The End of the Job Description

Shifting From a Job-Focus To a Performance-Focus

Tim Baker

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137581464
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Makes job descriptions fit for purpose – and not a process driven waste of time

part I

Job Descriptions to Role Descriptions

chapter1

Role Descriptions: The Next Generation

It is timely to expand the predominantly restricted task-centric document that defines the specific requirements of a job. We should take on a more expansive model of work that goes beyond the skills, knowledge, and attitude necessary to do a particular job.

John sat down with Peter to conduct his dreaded annual performance appraisal. John was anxious about this interview since he had some concerns about Peter’s performance. He wasn’t too sure how Peter would react. In particular, John was concerned about four aspects of Peter’s work. Specifically, his concerns were Peter’s lack of initiative, his poor interpersonal relationships with others he worked closely with, his lack of commitment to developing his skills-set, and his general negative attitude. John was satisfied with the tasks that Peter was performing in his job. But basically John didn’t think that Peter was performing his organizational roles. He had prepared thoroughly for the interview with several examples to back up his concerns.

As Peter took his seat in John’s office, John noticed that Peter had a copy of his job description clutched in his hands.

John got straight to the point, “Peter, I think you are doing your job well in lots of areas, but there are four areas I am concerned about.” “What are they?” said Peter defensively. “Well firstly, I am concerned that you don’t show enough initiative in carrying out your work. For example, on Monday you complained to me that you are short-staffed. However, I noticed that you were doing tasks that you could have delegated to other people. You need to show more initiative and do things differently,” said John decisively. “But nowhere on my job description does it mention the need to be innovative,” Peter fired back.

After an awkward pause, John continued, “And the other day, you didn’t help out in the production area when you finished your work load. That’s not being a team player in my book.” “It might be in your book, John, but once again, being a team player is not stated on my job description anywhere,” Peter said, in a challenging tone of voice.

“Also, I have been trying for months to get you to do that new course on report writing. You keep telling me that you’ve been too busy. Apart from anything else, Peter, it would help you develop your career skills,” said John, trying to appeal to John’s self-interest. “I don’t see developing my career skills written down anywhere on this job description,” said Peter, looking down at the two-page document in front of him.

Plowing on, “I am also concerned that in the team meeting on Monday your attitude to the suggestions of others was pretty negative. I need you to display a more positive attitude around your work colleagues,” John asserted. “Where is being positive and nice to people written in this document?” challenged Peter.

John thought to himself that these job descriptions were a waste of time. He further thought: Surely there must be a better way to get Peter to focus on performance in his role?

It is quite amusing, isn’t it, that most job descriptions contain that all-too-familiar disclaimer at the end of the document that says the employee must perform any other duties assigned by the supervisor. This legal qualification implies that the job description fails to capture all the work requirements the employee is expected to perform. It is hard to imagine a worker on the assembly line of the Ford Motor Company needing this kind of legal disclaimer. In those days, jobs were very specific and clearly defined. What was expected of workers in those work-settings was very apparent and task-specific.

However, since the early part of the last century, the nature of work has changed profoundly. Work is now more multifaceted, the boundaries around the responsibilities of employees are ambiguous, and indicators of performance are different. Instead of accommodating the magnitude of these changes in work and their impact on employees and organizations, we have merely tagged a legal rider at the bottom of the job description to cover all bases. This has resulted in Dilbert-like jokes about the worth and value of the job description.

There are inevitably many challenges in crafting the ideal job description. I know this, having spoken with clients across 21 industry groups. A recent survey by The Creative Group polled advertising and marketing executives on the greatest challenge in writing job descriptions. When asked what the top challenge was in formulating job descriptions, 28 per cent of respondents said it was the identification of the necessary soft skills for the job (competency-based approach). On the other hand, 24 per cent claimed it was most difficult to accurately describe job duties (task-based approach).¹ Although The End of the Job Description is not a prescriptive text on how to address these two issues specifically, it will hopefully provide you with a better perspective on formulating a more comprehensive and contemporary analysis of the work that 21^st-century employees are expected to perform.

