JOB DESCRIPTIONS, PERFORMANCE APPRAISALS, and salary administration are important management tools and valuable functions that every company performs, either formally or informally. But if the people administering them are not properly instructed in the purpose and use of these tools, they can be seriously mismanaged.
We need to speak of these functions from a conceptual viewpoint. Discussion of precise details (such as the forms used) is not feasible because of the great variety in approaches that exists between industries, and even between companies within individual industries.
Even companies without a formal program use these techniques—although sometimes poorly. Informality is more likely to occur in smaller companies that are controlled by family members or by one or two people at the top. These individuals may feel they’re being equitable and that all their employees are satisfied with the fair treatment they’re receiving. That may indeed be the case, but the chances of it are remote. Even without a formal program, someone in charge decides which jobs are most important (job evaluation), makes a judgment on how well people are doing (performance appraisal), and decides how much each employee is going to be paid (salary administration). So even if the motto is “We’re all like one happy family, and as the parent I make all the decisions on the basis of what’s fair,” the company does have a program—with all the idiosyncratic biases of the “parent” thrown in.
JOB DESCRIPTION BASICS
Most companies use job descriptions, although they may range from very informal to highly structured descriptions. A job description describes what is done in varying detail, and it usually includes hierarchical relationships.
Some companies write their own job descriptions; others use a system designed by a management consulting service whereby some company people are trained to write the descriptions and others are taught how to score the jobs to rank them within the organization.
A job description typically tells what is done, the educational background required, how much experience is needed to perform the work competently, what the specific accountability of the job is, and the extent of supervisory or management responsibility. The description may also spell out short-term and long-term objectives and detail the relationships of people involved, including what position each job reports to. It will often mention the personal contacts the job requires, such as interactions with the public or governmental agencies.
THE THREE-TIER APPROACH
When writing job descriptions, you’ll find it helpful to use the “three-tier approach.” The three tiers are:
1. Technical skills and knowledge
2. Behaviors
3. Interpersonal skills
In tier one, you specify what the person will need to do—the technical skills and knowledge required.
Then you add a behavior-based tier to the description. This tier describes the way the person will need to act or behave while performing the job duties. For example, the behaviors needed in tier two might include having good follow-through, being innovative and creative, or showing a commitment to quality.
The third tier is the interpersonal skills tier. Here the requirements for a particular job might include being a good listener, being a team player, or accepting criticism from others.
Many job descriptions focus only on the technical aspects of the job, which is tier one. However, the behavioral and interpersonal ones are just as important. In fact, most experienced managers say that behavioral and interpersonal competencies are greater predictors of an individual’s success on the job. When writing job descriptions, make sure that each of the three tiers is addressed.
JOB SCORES
At some point, you’ll write a job description, either for yourself or for some of the people reporting to you. Some companies allow the description to be written by the employee and then reviewed and modified as necessary by the manager. It is best if the description is a joint effort by the employee and the manager so that there is agreement as to what the job includes. This will help reduce disagreements down the road.
A committee specifically trained for that purpose usually does the scoring of the job. Often, the HR department does it. (We will not discuss how, because that varies by company.) The points arrived at in the ratings process will usually determine a salary range for each job, and the range may go from new and inexperienced to a fully seasoned professional on the job. If the midpoint salary of a job is considered 100 percent, then the bottom of the range could be 75 or 80 percent of that and the maximum for the outstanding performance would be 120 to 125 percent of that midpoint.
Since everyone knows that the score determines salary range, the score becomes crucial in many people’s minds. As a result, there is a tendency for people to overwrite job descriptions in order to enhance the salary range. Filling a job description with such boilerplate copy usually works to a disadvantage. If a description is puffed up, it forces the committee to wade through the hyperbole to get to the facts. Job evaluation committees know exactly what the writers are doing, so the puffing up has the opposite effect. On the other hand, job descriptions that are lean, accurate, and to the point aid the committee in doing its work. So, if you write a job description, avoid the temptation to load it up. It is highly unlikely you will fool or impress the scoring committee.