Are you still thinking like Henry Ford?

“Any customer can have a car painted in any colour that he wants as long as it is black?”

Do you know who said this? 

Many of us may recognise this as a quote which attributed to Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor company. 

Ford made this comment in relation to the Model T car in 1909. Despite lobbying from his sales and design team, Ford was adamant that his company should save costs and leverage efficiencies by only offering one type of chassis and one colour of car. And that colour was black. 

In his autobiography, Ford stated that his rational was that 95 per cent of potential car purchasers were not interested in the colour of their car and that they should be focusing on these consumers rather than the 5 per cent – labelled by Ford as the ‘special customers’ – who were potentially interested in a more distinctive look. 

There is no denying that Henry Ford’s approach was successful; when the final Model T ran off the production line on 25 May 1927, over 15 million cars had been produced. Whilst it is difficult to challenge the success of Henry Ford’s original thinking, it’s certainly fair to say that the one-size-fits-all approach is not shared by modern car manufacturers and does not remain at Ford today.

In the past, car manufacturers and designers approached heterogeneity and diversity amongst their customers as a problem or business challenge to overcome. 

Over time this mindset has shifted and manufacturers are increasingly recognising that responding to and tapping into individual preferences is a source of competitive advantage.

People who want a wider range of purchasing and personalization options are no longer thought of as demanding. To encourage and enable people to choose the options for their cars, showrooms can now be thought of almost as personalization centres set up to create a customized car-buying and driving experience. 

As well as being able to see and drive test and show cars, some showrooms now offer people the opportunity to use immersive technology to configure their cars. Having put on a virtual reality (VR) headset, customers of Volkswagen, Audi, Tesla and Toyota are now able to see, feel and hear what their final car will look like.7 Using augmented reality (AR) it’s now possible for customers to use their smartphone or tablet to project what their car will look like sitting on the driveway of their house.Why work should come in any colour

Why work should come in any colour

Unfortunately many organisations, leaders and managers view work, people, jobs and employee with the same eyes and dogma as Henry Ford. 

They see difference and diversity as a threat to productivity and effectiveness. They tend to box people in rather than setting them free. 

HR is often complicit in this too. We design detailed job descriptions which tend to tether people into fixed ways of working rather than trusting them to shape their roles (we’ve created an alternative to job descriptions). And we often subject requests to change or alter aspects of a job to formal scrutiny to determine whether or not they are ‘reasonable.’

In reality research overwhelmingly shows that when people are trusted to shape their work, they do so in a positive and constructive way. And in ways that benefit their colleagues and customers too. 

A diverse range of organisations including Virgin Money, Logitech, Widerøe Airlines and Connect Health have all reported benefits from enabling and encouraging job crafting as a practice and creating a more personalized people experience through applying concepts such as job crafting.

It’s time to bring this personal touch to work. 

Allowing people to personalise their roles, brings reality to the rhetoric that organisations want people to bring their whole and best selves to work. Rather than treating employees’ diverse strengths, passions and experiences as a threat to be controlled, genuinely people-focussed organisations can use this as a source of competitive advantage.

Not only does evidence suggest clear business benefits of creating a more inclusive and human approach to working, it is just fundamentally and morally the right thing to do. Afterall, work should not just be black. It should come in any colour.

If you are curious about exploring these ideas further you might ask yourself:

• Does your organisation genuinely treat diversity and difference amongst people as a threat or an opportunity?

• Are people able to personalise their experiences as work? It this open to all, or to use Ford’s analogy only ‘special employee’ such as those in management

• Do you create job descriptions and role profiles that limit rather than unlock the potential of colleagues?

If you want to explore these questions further get in touch. You might also find the following resources useful. 

The Job Canvas: A digital upgrade to the job description. Developed to support modern, flexible working practices.

Job Crafting: A concept that enables people to personalise their work and align their strengths and skillset to their job.

3 new Job Crafting articles every people professional should read

We believe that every HR and people professional should know about Job Crafting. In this blog we share 3 articles that we think you should read.