The job description: the pillar of human resource management

Despite the fact that the essence of work has advanced beyond the usefulness of the traditional job description, this document supports many organizationally-based Human Resources (HR) functions. The job description is used to recruit and select employees, manage performance, identify and provide training and development opportunities, aid succession planning, gauge remuneration and reward packages, and many other aspects of Human Resource Management (HRM). This work document is supposed to be the bedrock of human activities in the organization. Our reliance on the job description puts considerable pressure on getting the structure and content of this document right.

The job description is based on the tasks employees are supposed to do in their job. Most organizations structure the job description around the specifications of the job’s duties and activities; the adoption of a task-based approach. The task-based approach has its origins in “scientific management,” with Frederick Taylor’s notion that jobs could be studied and specified, and that work methods used for jobs could be improved and rationalized.

The first generation job description

Along with Peter Drucker, Frederick Taylor was undoubtedly one of the most influential management thinkers of all time. Over 100 years ago, his book, Principles of Scientific Management,² revolutionized the workplace. Taylor believed that we could and should quarantine jobs into a clear process so that the performance of the worker could be measured, monitored, and improved. This worked brilliantly on the Henry Ford motor car assembly line. From Taylor’s scientific management philosophy, the first generation job description evolved as a natural extension. With some alterations, 100 years later we are still using the same document! But the work people do is radically different. The task-based or first generation job description is actually doing more harm than good.

Jobs are designed by managers. The role of management is essentially to define, control, standardize, and evaluate work processes and practices. One of the fundamental building blocks of organizational work is the concept of the job. Based on the principles of scientific management, the traditional job description is a mechanism of managerialism. Historically, the job description has been the vehicle for documenting a set of relatively inflexible and tangible tasks and activities performed by a worker.

The job analysis movement of the 1940s was the catalyst for the development of the job description. Jobs were originally designed based on analyses that focused solely on the tasks that needed to be done. In the first generation job description, no real consideration was given to employee attributes to perform these tasks, at least not in a documented sense. It wasn’t until the late 1960s that job analysis took into account the traits of the employee.

A job analysis method called the Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ) was developed that incorporated employee-oriented competencies. The PAQ signaled a significant shift away from the task-oriented approach of formulating job descriptions by putting some emphasis on the worker. The PAQ opened the door to considering the qualities, traits, and skills required by the job-holder. Job analyses progressed from here to refer to these person-centric attributes as competencies.

It is likely that this trend toward considering employee traits will continue in the foreseeable future. As organizations become flatter, and the boundaries around specific jobs less clearly defined, generating task-based job descriptions may not play a central role in the practices of HRM in the future.³ Although many organizations have moved to a competency-based model of job analysis, the majority of job descriptions are still written in job-specific terms. Managers understandably still want to construct a periphery around each job. It is obviously difficult to change the entrenched habits of 200 years of industry. As William Bridges reminds us, jobs may be disappearing, but work still remains.⁴ Defining boundaries around work responsibilities is still considered important to managers and employees alike. People want to know where they stand and what they are accountable for.

I also think the need for clearly defined and specific task responsibilities is still important. But organizational leaders – and in particular, HR professionals – have been slow to shift the emphasis in the analysis of work away from the job and towards the job-holder. But some progress has been made: Task-specific and competency-specific information is now viewed as important in describing what people do at work. Although competency models are still developing, they have some way to go to match the prominence of task-specific information in the job description documentation. But non-job roles people perform – although recognized as important – are in most cases not fully integrated into the description of work documents. The important roles people perform in the work-setting – apart from the job tasks and activities they are expected to complete – need further attention. The End of the Job Description intends to bring these non-job roles into sharper focus.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We need to understand the shortcomings of the first generation job description and how this led to what I refer to as the second generation job description.

Weaknesses of the task-specific job description

Task-based job descriptions, although still prevalent today, are criticized for three broad reasons. First, there is too much concentration on a specific job and a subsequent lack of weight on the individual job-holder’s ability to carry out the work. Second, with the concentration on tasks and activities, first generation job descriptions are not equipped to take into account important work that is not job-specific. And third, the task-based approach assumes that by clearly identifying the work that needs doing, putting the “right” person in that job naturally leads to productivity and performance. Balancing person-specific information with task-specific information goes some way to alleviating these deficiencies.

However, it is worth considering these shortcomings in more detail for a moment. Tasks can and do become outdated or obsolete very quickly in a fast-paced work environment. For instance, some tasks can be automated while others ca...