Last time I talked about the importance of workforce planning, and how, when done effectively, it can give you a strategic advantage. Part of workforce planning is ensuring that you have clearly defined the key job roles (skills sets, experience, behaviors) that are needed to help you achieve your corporate goals and objectives.
Start by defining the work that needs to be done, and the skills and competencies required for that work. If you’re starting from scratch, you may want to use an employee who is currently doing the work successfully as a model to identify required skills, experience and behaviors, but remember that a job should be designed around the role requirements, not a particular person.
Once you’ve defined and designed the critical job roles to meet your needs today, spend some time thinking about skills/job roles you may need in the future. This will be helpful in identifying skill gaps, and determining whether it makes more sense to hire for those skill gaps or to develop current employees to fill the gaps.
Once you’ve completed your job role designs, it’s time to create formal job descriptions. You may already have job descriptions, but these should be reviewed and updated at least annually, and whenever someone leaves. Each time someone leaves a role, consider whether you need to add or change responsibilities in that role based on future needs. Many organizations fail to periodically review job descriptions. Over time the job evolves with the changing organization and needs, and the job description ends up looking nothing like the actual role. This can present a problem in recruiting, hiring and performance management.
Remember when you are writing job descriptions, they should be as detailed as possible. This will help you recruit the right person for the job. It will also give you a legally defensible document, or ‘benchmark’ for performance management. Be sure your job descriptions include at least the following:
- Job title
- Job location
- A summary of the job objective/purpose
- Scope of responsibility
- Reporting relationships
- Qualifications required (experience, skills, competencies)
- Key functions and duties (including standards)
- Physical requirements of the job
If you need help defining job requirements or creating effective job descriptions, please contact me.