Having a good job description for every position in your company, and writing one for each emerging or revised position, will help you secure and retain good staff. A clear job description forms the basis of your contract of engagement with your staff, so it is important to set out all the expectations and requirements essential to the position.

If you develop a job description template identifying the key elements of describing any position in the company you will only need to revisit the template and fill in the blanks to standardise your job descriptions and maintain a database of descriptions for each position in the company.

Don’t be afraid to review job descriptions as often as necessary and generally on an annual basis. These reviews allow you to plan how people will have their positions upgraded, or changed. They can form the basis for salary renegotiations and also for succession planning.

It is important not to change the roles and requirements of a position without negotiation with the incumbent and making sure the new description is clear and concise and the conditions have been agreed. These negotiations about change and the clarity of the job description will form the basis for trust and loyalty between a company and its employees.

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Job descriptions are valuable tools to enhance workplace harmony; clarify roles and responsibilities; create a platform for performance management and staff appraisal; form the basis for negotiations around salary and also to plan succession within the company, particularly when trying to retain good staff.

A simple recipe for a good job description includes the following ingredients:

The title of the position and the department in which the position is held should go together if possible. Good titles are those that accurately reflect responsibilities and denote the area in which the person has those responsibilities. For example;

  • Machine Operator, Excavations – this is a title that tells us the person who holds the position operates machinery that is used in the field of excavation
  • Director, Operations and Planning – lets us know this person is responsible for overseeing the planning aspect related to the operations of the company – a strategic rather than operational role
  • Manager, Learning and Development – says this person manages the section involved in staff training and professional development
  • Administrative Assistant, Office of the Secretary General – a person who provides administrative support in a particular office

An overall description of the responsibilities of the role couched in terms of productivity. Information in this section relates to how the position fits within the company and how the position supports the goals of the organisation. This should be brief, no longer than 3-4 sentences.

The next section outlines the main areas of responsibility of the position. Each area needs to be described in terms of an action using verbs such as supervises, controls, liases with, negotiates, instructs, manages, organises, operates, supports and etc. Each description must have an action verb and should be listed in order of importance to the position, with the main responsibilities listed first. It is important in this section to try and catch all the known responsibilities of the position. This will give you a realistic picture of what this position holder does, how important they are to the success of the company and also at what level they need to be compensated. If you come up with a very long list you also need to check it for reality – will one person really be able to carry all these responsibilities? If one person has this number of responsibilities what level in the organisation do they fit – are they technical, operational, managerial, strategic, directorial? This will determine the amount of compensation the applicant will expect and the organisation will need to offer to secure good applicants.

Describing relationships is important. The job description should identify who the person reports to directly and indirectly and identify who are the senior people most involved with this role. It also needs to describe who will be reporting to this position; how many people and what their responsibilities are. It is good practice to describe the reporting structure and/or attach an organisational chart so applicants can position themselves in the company and know their spheres of influence and responsibility.

Qualifications and preferred experience now needs to be identified. It may be the position requires certain licences; membership of a particular organisation or association; or involvement in activities outside the work environment. If a professional qualification, level of education or certification is required, list it. When  doing this section be realistic and also allow for a broad range of specifications. If you are looking for experienced people be careful how you phrase the experience requirement. Some people can have ten years experience which is really just one year experienced ten times! Ask for demonstration of skill rather than years of experience. Every job description needs a set of competencies and a clear definition at what level that person needs to demonstrate their competence. This record of competence in each job description feeds your organisation’s competency framework (see article below about competency frameworks).

Finally it is good practice to identify any probationary period; period of engagement; length of contracts offered and the review process for remaining successfully employed. This area should identify any performance management and appraisal processes and identify a contact in the Human Resources office who can discuss the position and all requirements related to it.

Now that you have developed job descriptions for your company make sure every competency, skill or qualification is identified and recorded in your competency framework, and that the expected level of expertise in these areas of competence is identified for each position.

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