The “new world” of Human Capital Management can no longer tolerate the “quick fix” Job Descriptions of the past that were defined either around an incumbent, or for a specific hiring decision, and then put in a file and never seen again.  Human Capital Management requires Job Descriptions that:

• Are part of the Organisation Design process,
• Define the role that needs to be performed,
• Are part of a lattice of career paths in the organization,
• Enable the Business Processes of an organisation,
• Are living mechanisms of the workplace
• Lead to Organisational Performance.

A “business process” is an activity or set of activities that will accomplish a specific organizational goal.  Business Processes generally focus on meeting the needs of the “customer” and delivering a good or service that will fulfil that need.  In most cases, the business processes are actually a collection of interrelated processes that function in a logical sequence to achieve the ultimate goal.

Job Descriptions define the requirements for people performance at specific “nodes” of a Business Process.   Job Descriptions define and describe the activities to be performed at a specific time in the Business Process to ensure that the process is complete, or can be completed in accordance with organisational goals and objectives.

Job Descriptions today need both process and governance to manage the integrity, consistency, and coherence of information that is critical to the success of the organisation – the sets of activities that need to be done to achieve organisational goals.

Process of Job Descriptions

The organization needs to be structured in such a way that it is able to achieve its goals within budget and quality requirements.  So the first step in the Job Description process is to evaluate the organisational structure and ensure that each defined job plays a role in a business process that leads to the achievement of organizational goals.

The next step is to ensure that the structure also provides a clearly defined Career Development Roadmap^TM of careers in the organisation.  This should be defined to show coherent and logical growth from one level to another.  This will avoid the bad practice of defining a Job Description around an “individual”.

Once the Career Development Roadmap^TM is defined, the Competency Matrix can be created that shows the level of competence for competencies relevant to each job, for all jobs across the organisation.  This becomes the Competency “blue print” of the organisation against which individual development can be mapped, but also can be used to identify areas of the business “at risk” of not have the competencies needed to achieve the required goals.

Finally we can start drafting the Job Descriptions as we now have all the fundamental information needed to define job “outcomes” (or deliverables), job responsibilities and job performance indications, job competencies, as well as other ancillary information generally found on a Job Description.

Governance of Job Descriptions

Governance is needed for Job Descriptions to ensure:

1. That new Job Descriptions are created only in line with the strategy and business processes of the organisation,
2. That there is a managed “Change Management” process in place to manage and control changes to Job Descriptions to ensure that they remain in line with the strategy and processes of the organisation.  The Career Development Roadmap^TM is the foundation document used for Governance purposes.  Any new or changed Job needs to be mapped into the Career Development Roadmap^TM and approved before the Job Description can be drafted.

Having a proper process and governance in place for the definition of Jobs in the organisation has a number of direct and indirect benefits:

• It ensures that the Jobs defined are those that are needed to deliver the strategy of the organisation,
• It reduces job redundancy, overlapping of tasks, and inconsistent job levels in the organisation,
• It makes it easier to align with remuneration practices,
• It facilitates both Succession Planning and Sourcing requirements,
• It facilitates the management of performance, both employee and organisational,
• It provides the logic that enables HRIS and HCMS systems to be implemented more quickly and easily and provides for the management of data input to these systems over the longer term.

As anyone in leadership knows, good planning at the beginning leads to better results and reduced costs over the longer term.  Job planning and Job Descriptions are no different.

If you would like our assistance with putting both process and governance around your job environment, contact us.

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.

Human Capital Management is VERY different from the traditional “Personnel Management”. Primarily – it acknowledges that the people of the organization are ASSETS of the organization – that is – sources of revenue!.

Human Capital Management does not replace the processes that are part of “Personnel Management” – far from it. These processes remain and new processes are added to align the organization’s talent with the goals and strategies of the organization.

Employers and employees need to have a clear, mutual agreement about the expectations for the job, and the Job Description is a key document to achieve this.

