Job Descriptions seem to be randomly and inconsistently created and used in most organisations.  Why is this?

I believe that this is part of a “legacy” culture still pervading the “people management” space in many organisations.  What do I mean by “legacy” culture?  I mean the old Theory X and Theory Y “models” taught at business schools 30 or so years ago.

What do I mean by “randomly and inconsistently created”?  I mean created for a specific purpose – a hiring situation, or remuneration situation – and then filed away in a drawer and never referred to again.  I mean Job Descriptions that are inconsistent with each other and inconsistent with the new requirements of the workplace.

In the new “performance-base” culture of people management, Job Descriptions are, or at least should be, an extension of Organisation Design, not some random exercise.  Organisation Design defines the structure of the organisation and the roles needed for one purpose only – that is, to implement and drive business strategy to the achievement of business goals.  So the definition of the roles includes, minimally:

• The outcome, or deliverable, of the role, e.g. “Servers that are operational to Service Level Agreements”
• The Responsibilities covered by the extent of the role, e.g. “Manage and maintain the organisation’s core business process servers to meet required Service Levels”.
• The KPIs, or, how will the job be measured, e.g. “Percentage uptime of business process servers”
• The Competencies, and level of competence, needed in order to be able to deliver the outcomes within the performance measure.

All other aspects of the Job Description either expand on these 4 core elements of a Job Description or are descriptive of a potential candidate for sourcing purposes.

• Tasks – expand on Responsibilities
• Qualification – expansion of Competencies
• Experience – expansion of Competencies
• Prior Knowledge – expansion of Competencies

Even worse, when organisations implement HRIS systems, after the initial “takeon”, there is virtually no control, or governance, over what jobs are added to the system, what jobs need to be removed from the system – or made redundant, how to ensure consistency of similar roles across the organisation, whether or not there are incumbents in each of the defined roles, how one grows from one job to the next, ….  Data integrity is a major concern with most implemented HRIS systems today.

So, what are the problems, and what do we need to put in place to ensure better integrity of the Roles defined to drive business performance.

1. Job Descriptions written around a person, or incumbent, rather than the outcomes that are needed by the business.  Job Descriptions are often changed to follow the movement of the original incumbent.  This generally happens when remuneration issues become apparent.  In today’s performance-based culture, this is particularly bad practice.  There should be a Job Description for each level of a job that defines the requirements of the level of the job.  Incumbents are then able to grow from one level to another in a structure predefined by strategy.
2. No process around what tasks need to be performed and how to combine them into a job.  Similar to the problem above, tasks are sometimes grouped into a Job Description depending on the ability of the present incumbent.  This is a legacy of the old method of Job Analysis used by many HR consultants.  As with the above, this is just not good practice today.  Tasks should be grouped to meet outcomes at a specific level, taking into consideration the complexity of the tasks for each level.
3. There is no governance to manage what Job Descriptions are developed and how they are managed, changed and used in the organisation.  In many cases a “job” is created out of expedience instead of out of strategic necessity.  There could be a interdepartmental communication problem and, instead of fixing the problem – improve communication and co-operation, a new job is created to “bypass” the problem.  When creating a new job, the career path of that job needs to be taken into account.  When this happens, inconsistencies will soon be identified.
4. Most often a Job Analysis means interviewing incumbents of the role to determine what they do, and then Job Descriptions are drafted from this information.  Instead, the structure of the organisation needs to be reviewed together with management to establish the roles needed to drive business performance.  Job Description should be drafted from this information with reference to Subject Matter Experts when necessary.
5. Job Descriptions are quickly put together for specific hiring situations, and then filed and never used again – unless a legal situation arises, and then it’s generally too late!  Job Descriptions should be written for the structure of the organisation based on the roles needed to deliver strategic goals.  If you find that you are needing to draft a new Job Description for an urgent hiring situation – STOP, this is a classic symptom that something is wrong.  There is a deeper problem in play.

All of these problems really point to a lack of Workforce Strategy and Planning and a lack of focus on the tasks that need to be performed and the competence needed to perform them in order to drive business performance.

Please contact us if you are interested in how to implement a “performance-based” culture in your organisation.

“Reading body language can be very interesting and informative. People don’t realise how much information they display and how noticeable it is to other people.” So says Peter Clayton in a recent post in Soft skills. Understanding business body language can be very rewarding. You’ll know when to move forward, back off or slow down. It is also invaluable when interviewing, negotiating, running a training course or leading a team.

So what should we be concentrating on? The short list that can be used for Business Body Language is:

1. Voice tone, inflection and volume.
2. Eye contact.
3. Head movement.
4. Body movement including hands, arms, body and legs.

