Role of Position Description

Question: Explainthe role of position description. Answer: A position description defines the roles and responsibilities a person has to step into as a part of his job. It goes without saying that it is of extreme importance that a person needs to know what he is getting into before starting with something. With a clear job role in mind, a new employees transition into his job is seamless and he starts delivering the work as if it all came naturally to him. A well designed position description not only increases job satisfaction, employee motivation and performance, but it also reduces the amount of stress an employee feels because of the job (Garg Rastogi 2006). As the role complexity and role ambiguity increases, stresses related to work increase making it more and more difficult for an employee to be committed to his task. A good positon description gives an employee the clarity about the routine tasks he needs to perform as a part of his job; but more than that, it serves him as a guiding instrument on how to shape his future career. A customised position description will always play to the strengths of the employee and try to get him to reach to the best of his potential. A position description not only gives a guideline for an employee to work with, it also provides his manager with a baseline from which to measure his performance. Having specific, measurable results gives both manager and subordinate to have a fair view of employees performance. An employee performing haphazard work apart from his position description is always conscious of the fact that the work was not a part of his job and thus harbour resentment. And, one of the best ways to gauge employee performance as well as the fact that whether the employee understands his job properly or not is self-assessment. His self-assessment should tell an employer how well the employee has been able to grasp his job requirements and how well he thinks he has been performing. This also helps in performance appraisal of the employee since the preliminary assessment was done by him himself, there is a sense of non-biasness and institutional justice that employee feels. In The Motivation to work, Herzberg, Mausner and Snyderman (2011), talk about how a well-designed position description acts as a motivator for an employee and is true for both the types of motivational factors viz. Hygiene factors like Salary, Status, perks, etc. and the Motivators or the intrinsic factors like authority, achievement, responsibility, etc. Making sure that an employees position description suits the employees skills and abilities ensures that employee is engaged well with the organization, committed to it and feels a part of it. Breaking it down father, the employee performs well at both individual and team level. When initial work expectations of an employee do not meet his actual job, there is a feeling of discontentment and disappointment in the employee which finally leads to a negative job outcome (Hermanson, Hill and Ivancevich 2009). Oft times, the reason for this disappointment is not quite apparent since the changes and deficiencies in the job expectation and actual job are so small that they arent necessarily obvious. As important as it is for an employer to design a good position description, it is equally important that it is well suited to the person the job is meant for. Basically it helps find right people for the right job and assigning correct role to each person in a team ensures the success of the team in the long term. Setting a particular type of goal for a given employee can significantly improve not only performance but also the quality of the performance. Even more important is that the document communicated well to the employee so that the employee is well aware of what are the job expectations. And the good part about meeting job expectations is that with a well-placed praise, you can get it to be repeated and thus increase employee productivity (Woerpel, 2015). As the amount of clarity about a job increases, a person starts getting more and more involved with his job. According to Paullay, Alliger and Stone-Romero (1994), job involvement is the degree to which one is cognitively preoccupied with ones present job. Once the employee starts getting more engaged with his job, a sense of responsibility starts creeping in. But more than that, with increasing job involvement comes a sense of ownership of the job and ones pride in the work accomplished by him. And this sense of accomplishment is a great binder of an employee to his job and in turn to his company. This increases the persons emotional attachment, involvement and identification with the organization (Lok and Crawford, 2001). The more the commitment the employee feels with his job, the more motivated he will feel to be inventive and innovative with it and eventually help in the overall success of both employee and the firm (Ali and Zia-ur-Rehman 2014). An employee committed to his organization holds the companys shared values sacred to his heart and when this sentiment is widespread in the organization, it creates a strong organizational culture (Manetje 2005). A few of the most effective practices to improve employee engagement in the organization is through defining the employees role in organizations purpose, supporting and valuing him and by creating sustainable reward systems (Halm 2011). This means an increase in an employees control over the task assigned to him and a corresponding increase in the job performance and