Though this seems like a huge undertaking, up-to-date job descriptions for all of your employees can be accomplished with less work than you might think and provide a number of liability reducing benefits. Below I will discuss how these descriptions tie into your overall human resources system and explain the benefits that come from reducing liability.

Accurate job descriptions will allow you to find the correct people for the job. When that happens, you reduce the chance of having problems with employees and, ultimately, having to terminate employees. Fewer terminations mean fewer lawsuits. Why do accurate job descriptions help you find better employees? Often times employers change the scope of the job, add responsibilities and change the way the organization works without updating job descriptions. While adapting is a good thing, many employers fail to keep job descriptions up-to-date along the way. When it comes time to hire a new employee, you usually are not going to have the time to rewrite the job description completely and you may not know exactly what the last employee was expected to do. That means that you might not be able to evaluate candidates properly or give them a clear picture of the job. If either of those things happens, it could lead to a poor employment relationship or a termination.

Job descriptions are also critical if you are ever sued by a person who fails post-offer examinations. If you do any post-offer testing you need to make sure the testing is narrowly tailored to the requirements of the job. If someone fails an exam and you need to take the job away, there is the potential for a lawsuit. If that happens, a job description for that position will be critical in determining if the tests were related to the position for which the person was applying.

Similarly, there is always potential for liability under the Wisconsin Fair Employment Act and Americans with Disabilities Act if an employee argues you did not make reasonable accommodations for their disability. The definition of disability is expanding and seems to encompass anything that affects work performance. If you ever need to terminate someone due to a disability and you are sued, the job description will be important in determining which accommodations may have been reasonable. To aid in this determination, job descriptions should not only explain the specific job, but how it fits into the organization as a whole.

So, how is creating these job descriptions less work than you might think? While it is not that it’s necessarily less work overall, but if you are the manager, you should not feel like it is your job to invent a job description for each employee in the organization. Instead, managers need to be the facilitators – the people who guide others in the organization on how and when to update job descriptions.

The process should involve (1) each employee’s immediate supervisor reviewing/updating the job description, (2) job descriptions should be updated each year by supervisors and employees during the performance review process and (3) if employees will agree, ask them to review the job description before leaving and ask what could/should be changed to give new employees a more clear picture of what to expect.

At first, the supervisors may view this as extra busy work, but in reality it goes back to the idea that if the job description is correct you can get better employees – a benefit for everyone. Employees know best what they do in their job and should be involved in revising the job description. Again, this means that as a manager, you do not write and revise every review, but you are engaged in setting policies and expectations for supervisors and employees to take job descriptions seriously.