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August 2007

 Job Descriptions

  by Pat Zingheim & Jay Schuster

At lunch the other day, a compensation executive told us she had looked at the job description for a senior administrative job in her organization from 40 years ago. The only change was trading the ability to use a typewriter for the use of a desktop computer. Otherwise, the job was exactly the same—no changes in about 40 years. However, she noted, the job’s value relative to other jobs in the organization had become significantly inflated and not in her view because of differential external market changes.

For organizations that rely on job descriptions for determining job value, how might they take action to stop job value inflation? Some ideas might include:

1. Standardize Job Value Elements: Preventing job descriptions from becoming an exercise in “creative writing” is an important priority. This can be done by selecting the elements of jobs that reflect their value and worth to the organization. Choosing these elements comes from answering the question—what makes a job valuable? Possibilities can be responsibility in terms of results, people, assets, etc.; skill and competence that are close to the core capabilities of the organization; etc.

2. Deemphasize Education and Service Requirements: Organizations that focus on job value need to separate the person in the job from the job's scope and responsibilities. Although a job description may include some minimum educational and experience requirements, these differences can reflect more the person in the job than the job itself. Ten years of experience often differs in value to the organization from employee to employee, and the value of education beyond some minimum requirements may not reflect the necessary preparation to do the job.

3. Describe Value-Added Changes: What has changed about this job to suggest it has become more or less valuable to the organization than it was before? We are talking about substantial and measurable or observable changes in value. If the job itself is essentially unchanged for a period of time, it is possible its strategic value has changed and become more or less important to the organization's business. Some jobs become more valuable without changes in job responsibilities; when this happens, the organization should consider documenting the reasons.

4. Review Similar Jobs Together: Comparison helps determine overall and relative job value. It is likely that a number of jobs are somewhat similar in the same organization. Manager jobs, technical jobs, and administrative jobs are possible examples of this. Considering multiple jobs at once permits the organization to make comparative judgments to determine how unique the value of a specific job is compared to other jobs. If you don’t do it this way, the organization may be continually faced with leveraging one job off another similar-sounding job.

5. Reflect Market Differences: Jobs need to reflect the market no matter how much an organization is concerned about internal job value. In many instances, jobs of similar internal value enjoy substantially different values in the external market. For example, jobs that in a job description seem similar in scope and responsibility but that are in different areas of the business may have strikingly different market values (such as differences between technology and accounting and manufacturing and customer service).

With pressure to direct reward dollars to high-performance, inflation in job value wastes dollars that should be rewarding skill and competence growth and performance results. Job descriptions do not add value to organizations, employees do. So the process of managing the job description process needs care and attention.