A Tool To Guide Your Human Capital Work
There’s a surprisingly simple tool that serves as the backbone of human resources: the job description. You may be surprised to learn that 52% of job seekers say the quality of a company’s job descriptions alone is very or extremely influential to their decision to apply.
And while that may be enough for you to look twice at your job descriptions, the truth is that a great job description will support an organization with all kinds of pivotal moments throughout the employee lifecycle.
Here are just a few reasons we love (good) job descriptions.
1) Job Descriptions Support Pay Equity
These days, it’s certainly best practice - and law in many states - to share salary bands on job descriptions. Doing so not only ensures that you stay in compliance as an employer, it’s a great contributor to equity for your employees. When people can see what their peers are making, they can advocate for themselves comparatively. In addition, salary bands make it easy for people to determine whether they want to apply for your roles or not, saving time that could be lost to a mismatch.
2) Job Descriptions Clarify Minimum Qualifications
Whether you need employees to be able to lift 50 pounds, have a master’s degree in education, be a CPA, or provide a negative drug test, putting it in your job description make it clear that those who don’t meet the minimum need not apply. In addition, having these qualifications clearly stated provides you a legitimate reason for not hiring - or removing - a person who does not have them from the job in question.
3) Job Descriptions Justify Exempt Status
If you believe an employee should be exempt from minimum wage, timekeeping, or overtime requirements under the executive exemption to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), it’s important to ensure that the employee’s job description states that the employee manages a “recognized department or subdivision” of your organization. Any additional managerial duties, also listed in the job description, will help justify an employee’s exempt status should it be called into question.
4) Job Descriptions Support Reasonable Accommodations
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that jobs make “reasonable” accommodations for people with disabilities. What is reasonable can be hard to define, and that’s where a job description can come in. When an employee has a temporary or permanent disability, determining which parts of their job description they cannot perform is usually a starting point in determining what happens next. From there, it’s possible to review each challenging job function and determine which accommodations could support the employee to do the work, and whether such accommodations would cause an “undue hardship” to you as an employer.
5) Job Descriptions Communicate Expectations
While we are more fans of role profiles to ground formal employee feedback, job descriptions also work as a starting point to review performance, especially in a more informal manner. Since they outline the specific points of the job, they provide shared language and context for you and your employee with regards to what they should be doing each day.
Interested?
We’re experts at writing both job descriptions and their close cousin, role profiles. Agile also provides compensation benchmarking aligned to job expectations, a terrific option for companies ready to take the next step for equitable employee practices.
