How Job Descriptions are Ruining the World (or at least the workplace).

During the last 16 years I’ve worked with thousands of companies.  I’ve seen what great companies do to keep their staff and I’ve seen (and made a lot of money from as a recruiter) what companies do to drive staff away. 

I now back my own experience up with scientific research and advise companies on what they can do to retain their staff.  For a PDF of my new Keynote Presentation and Training Series click here.

One of the key principals and what I spend a great deal of time working with clients on is employee autonomy.  Daniel Pink talks a lot about this in Drive, Seth Godin in Linchpin and Marcus Buckingham in his management classic First Break all the Rules. 

What is employee autonomy?  Here’s what it is NOT!  A client of mine recently told me about a new policy in her company designed to increase recycling.  Now, the inner environmentalist in me absolutely loves this idea.  More recycling!  That’s a good thing, right? 

Then I heard about how there were doing it.  They decided to take all of the rubbish bins away from under individual desks.  You were allowed to have a cardboard recycling bin for paper, but not a rubbish bin.  Apparently too many people were simply throwing the paper into the rubbish and not taking the time to discriminate between the two receptacles under their desk. 

They are now being forced, like naughty children, to get up and go to the back of the room to throw their rubbish away.

Has this policy worked?  Shockingly no (irony intended).  Predictably people are now lining the cardboard recycling bins with plastic and turning them into rubbish bins.  One, particularly renegade individual simply throws her trash on the floor behind her - apple cores and all - and leaves it to the cleaners to pick up.  I kid you not - I couldn’t make this stuff up!

Employees like to be given objectives, not told how to do something.  Tell them why recycling is important, don’t take away their freedom to easily discard their half eaten lunch.

This is why job descriptions are ruining the workplace, if not the world.  Not the documents themselves, mind you - although in the United States from where I originally hail they are almost non-existent. 

Job descriptions are necessary.  The Gallup research done over 20 years with over 2 million people clearly showed that the happiest, most engaged employees are ones that had clearly defined roles.

This begs the question, what does “clearly defined” actually mean?  And this is where most job descriptions go horribly wrong.  They can get so detailed, so prescriptive, that one of two things happen.  Either they become so ambiguous that no one can tell what the role is actually responsible for.  Or, they completely take out all of the creativity and autonomy in the role. 

Daniel Pink gives case study after case study in his book Drive about how companies that give employees autonomy over their task (what they do), their time (when they do it) and their team (who they do it with) beat their competition time and time again.

The way most job descriptions are written takes this autonomy away.  Not only is this not productive, it can be downright destructive as employees metaphorically throw their apple cores over their shoulder.
So next time you get ready to write job description remember to clearly define the objectives of the role.  The outcomes, end results, lines of authority and stakeholder responsibilities. 

Then instead of telling them HOW to do the role, hire the right person for the job and let them do it  the way they see fit.  Not only will you beat your competition, you will have happier, more productive and more engaged employees.  And you will never again here those immortal words, “but that’s not in my job description!”

Kim Seeling Smith speaks, trains and coaches on Staff Retention and Career Management issues after having spent 15 years as a recruiter studying the differences between those companies that are extremely successful in keeping their critical people and those that consistently battle staff turnover.   www.MyCriticalPath.com