If anyone questions your layoff selections—and they will—employees’ attorneys are going to scrutinize the job descriptions on which you based your determinations. What will they find? A full set of up-to-date, accurate, and complete job descriptions, right? Well, maybe not a full set—and maybe not all accurate and complete and up to date, either. Here are three very common mistakes employers make in this area:
- Inaccurate
Pick up a few of your job descriptions at random and, as you read them over, you’ll likely say, “Oh, well, she doesn’t do that anymore because…” As your company changes and evolves, your job descriptions need to as well. - Incomplete
Too often we go for the “quickie” job description, e.g., “Drives forklift truck in warehouse.” That’s not enough—what about training, what about maintenance, what about roadworthiness checks, fueling, operating capacities, loading and unloading rules, and so on? Even for seemingly straightforward jobs, the job description must be complete. It must have enough detail to be useful and should indicate essential duties. - Out of date
Jobs change with surprising rapidity. In theory, the job description doesn’t reflect the person in the job, just the job itself. But in reality, when different people do a job, they bring different backgrounds to it, and they may do it differently. And those changes tend to get passed on to the next person who has the job.
Furthermore, even small modifications in systems and your organization can dictate changes as well. You don’t want to be on the witness stand saying, yes, this is the job description on which we based our layoff decision—it is completely up to date except for these three key duties that are now totally different.
Accurate and well-written job descriptions are a must for today’s employer. They provide a basis for job evaluation, wage and salary surveys, and an equitable wage and salary structure. They help applicants and employees understand what’s required for the position. And, they can be an important tool to help employers comply with the reasonable accommodation requirements of the newly revised Americans with Disabilities Act and California’s disability bias law. A key step in creating or updating job descriptions is to gather detailed information about each position from those in your organization most familiar with it. Our exclusive questionnaire helps you do just that—click here to download our Preliminary Job Description Questionnaire now.