satisfaction because of the task ownership. However, this task efficiency is not limited to only individual level. Improving job satisfaction and job commitment improves the functioning of a person whether working alone or in a team (Nancy and Daniel 1996). As the position description clearly demarcates the tasks employee has to perform, performance measurement is eased down to a great extent. The obvious next step from appraising a well performing employee is to reward him for his good performance which acts not only as an appreciator for his efforts, but also a means of motivating the employee to continue on with his performance. Organizational rewards come in various different forms and packages. Long-term incentive plans like stock options, security benefits and team-based rewards such as profit-sharing plans are some such rewards being given to motivate and encourage employees towards continuing excellence (Zhou, Zhang and Montoro-Snchez 2011). Rewarding and recognizing employees also creates a strong culture where employees feel empowered and motivated to work. Recognition stems from the fact that an individual or a team performed up to the mark or even excelled beyond it. Not recognizing and appreciating your employees for their commendable job might lead to a feeling of disengagement, underappreciation and disenchantment with the work (Alexander 2016). One of the most important reasons residing at the root of employees less than commendable job performance is the clarity about job expectation. If that clarity is missing, howsoever skilful an employee, he will always under-deliver. Thus, the importance of a good position description cannot be overemphasized. However, giving recognition where its due makes employees feel valued and they are better able to engage and connect with the companys aspirations and goals and hence eventually help with the companys bottom-line. In their research on the role between leader reward behaviour and employee behaviour, Jackson et al. (2012) theorize that the employees sense of organizational justice is evoked from his perceived impartiality of the leader towards the members of a team. This has a direct effect on three things viz. Task performance, Organizational citizenship behaviour and turnover intentions. At the same time, it is also important that context specific rewards are distributed. While cash would be the most preferred form of reward, its effect might not last that long. It is prudent to give rewards after putting some thought into it. For e.g., at times, a boosting word, or a weekend party thrown by the leader might work just as well as a cash reward and it works for strengthening the team bonding too. These give rise to the concept of intrinsic rewards such as job enrichment, job rotation, work flexibility and extrinsic rewards such as ESOPs, long term incentive plans, bonuses, etc. and which of them can be applied where to derive maximum benefit out of them viz. motivate an employee to the max. Thus, it is in the favour of a good firm as well as a great manager that he is able to assign the right task to the right person. And this entails the perfect communication of a persons position description to him. A good position description helps an employee acclimatize easily to his job, understand the requirements of the job thoroughly and excel at it. Ease of acclimatizing to the job in turn translates into goal mapping and efficient future planning for the employee. The result is a happy employee who is not thinking of leaving the organization any time soon and is rather willing to work for its progress. Performance appraisal and rewarding are simplified to a great extent by the use of a good position description. And once an individual is happy, it also results in high motivational levels across the team, increased productivity and a culture of innovation is built in the organization. Hence, increased organizational commitment, increased innovation and improved employee retention are few of the most obvious benefits of a good position description. On the other hand, an employee who is feeling unappreciated and neglected is disgruntled with the management all the time and is thus responsible for spreading this discontent to the whole team. Even if the position description was not completely suited to a person the first time around, sincere efforts should be made as soon as possible to rectify the mistake so that the employee knows that the organization is ready to support him in whichever way possible and his sense of belongingness to the organization increases (Duyar 2012). Plus, such a move will be in the favour of the organization as well. Not only do they retain an employee and make a stronger bonding with him, the mangers who designed the position description in the first place get a chance to learn from their mistake and can avoid repeating it again. References Alexander, B 2016, The true impact of reward in the workplace, Employee Benefits, industry insight, April, viewed 10th June 2016. Ali, N and Zia-ur-Rehman, M 2014, Impact of Job Design on Employee Performance, Mediating Role of Job Satisfaction: A Study of FMCG's Sector in Pakistan,International Journal of Business and Management,vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 70. Dodd, NG and Ganster, DC 1996, The interactive effects of variety, autonomy, and feedback on attitudes and performance,Journal of Organizational Behavior,vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 329-347. 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