Voice tone, inflection and volume

Use the first few minutes of any business meeting to read and memorize the normal body language of important attendees, including voice tone and volume. Using small talk allows your to understand how they speak and how they communicate. Later in the meeting when things get serious you can use your original benchmarks to check how genuine they are.

Eye contact

Next, consider how much eye contact they are displaying and in which direction they look when using small talk. A dominant person maintains eye contact approximately 99% of the time which is a great deal more than a reserved or quiet person which is normally 60% of the time. An enthusiastic person would look you in the eyes approximately 75% of the time and would tend to look upwards and around when recalling memories.

Try to include a question about the marketplace and the way the economy is affecting all of us. This is a negative topic for most people, the eyes will probably go down and the voice will be lower. What you want to know now is how their eyes drop and for how long and in which direction left or right. When important points are mentioned during the meeting, if eye contact drops further and lower and is more focused then there is probably something to be concerned about and the person may be concealing something.

Remember, these are only indications of something to be concerned about or partial concealment. It is not, as some believe, an indication that someone is lying.

When lighting conditions are favorable it is very useful to gauge whether someone’s pupils are constricted or dilated. If you see a small piece of body language that concerns you and you can also see that the eyes are constricted then you know the person you’re talking to is concealing something. Likewise, when negotiating it is good to see someone’s eyes become dilated, it tells you they are far more interested than they would like you to believe and that the negotiations are going well. The easy rule is that the eyes constrict when someone is concealing negative thoughts, where as dilated pupils are a sign of enthusiasm and interest.

Head movement

It is important in the first few minutes of any meeting to see how much head movement a person is using when talking about small issues. When someone is attempting to conceal something, they will increase their eye contact to 100% directly into the eyes whilst holding their head steady. It is a subconscious movement that says if they are not looking away or fidgeting you will believe them. This stronger eye contact and steady head comes from childhood when we were told by our parents to “look me in the eye and tell me the truth”.

Hand to face

When we are thinking one thing and saying another, we feel uncomfortable. The facial skin gets warmer, especially around the base and side of the nose, ear lobes and neck. When you hear somebody say something which appears to be positive, but then they slightly rub the base of their nose at the same time, something is wrong. What happens is that blood has come to the surface of the skin and causes minor irritation which prompts someone to touch it to clear the irritation. Note – it is not blushing and you will not see any redness.

Body movement

Going back once again to the beginning of the meeting, what posture does this person have? Are they sitting upright, slightly forwards or slightly relaxed with their arms on the desk? How far away is their body from the desk? Enthusiastic people tend to come forwards, their hands become slightly animated and involved and their voice is a little louder. We can all see these expressions because unless you’re negotiating there is no need to conceal them.

However, as the meeting progresses it may appear that someone is becoming more relaxed, they move slightly away from the desk and turn to the left or the right very slightly. If this happens it is a sign that they are losing or have already lost interest and are being polite about it until the meeting finishes. This is almost certainly the case where the person you are talking to has respect for you and therefore the posture they have is an attempt to look relaxed. If when you ask the next question the voice is lower, with less inflection and tone then you can be sure that they are just being polite.

Peter Clayton is a leading body language expert, speaker and trainer as well as a consultant for the BBC and ITV. He writes for a wide range of national papers and magazines and is a specialist consultant to other speakers, leading businesses, celebrities and politicians. For more information, visit his website:www.peterclayton.com

The process involved in IT Talent Searching and Selection is probably one of the most time-consuming activities for HR Consultants in an IT environment. Between the calculated risk of making an appointment and what you have to weed out, hiring is the most dreaded and difficult activity performed by any HR Consultant because failure to hire correctly is statistically NOT in your favour.

How can we improve this?

How can we have more confidence in our hiring decisions, and how can we make better hiring decisions – better in terms of both cost and productivity?

To achieve this we need to look at our processes AND the tools that we use to improve these processes. Today there are a number of “computer applications” available to improve the staff recruitment and selection processes.

But if the information used to “drive” the application is not good, the results are not going to be any better – the old adage GIGO (garbage in – garbage out) applies just as much today as it did 50 years ago for computer applications. You need the very best of information for the automated recruitment and selection processes to be effective.

But there are also other considerations when it comes to selecting the actual application. Many of these applications are “stand alone”, meaning that they don’t easily interface with other applications used, or more importantly COULD be used by the organisation for effective Human Capital Management.

The goal of every organisation today, whether they know and understand it at this stage or not, is optimised Human Capital Management. That is, optimizing the Return on Investment in the skills, competencies, attitudes and experience that reside within the organization.

So, think carefully before making these decisions as changes in the future are inevitably more expensive than making the right decision up front.