Legal Aspects of the Job Description

Be very careful to adhere to relevant Labour Relations and Conditions of Employment legislation when compiling job descriptions, job adverts and person-profiles. In most countries this means that you may not specify preference for gender, race, culture, religion, or physical ability.

Job Descriptions should facilitate job-related interviews and evaluations, and should not provide anyone with the opportunity to “personalize” these procedures

That said, job descriptions are not operating manuals. Keep the descriptions of duties concise and free of detailed operating or processing instructions.

These are the domain of the organization’s procedures or operating manuals. If necessary, refer to these in a phrase such as “according to company procedures”, or “according to the operating manual/safety manual” etc. By referencing rather than including specific operating standards or processes, the headache of updating all the job descriptions when procedures change is avoided.

What Is An Organization?

The word organization is used in a number of contexts. An organization can be a whole corporation or just one part of it. It can comprise tens of thousands of people or just a few dozen. Organizations are nested inside one another. The smaller the organizational unit, the fewer design choices and decisions there are to make, and the more those decisions will be influenced by the larger organization. Regardless of size, there are still tremendous opportunities for the leader to shape the organization and improve its effectiveness through the Organization Design process.

What is Organization Design?

There are a number of definitions. Here are a few that really hit the mark:

• A formal, guided process for integrating the people, information and technology of an organization to match the form of the organization as closely as possible to the purpose(s) the organization seeks to achieve. (Source: unknown)
• The deliberate process of configuring structures, processes, reward systems, and people practices and policies to create an effective organization capable of achieving the business strategy. (Source: Galbraith et al)
• Aligning the structure of an organisation to its objectives and improving the relationships between individuals and groups (Source: unknown)
• Aligning the organisation to reach its strategic goals (Source: Little)

From these definitions it is clear that the PROCESS of organisation design is both FORMAL and DELIBERATE. It needs to take all aspects of PEOPLE, PRACTICES, POLICIES, AND PROCEDURES into account. And it needs to be based on enabling the organisation to ACHIEVE IT’S STATEGIC GOALS AND OBJECTIVES.

Job descriptions are an important part of a well-organized company and are an integral part of the organization design and performance management and evaluation systems. They offer the basis for clear employer/employee communication and sound HR practices.

Job descriptions improve an organisation’s ability to manage people and roles in the following ways:
• they clarify employer expectations for employees in specific roles
• they provide the basis for measuring job performance
• they provide clear descriptions of roles for job incumbents and candidates
• they provide a structure and discipline for the organization to understand
• and structure all jobs and ensure that deliverables, responsibilities and
• activities necessary for the achievement of organizational strategy, are covered
• within the organizational structure
• they provide continuity of role parameters irrespective of individual manager interpretation
• they enable remuneration and job grading systems to be structured fairly and logically
• they prevent arbitrary interpretation of role content and limit by employee, employer and manager
• they are an essential reference tool in issues of employee/employer dispute
• they are an essential reference tool for discipline issues
• they provide important reference points for training and development
• they provide neutral and objective (as opposed to subjective or arbitrary) reference points for appraisals, performance reviews and counselling
• they form the basis for competency profiles for each role and competency
• management for the organization
• they enable the organization to structure and manage roles in a uniform way,
• increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of talent management processes
• they enable a factual view (as opposed to instinctual or personal) to be taken by employees and managers in career progression and succession planning.

In IT, the workplace is becoming more and more role and competency based, and less and less ‘job’ based. There are a number of well-understood ‘roles’ that need to be in place in a well-structured IT department. But, depending on the size of the organisation, the level of outsourcing, and the level of IT facilitated business processes, how these ‘roles’ are structured into ‘jobs’ can differ widely.
So, to be able to assist any organization with an IT department, no matter the size, TalentAlign has created a database of information relevant to over 300 IT jobs.
Select from our generic Role Descriptions and customise them for your specific requirements. Then download the IT role descriptions and they are ready for you to roll out your structure, or customise for your specific environment.