Everyone out there, no matter what they are responsible for, has certain tasks or responsibilities as part of their job that they enjoy doing. Likewise, there are certain other aspects to the job that they . . . would prefer not to have to do.
Often the emotional reaction is even stronger.
I work in Human Resources, and personally have never liked being responsible for job evaluation. A thankless task if ever there was one, and one certain to impact the number of Christmas cards I received each year. But that's another story.
Line and staff managers have their own likes and dislikes as well, but it's a hard-and-fast certainty that they don't like to write job descriptions. Why? Because they hate them, and will look sideward at HR when they see us coming. We're the folks who insist on bothering them with this administrative hassle.
Yep, that's what most of them think. But why? What are the friction points that cause so many Managers to start grinding their teeth when the subject even comes up?
- Many don't see the point: most view the writing (preparation) of a job description as a make-work effort, when "everyone knows" the job already. So why do we need to do it, they grumble. Why do we have to write it down?
Or, why don't you do it?
They consider this onerous task as filling an HR need, not one of their own. So it's not a necessity, not a priority and certainly doesn't help them. To be fair though, not everyone feels as strongly, but you'll see this reaction often enough to sense a common behavior.
- The formatting is not manager-friendly: so-called HR "specialists" are always tinkering with the form template, seeking a better way to describe a job. But that better way usually results in a description preparation process that is overly long, tedious and a drudgery to follow.
After all, how many ways can there be to describe the tasks and responsibilities of a job? Here is where HR consistently shoots itself in the foot, by making the simple more complex, the straightforward more convoluted and an easy job a trying ordeal. At least that's the way it looks from the manager's perspective.
- They take too long to complete: over time the forms get lengthier, the instructions more complex and the questions that need to be answered more numerous. And the result? When something you don't like to do takes a long time, what naturally follows is a combination of delay and reduced quality.
Some Managers will also rush the process, will have the employees themselves do the work (a separate challenge), will ignore information sections, will fail to properly complete others, etc. A real mess can be sent to HR.
- Rumor: better writers get better deals: managers don't look at themselves as writers, and they can't seem to shake the bias that better written job descriptions get higher job evaluation scores. "If only I could word this right," is a common self-criticism, as if the reader takes every turn of phrase as gospel.
So another reason for delay is because they know they're not very good at writing descriptions, so they put off starting. Just like a homework assignment.
- They have better things to do: this is the bottom-line criticism, the core reason from many a complaining manager; "I'm a manager; I have a department / business / empire to run. I don't have the time to waste writing job descriptions." In other words, you do it - and they don't much care who the you is.
Not a pretty picture, is it? But it doesn't have to remain that way.
In my next post we'll flip the coin and look at what you can do about this hatred-thing. There are ways to create a win-win scenario, and perhaps even get a smile (albeit a small one) from your management contacts.
Stay tuned.
Chuck Csizmar CCP is founder and Principal of CMC Compensation Group, providing global compensation consulting services to a wide variety of industries and non-profit organizations. He is also associated with several HR Consulting firms as a contributing consultant. With over 30 years Rewards experience Chuck is a broad based subject matter expert with a specialty in international and expatriate compensation. He lives in Central Florida (near The Mouse) and enjoys growing fruit and managing (?) a brood of cats.
Image courtesy of juhansonin
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