Job Crafting currently remains a fairly niche (and some might say nerdy) topic. However, the evidence behind the associated benefits of job crafting are so compelling in terms of engagement, retention, wellbeing and performance, that we are doing all that we can to raise the profile of the concept.

At its core, job crafting is about positively tweaking and shaping areas of your job to make it a better fit for you as an individual.

So trust us when we say if there is an article about job crafting we have probably read it. It’s great to see more being written about job crafting in academic and more mainstream press.

Here are 3 recent articles we have picked for you (yes, we’re nice like that) which highlight the role that job crafting can have in supporting current and contemporary workplace challenges and opportunities.

1. How to love your job according to science

[Photo: Luis Alvarez/Getty Images]

Website: FastCompany

Author: Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

With the pandemic bringing to light the need for more meaning, purpose and enjoyment in our jobs. This article provides you with 5 ways you can make your job better in areas that you can control.

One of the ways is to embrace job crafting.

“Whatever you do, you always have some autonomy and control to do it better”.

2. How Job Crafting can help digital gig-workers build resilience

Artwork by Franziska Barczyk

Website: Harvard Business Review

Author: Sut I Wong

We’re always interested to hear of different industries and sectors are crafting their jobs. We were even more excited when we heard about gig-workers.

This article suggests several strategies to help gig workers and platforms boost resilience through job crafting.

A supportive and collaborative job crafting culture is key to ensuring both a resilient gig workforce in the near term, and a healthy gig economy in the long term.

3. Leadership To Last: 4 Ways To Keep Employees During The Great Resignation

Website: Forbes

Author: Aliza Knox

There is lots of chatter around the term the ‘The great resignation’ and ‘The great imagination’. This article argues that leaders need to enable people to see how they can get what they need from their existing jobs, before moving on.

Of course, one of the ways you can do this is through encouraging job crafting.

One more tip for keeping employees engaged, and working alongside you: make sure their jobs grow with them.

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If you enjoyed this blog and are curious about job crafting we have some cracking stuff over on our website here. Also, if you want to go really deep into job crafting research you can check out Rob’s book Personalization at Work.

Thank you for reading.

What do HR professionals say about job descriptions? (it’s not good)

“It’s not in my job description.”

At our Job Canvas launch, we chatted with HR professionals from around the world and found out what they had to say about job descriptions.

In this blog we will share the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of what people pros liked and loathed about job descriptions.

1) The Good

Firstly, we’re going to start with the positives. We’re a positive psychology and wellbeing consultancy so it would be rude not to.

“Good to create role clarity, especially during change”.

What we have to say: We can agree, having a job description can create clarity about your roles and responsibilities in your job. However, often we find that they are not referred back to.

“Important for recruitment - to avoid discrimination & legally... if you end up in a tribunal”.

What we have to say: [Chloe says] I've just changed jobs, so am paying close attention to my new one! Before that it didn't evolve as my job evolved over time and didn't reflect a lot of what I did every day.

“A blue print for the skills you need to develop in the current role and the next”.

What we have to say: Yes, the job description can be something to refer back to, but surely there is a better way of listing your skills you need to develop? What about the purpose and value of your role?

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2) The BAD

These are some of the frustrations HR professionals shared at our launch:

“Job descriptions can be overly constrictive”

“Too specific and not agile”

What we have to say: We also found this with job descriptions. A barrier that job descriptions present are that they restrict and constrain people, not enabling them to perform at their best. “

“Not actually describing what I do on an everyday basis”

“Don't accurately reflect the work that people do”

“Limiting and hold people back from promotion”

What we have to say: The reality of job descriptions are that they don’t actually capture the true description of what we do at work. Often, job descriptions are actually just works of fiction.

“It’s a snapshot in time”

“Describes one point in time and doesn't usually evolve”

What we have to say: Our jobs and roles are changing all of the time to adapt to the world around us. Yet, our job descriptions remain the same. Therefore, they are out of date pretty much as soon as they’re written.

