What section of a job description describes what activities are performed on the job?

A job description is a written statement by a company describing the duties, responsibilities, required qualifications, and reporting relationships of a particular role.

Although the responsibility of writing and reviewing job descriptions can seem mundane, or possibly even pointless, without an effective process you open up your organization to many risks.

For HR professionals, job descriptions serve as the foundation for every action we take. Whether used for hiring, conducting a performance review, or conducting any number of HR-related activities, job descriptions cross your desk as an HR professional time and time again.

In this issue of Astronology®, we will explore how crucial job descriptions are to your organization’s success as well as answer other pressing questions:

• Why are job descriptions helpful?
• What are the essential components of a job description?
• How can you make your job descriptions the best they can be?

From the factors that contribute to how you’ll compensate individuals, to the growth opportunities your company offers, your job description should tell it all. Ready to learn more? Let’s dive in.

Why Are Job Descriptions Helpful?

We can all probably imagine a badly-written job description. It’s only a couple of sentences, doesn’t list what the role entails, and is vague about the compensation. As a reflection of the company’s mission and goals, this job description is enough to turn away even the most passionate prospects.

Besides attracting top candidates to your organization, job descriptions can benefit your team and make your life in HR easier in many ways. Specifically, job descriptions are helpful because they:

• Provide a clear understanding of what the duties and responsibilities for a particular position are. This is helpful not just for applicants interested in the role, but also for management to better determine the actions needed to achieve organizational goals.
• Protect an organization legally, as the job description can defend why a candidate was selected—or not—for a position. Job descriptions also can defend the reasoning behind why a position is classified as exempt or non-exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
• Ensure a consistent understanding across departments of how different job positions and roles help the organization grow. This will help overall team engagement and remind employees of the value of other players in the business.
• Lay the foundation to facilitate ongoing performance management. With role duties and responsibilities clearly laid out, it’s much easier to measure the success of new employees and ensure that certain targets are being met.
• Help employees create personal goals for advancing in their current role. Your job descriptions not only introduce prospects to the role at hand but also enable them to start thinking about how they can take those responsibilities a step further and add more value to the organization.
• Create boundaries regarding employees’ responsibilities. This ensures that new team members (and existing ones) aren’t doing more than what they’re compensated for.
• Justify an employee’s pay. By listing out all the duties and requirements, you provide some context as to why a role is compensated in a specific way.
• Support training and development activities by providing written documentation for what a particular role entails and the needed training and activities it requires.

As you can see, job descriptions are more than short paragraphs added to a general job listing site. They introduce prospects to your organization, set expectations for the job role, and provide concrete metrics and goals for management to look back on.

What Are The Essential Components Of A Job Description?

You now know that job descriptions are critical. This means that great care needs to be taken in creating them and keeping them up to date.

While the information in a job description will vary widely by role and industry type, there are a couple of essential items that you definitely cannot forget. Paul Slezak, a writer for Recruitloop.com, lists five areas that should always be included when writing job descriptions:

1. Job Title: This should accurately reflect the nature of the job, including its ranking order with other roles in your business. It also should be generic enough for recruitment purposes and in harmony with similar jobs in the same industry.
2. Duties: Ideally, the list of responsibilities and duties associated with a position also should include a percentage reflecting that task’s importance. This provides a more rounded understanding of how much someone is expected to handle over the course of a year. It’s also important to keep this section brief. A bullet point list also suffices.
3. Skills and Competencies: These ask for similar information but should still be listed separately.
   • Skills describe the activities one has learned through previous experience as well as specific qualifications earned. An example of this is
     “proficiency in Microsoft Word and Excel.”
   • Competencies describe the traits we expect one in this job position to display. An example of this is “being a good team player.”
4. Relationships: Along with the basic job information, your description also should include where this role falls in the hierarchy of your organization. Including this helps both employees and candidates better understand where they fit in and the people they’ll be engaging with and reporting to.
5. Salary: Rather than listing a specific salary, providing a salary range that’s competitive with the market is an ideal, more flexible choice, and may be required under local law. Consider conducting a compensation survey!

Now that you have all the puzzle pieces, it’s time to put them together. For inspiration and more guidance, we’ve put together a template depicting all the job description essentials.

Job Description Template

How Can You Ensure Your Job Descriptions Are The Best They Can Be?

Now that you know why job descriptions are important and the necessary details you’ll need to include, you might think you’re set to start recruiting. However, there are a couple of other considerations and best practices you should keep in mind:

Frequently Update Job Descriptions

Because of the many roles that job descriptions play in an organization, it is essential to keep them up to date. Forgetting to update your descriptions on a regular basis can result in applicant confusion or even turn away prospects who might be looking for specific benefits that you had only recently rolled out.

An ideal approach is to review job description content in three contexts: during your performance appraisal period, before you begin actively hiring, and on a rotating two-to-three-year cycle.

