Job Descriptions–A Forgotten Asset

Job Descriptions – A Forgotten Asset

In the middle of one of my many management learning experiences I was struck with how difficult it was to get every employee focused on a single picture of success, and to see how each of their own jobs fit into it.  I learned that you could not hire a new employee or change your organizational chart without first rewriting the job descriptions.  It is impossible to review an employee without having a clear job description.  Job descriptions and an organizational chart are the basis of any organization.  All personnel issues start and sometimes finish with the quality of job descriptions.  Public institutions do a better job of using job descriptions to hire people and define a potential new employee’s responsibilities.  I truly believe that private business often fails to use the discipline of effective job descriptions to define employee responsibilities and their roles in the organization as a whole.

When I was first given the responsibility of running the marketing and sales promotion division at The Bon Marche, I felt I needed to learn what people did, so I asked the personnel department to give me the job descriptions for my division.  I found that there were very few complete ones and that the previous senior manager preferred to have not only as few as possible, but to make them very general.  The belief was that the less people knew what others were doing, the better.  I spent a better part of two months rewriting all the job descriptions myself.

This exercise taught me a great deal:  the relationships of tasks between different employee groups, the expectations I had for the area managers, and how leads’ jobs differ from those of standard employees.  Let’s take the basic working relationships, for example.  Seeing who could make what decisions and who was responsible for what proved to be not only a quick way to learn my new area, but also created many questions that in turn, generated a whole list of structures and employee relationships that I wanted to challenge.  On the whole, I found it to be a great experience.

As I continued to restructure and redefine the organization to meet the many challenges of the day-to-day operation, I always focused first on the job descriptions and the organizational chart, knowing they had to be rewritten prior to any structural move.  In each case, the reward for adherence to this goal was a better understanding by the employees, of the issues and changes of the new structure.

The true test of this use of job descriptions came when we decided to re-do our entire production process, from traditional manual methods to a massive electronic publishing system.  In this transition, the approach was proven, and even enhanced.  We began with choosing what form of electronic publishing to use.  There were two options.  The first was an IBM system that had been designed to match the existing work flow, and duplicated many of the specific job functions of the traditional manual production system.  It made the existing environment electronic, with a high output capacity.

The second option was a Macintosh system that was very design oriented and established a work flow, production output, and job descriptions that were entirely different from the traditional manual production process.  We searched the United States for an organization using something like what we were considering, but could not find anybody with as big a system as we required.  It was obvious from our studies that we needed the creative environment offered by the Macintosh, but we were worried that we might have output problems.  We finally decided to risk the output problems because we felt the future would more easily correct Macintosh’s output than IBM’s creative gaps.

Once the decision was made, my senior team set about the task of rewriting the job descriptions and organizational charts of our new organization.  What a learning experience.  First, we were not sure what the exact job descriptions, job functions, and job tasks would be.  We were not sure how much of a work load individuals would be able to handle.  The personalities of the people who traditionally dealt with our clients generally didn’t match those of people who worked on the computers.  But in spite of these obstacles, we created job descriptions, reorganized our organizational charts, planned how to find new employees, decided on our severance packages and re-training programs, established our transition plan, and took off.

The job descriptions first allowed us to re-position employees into jobs their existing skills qualified them for, and showed us how much training they would require to stay in the new job environment.  The descriptions formed the rationale for why some employees were not retained, and established job requirements for the new employees.  From the personnel side, I would say the transition was smooth.  New employees were hired, some employees preferred to leave, some were asked to leave, some were re-trained.

After one hundred days of trying to force the production from the old system to the new, we hit a major wall.  The new system was running at full capacity.  Both new and old employees were working very hard, but no one knew for certain what the new work flow was, who made which decisions, or who was responsible for what function.  Large sums of money were being spent to get the work done outside, and the overall stress level was creating attitudes of distrust, disrespect, blaming, and potential explosion among employees.  I received an anonymous letter from an employee stating that in their opinion, we were on the verge of a total breakdown in all parts of the organization.

I must admit this was a very difficult time and as the senior manager I had to take responsibility.  I knew that even though we had worked hard at putting a good plan for transition together it had succeeded only in changing the employees to new jobs and tasks — and that was it.

At that moment I clearly understood Crisis Management, Issue Management and Standards and Procedures Management.  We had created standards and procedures, but unknown issues had caused a crisis.  This totally reinforced what I call the Principle of the Unintended Consequence, which states that no matter what the plan or intent, the unintended will always overpower the intended.

After we moved into Crisis Management, we clearly narrowed our focus, established priorities, defined important issues, and started to manage our way out of the production crisis.  But getting the work out the door was not going to fix the organization.  It was not going to re-establish people’s respect and trust in each other.  More needed to be done.

Now the use of job descriptions went to a new level.  In the past I had always been the one to write the job descriptions and use them to define people’s roles in my organization.  I realized that nobody knew what the new organization was going to look like, that I needed a new approach, one that would take the strength and discipline of the job descriptions and let the employees empower themselves for a new culture, a new work flow, a new environment.

I started where I had always started, with me looking at the job descriptions.  But this time I handed them out to everybody in the organization.  I scheduled meetings with each work group in which we discussed their job descriptions, their functions, responsibilities and tasks.  Then I asked, “What issues are in the way of getting these tasks done?”  Each meeting started the same, with my acknowledging that the activities of the last few weeks had created a need to redefine our roles and functions in the organization.  We then went around the room and each person read their job description out loud.  People were asked if they agreed with what was being read and whether any of the statements required clarification.  Finally, we discussed what issues were getting in the way of their ability to do the job.

If job functions between different work groups were not clearly defined, a second meeting was scheduled between the two groups to discuss these issues and make decisions as to how proceed.  Within thirty days of this exercise the new organization was communicating and operating at a higher level than the best of the traditional organizations.  People were trusting each other and helping each other solve problems.

Job descriptions are basic to any organization.  Using this most basic tool as a means of employee empowerment can significantly enhance the overall production level and job satisfaction level of every employee.  I will never let a year go by without meeting with every employee group to discuss their jobs and what issues are in the way of their performance.