-to-date job descriptions can also help you in these areas too:
– Hiring and Recruitment: Up-to-date job descriptions attract the right candidates and set clear expectations from the start.
– Legal Compliance: Accurate job descriptions help you to comply with US employment law and protect you during employee disputes.
– Employee Productivity: Employees who know exactly what’s expected of them perform better and are more engaged, which leads to enhanced productivity.
– Performance Management: Regularly updated job descriptions make it easier to measure employee performance, provide feedback and address underperformance.
– Business Scalability: As your business grows, updated job descriptions help to ensure that your team evolves in alignment with your organizational goals.
– Avoiding Job Duty Issues: An up-to-date job description sets clear boundaries to prevent employee burnout, dissatisfaction and role confusion.
So, are up-to-date job descriptions that important?
The answer is definitely yes…
Here’s what an up-to-date job description should include:
– Job Title: A clear and accurate title that reflects the role’s responsibilities.
– Purpose of the role: A brief summary of why the role exists and its contribution to business goals.
– Key responsibilities: A detailed list of main duties and responsibilities for the role, including essential functions of the role.
– Skills and qualifications: A detailed list of essential and desirable criteria for the role.
– Reporting lines: Information on who the role reports to and any team members reporting to them.
– Location: Details about where the role is based, whether office-based, hybrid or remote.
– Employment Classification : Specify whether the position is Hourly, Non-Exempt or Salary, Exempt. If exempt, specify the exemption job duty (Executive, Administrative, Professional, etc.) that the position qualifies.
– Employment Type: Details whether the role is full-time, part-time, fixed-term, permanent or contract.
– Working hours: A clear definition of expected working hours.
– Pay and benefits: Information on salary range, bonuses, pensions and employee benefits to help with transparency.
– Equal opportunities statement: A statement committing to equal employment opportunity and non-discrimination.
– Health and safety information: Information describing relevant health and safety requirements for the role.
Need help with reviewing your job descriptions and organizational design?