Other opportunities for job description reviews are:

• When an incumbent is promoted
• During an exit interview

With many touchpoints along the way, keeping descriptions up to date shouldn’t be a major time investment.

Write Inclusive Job Descriptions

With the new working generation tending to care more about job quality and happiness than previous generations, the way you craft your job descriptions and the wording you choose can have a direct impact.

Specifically, special consideration for inclusiveness needs to be made in writing job descriptions, especially for recruitment purposes.

In an August 2020 SHRM blogpost, Osasumwen Argibe, PHR wrote

I’ve learned that word choices can determine the diversity of a company’s talent pool. So, if a company’s goal is to create a diverse and inclusive workforce, it’s important to attract diverse candidates using inclusive language in job postings.”

Monster.com has the following suggestions for writing inclusive job descriptions:

• Remove Gender-Coded Words: Avoid the common mistake of using coded words for a male or female audience. For instance:
  • Female coded words include variations of agree, empath, sensitive, affectionate, feel, support, collaborate, honest, trust, commit, interpersonal, understand, compassion, nurture, and share.
  • Male coded words include variations of aggressive, confident, fearless, ambitious, decisive, head-strong, assertive, defend, independent, battle, dominant, outspoken, challenge, driven, and superior.
• Avoid Gender Bias: A Hewlett Packard Internal Report mentioned that women often will apply only for jobs where they meet 100% of the qualifications. To help reduce this issue, consider eliminating requirements that are not essential. For example, do not ask for experience with specific software packages if training can be easily provided for the position. Generalize transferable skills and clearly outline which qualifications are required and which are preferred.
• Eliminate Racial Bias: Racial bias can be implicit. To eliminate this in your job description writing, keep these tips in mind:
  • Never mention race or national origin.
  • Avoid phrases such as “strong English – language” or “clean-shaven” as they could deter qualified non-native English speakers or candidates whose faith requires facial hair.
  • Don’t use phrases such as, “Cultural Fit” instead, use “Value Alignment.”
• Consider Experience: 35% of the workforce will be made of workers ages 50 or older by 2022. The mixed generation workforce is already here, so it is imperative that job descriptions remain age-bias-free. Avoid phrasing such as:
  • “Young and Energetic”
  • “Digital Native”
  • “Athletic” or “Athletically inclined”
  • “No more than X years of experience”
  • “Supplement your retirement income!”
• Keep in Mind Disabled Workers: Communicate that your organization welcomes and values all people by using phrasing such as “Ability to complete tasks with or without reasonable accommodations.”

Unconscious biases influence many of our everyday interactions and decisions. Left unchecked, this risks HR professionals and organizational leaders creating unintended environmental challenges in the workplace. To counteract these biases leaders should first address how job descriptions are written from the very start.

Perform a Job Analysis and Compensation Survey

Sometimes, you can get stuck at completing what you might assume to be the most straightforward part of a job description: responsibilities and compensation. How might you get over this hump? With a job analysis and a compensation survey!

A job analysis is the process of gathering, examining, and interpreting data about a specific role. The results should supply accurate information about the job so that an organization can manage and regulate it efficiently. It also should reveal the specific duties and responsibilities of the role.

Performing a job analysis includes the following steps:

• Interviewing employees to find out exactly what tasks are being performed.
• Observing how tasks are performed.
• Having employees fill out questionnaires or worksheets.
• Collecting data on jobs from other resources such as salary surveys and the Occupational Outlook Handbook.

A compensation survey is a popular method of determining a fair employee compensation strategy. The results can provide key insights into a role and its pay, helping management and HR evaluate the best way to compensate that employee.

Compensation surveys typically involve analyzing these forms of compensation data:

1. Base salaries
2. Increase percentages/amounts
3. Merit increases
4. Salary ranges
5. Starting salaries
6. Incentives/bonuses
7. Allowances and benefits
8. Working hours

You may be able to purchase existing compensation survey results for your sector, or you can partner with an HR consultant for a survey that meets your organization’s unique needs and job roles.

Create (& Update) Job Descriptions in Performance Management Software

Creating concrete job descriptions for each role at your business and then being able to update them as needed is the foundation of all your broader HR processes.

Today, we have modern performance management software that not only can organize all of your job descriptions but also allow you to easily update them and view roles in the grand scheme of your hierarchy.

Some solutions can even help you remain legally compliant by making it easy to explore Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) implications and attach role-specific documentation to each description.

Wrapping Up

If your organization is quite large, your job descriptions are out-of-date, or you’re having trouble getting started with a job analysis, contact the HR professionals at Astron Solutions!

Not only can we help create compelling and engaging job descriptions to attract top talent, but we also can aid with performing any necessary job analyses or compensation surveys. We even have a dedicated web-based talent management system with a specific job description module.

No matter what, it’s imperative that you put some careful thought and consideration into any job descriptions you’re creating and updating. Keep track of your job description success—if you find applicants asking many follow-up questions or your listing isn’t getting the expected traffic, it’s likely time for an update!