Is Your Job Description Holding you Back?

If you’re a seasoned professional, then perhaps you’ve forgotten the importance of understanding the big picture of your job - how it relates to the business strategy of your department and ultimately your organization’s goals. This happens often, after all, we keep busy enough devoting most of our attention to day-to-day activities and “tasks”. It’s important not to forget about how our job fits into the overall organization.



FACT: About 95% of medium and large size organizations use job descriptions to analyze and determine a job’s value within the organization.



Any job, or "box," if well defined and justified, is critical for the execution of any organization goals. The relationships between all the “boxes” should reflect the necessary skeleton needed to move an organization forward. The nice thing about organizations is that they still require human beings, not robots or computer, to fill these boxes. None of these are alike; hence, people with diverse backgrounds and sets of skills are needed to fill them. Each individual brings his or her personal touch to how each job is performed, and this brings the opportunity and possible advantage of enhancing his or her position to certain degree.




In order to succeed in your position you need to clearly understand what you’re supposed to do in your own box. This can be explained by a boss, but in a medium or large-sized organization a structured process to assign tasks and responsibilities is necessary.



To do this, companies request that the Human Resources department define each job’s duties and characteristics in a Job Description.



The Job Description helps the company define the following:

1. The main objective of the position, its function, and the role it plays within the company.
2. The responsibilities and the degree of decision-making freedom that the person who assumes this position has.
3. What functions and tasks the position must accomplish. This means describing the kind of work that must be done and according to what policies and procedures.
4. Where the position fits in the existing organizational structure. That is, in what area does the position belong, under whom do they work, who they oversee, who are its peers, etc.
5. What skills the occupant should have : education, knowledge, area of expertise, type and amount of experience required, etc.
6. Dimensions: The breadth of the position within the organization, the amount of money it is responsible for, its budget, its sales, the number of employees it supervises directly or indirectly, etc.

And last but no least, YOUR PAY!! As we said before, your Job Description should determine the internal value or hierarchy of the job within the organization, as well as the reference to compare your jobs with others similar in the market place. So if you are concerned about your pay, understand and demand an update of you Job Description.



Today, most organizations have stopped updating job descriptions because of frequent organizational structural changes. Have you seen your job description lately? When was the last time your boss or your Human Resources department asked you to update your job description? If it hasn’t been reviewed recently, it is probable that your position’s internal value hasn’t been updated. Even more likely is that your value has been erroneously compared in the market place with a job different from what you are doing now. Due to so much restructuring, it is likely that you have been given new responsibilities and tasks which are not reflected in a document as important as your job description, which helps determine its own value within the company and the price the market is willing to pay.



The job description is also a useful document to:

• Take your work and your career to the next step. How can you know when you have covered or have exceeded the needs of your job?
• Clarify your responsibilities and rights to act within your departments and in other areas
• Determine your performance. This document can help you have smarter conversations with you boss. For example, maybe your boss is asking you to do something that is not in your job description. With this updated document in hand, you can determine if it is fair to be evaluated based on what you are supposed to do and how to do it
• In the unfortunate case of an employment lawsuit, it can determine your required responsibilities and accurately measure your performance

We hope that the reasons mentioned above may convince you to ask your boss and/or Human Resources department to give you the updated job description.