"We are growing so fast that we need to better organize our 'key' people's jobs. We are thinking of writing job descriptions. How should we start"? M.S., Alabama

THE INDUSTRY ADVISOR

THAT'S NOT MY JOB, IS IT?

by Gene Levine - www.genelevine.com

  You're on the right track by wanting each key person in your company to understand what his or her responsibilities and authorities are. You will get better performance and better motivation out of people once they have a clearer understanding of how their activities relate to company goals.

In truth though, few management people know their complete job, the level of performance that is expected of them, what specific steps they could take to improve their performance or how well they are doing.

One way to improve operating efficiency is to get each person to view his job not as self-contained, but as a responsibility to be fulfilled within the larger framework of the total company operation. Correct job descriptions clearly state the duties, responsibilities, authorities and conditions necessary for performance of a specific work function. With job descriptions in place, employees are less likely to say, "I didn't know that was my job!"

Some benefits of job descriptions are:

• Introduces new employees to their jobs and gives an understanding of what is expected of them in terms of duties, organizational relationships and reporting procedures as they relate to company goals;
• Assists in the realignment of functions and responsibilities and ensures that costly duplications of efforts are minimized;
• Establishes exact channels of communications so that employees know whom to go to for information; and
• Assists management in evaluating performance by illustrating what should be done versus what is actually being done.

As the wording suggests, a job description describes the job, not the person who happens to be performing the job. I suggest that job descriptions be divided into the following five sections:

1. Definition of Job Area: A brief, one sentence (if possible) summation.
2. Source of Authority: To whom is the job function directly responsible?
3. Scope of Authority: How far does the authority of the job function extend?
4. Scope of Job: This area is the detail of the description. Each responsibility should be noted in outline form. Responsibilities should be organized according to functions, and each responsibility should have a degree of authority assigned to it.

Responsibilities (i.e. the job) should not change, but degrees of authority necessary to achieve the responsibility may change according to the progress of the job holder. Degrees of authority must be continually reviewed to ensure growth and/or compliance by the job holder. It should be noted that my basic example of a job description (see Figure 1) shows no degrees of authority, only the whole scope of job.

5. Abilities, Skills and Education Requirements: What personal and business experience is necessary to do the best job in the stated position?

The job descriptions that I've written for client's Job Description manuals all use the format shown in Figure 1 below, which you can adopt for your purposes. Although space constraints do not allow the entire description to be printed, you will find the following example job description contains enough key ideas to get you started (and if you are interested, you can get information about our complete "Writing Effective Job Descriptions Manual" by clicking here).

FIGURE 1

Example Job Description . . .

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