Employer Articles
Use for data not decided first many a data-gathering effort has been like poking in a haystack to try to find the needle. The effort is excessively lengthy, it gathers data that will not be used, job analyses challenge workers unnecessarily.
Job analyses, and job description preparation, if properly executed, can be expensive-at least until a system for gathering data and preparing JDs is established.
Job descriptions are not adhered to. Incumbents must be thoroughly schooled and motivated to provide truthful data. This may require extensive orientation about the analysis.
Quality and consistent structure in person specs, performance evaluation instruments, and job factor sheets can, therefore, not be obtained. Rather than use such JDs, they are ignored and efforts, independent of consideration of the job descriptions, are made to develop person specs, performance evaluation instruments, and job factor sheets.
Job descriptions alone are of little value for measuring performance. They tell what areas to look at in evaluating performance but not how to measure it.
It was just stated that job descriptions fail to cover general responsibilities that apply across many workers. But it is perhaps even more common and more of a problem when JDs do not reflect adequately the uniqueness of each different position.
Job descriptions usually leave out discussions of the independent authority that can be exercised by the jobholder. What kinds of decisions can the incumbent make without navigating through the checks and balances of higher authorities and supervisors?
In practice, considerable problems exist with respect to job description use and preparation. They are neither used properly nor nearly as fully as they could be.
Data gathering for human resource management, however, is often not highly funded in organizations, though there is some evidence of a change in attitude on this matter.
Action verbs at the beginning of duty statements quickly inform the reader of the kind of action the person is engaged in. Properly chosen verbs tell, with some precision, what the person does.
Position specific responsibilities are those unique to the specific position being described by the job description. Distinguishing position specific from general responsibilities helps clearly differentiate a given job from other jobs, while at the same time clarifying expectations that are the same for many employees.
An efficient and relatively simple way to prepare job description is to break the job into major functions for which the employee bears direct responsibility. These functions should be defined in such a way as to cover essentially all of the tasks incorporated in the job.
In the organizational relations portion of the job description, you should show informational, material, and monetary resource flows to the job as well as the sources of these flows.
A job description should indicate how the job fits into the line structure of the administrative hierarchy-that is, who the boss is and who the subordinates are, and should indicate, any functional authority and staff linkages to other positions.
By studying aggregations of job descriptions in an organization, flow patterns-types, densities, fluctuations--can be isolated. These patterns can then be analyzed for the purpose of designing more efficient communication networks throughout the organization.
Operative employees and perhaps some section leaders, or foremen-types, with relatively little supervisory work will usually be classified as non-exempt. The important point of job description is that the organization be consistent in its classifying of particular jobs.
Job descriptions can demonstrate institutional adherence to industry standards and practices. In short, job descriptions can spell out how employers are observing laws and other imposed requirements.
Job descriptions can guide the audit of the organization's personnel system by helping auditors ask the right questions, schedule interview times, and so on. They give, in concise fashion, a total picture of the system of jobs in the organization.
A quality job description should give insight into the kinds of resources the worker receives and the sources of those resources.
Demands on the psychological and physical well-being of the worker are often explicitly stated in the job description, and if not so stated are usually clearly implied. The JD suggests sources of stress and possible physical harm, such as dangerous equipment, toxic fumes, or extreme temperatures.