“Only used for recruitment”

“They've become a tick box - people rarely use them for anything other than recruitment and they could be better”

What we have to say: Other than onboarding and recruitment, can you think of another time you’ve used your job description? Most of the time job descriptions are used as a recruitment /pay evaluation tool only.

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3) The Ugly

“No mention of the meaning and purpose of your role”.

What we have to say: This is one of the biggest (ugliest) failings of job descriptions - the fact that they don’t capture or define the meaning and purpose of a job.

Over the last few years we have become more aligned and aware of our meaning and purpose at work. Yet, job descriptions are designed in a way that do not foster this. Not highlighting the impact of our jobs or an employees connection to the wider purpose of a job may lead to a disconnect and lack of engagement.

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What do you think?

What do you think? Are you a job description lover or loather?

Be sure to let us know. We’d love to hear from you.

Also, you can check out the Job Canvas here.

10 FAQs about the Job Canvas

You asked and we delivered!

There have been tons of questions surrounding the Job Canvas. Particularly at our Job Canvas launch, where people were very curious.

So we thought we would answer the top 10 questions we have received about the Job Canvas in this blog.

The Job Canvas is a digital upgrade to the job description. Developed to support modern, flexible working practises. The Job Canvas helps teams work with confidence and clarity and get the best out of themselves, their people and their jobs. You can find out more here.

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1. What is the Job Canvas?

The Job Canvas makes describing and mapping out your role incredibly simple.

With a few clicks, you can capture precisely what your role entails, the value that you add to others, the people you support and the resources you need to work at your best.

Once done, you can simply export the Canvas into a PDF.

The Job Canvas is a great starting point for high quality conversations about your job, your career and your development.

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2. What does the Job Canvas do?

The Job Canvas maps out your role using 9 essential elements, capturing key activities, stakeholders and customers.

On one page it provides a structured and clear way of presenting jobs which is easy to understand, customise, develop and review.

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3. Who is the Job Canvas for?

Anyone can use the Job Canvas. It’s designed to be used by employees to reflect on the way they current do their jobs and to identify what is working well and what could be improved.

The Canvas is a great tool for team leaders to be able to understand and explore how their colleagues view their jobs and have positive performance and development conversations with them.

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4. How long does it take to complete the Job Canvas?

In workshop we typically give people 2 minutes a section to complete. So this means that a draft job canvas can be completed in 18 minutes.

Typically it takes people around 30 minute to full and final job canvas.

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5. Why do organisations currently use the Job Canvas?

Early adopters of the Job Canvas have wanted to use the Job Canvas to enable:

• putting purpose, meaning and value at the heart of how people do their work

• encouraging clearer coaching-focused conversations between leaders and their teams

• enabling a personalised approach to working.

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6. How can the Job Canvas benefit my team or organisation?

There are many (many) ways the Canvas can support your team or wider organisation.

Here are a top 3 for you:

• Exceptional employee experience

  The Job Canvas enables people to reflect upon their roles, identify the areas and ways that they add value, and ways that they can grow, adapt and craft their roles to suit their strengths.
  

• Thriving Teams

  When the Job Canvas is part of regular operations, it will highlight a team’s key processes, resources, and colleagues. By having access to this data, team leaders can effectively succession and contingency plan should key colleagues move on elsewhere or systems fail.

• Organisational insights

  The Job Canvas offers direct and real-time feedback about how people perform their work and the value they provide to the people they serve and support.

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7. Can I see and analyse the data from the different Job Canvases people complete within my organisation?

Data from each individual Job Canvas can be collated and downloaded in various formats (e.g. a CSV file). This can then be viewed, searched and analysed using software such as Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel or integrated with other applications (e.g. Microsoft Power BI) to provide wider people analytics.

This can create insights about the job roles across a team or organisation (e.g. who are the key customers of certain individuals or teams and what resources do they need to be successful).

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8. Can the Job Canvas support Goal / OKR setting, appraisals and performance check-ins?

The Job Canvas is a great tool to use as part of any conversations focussed around how people currently do their jobs and how they might personally develop themselves and their work in the future.

It is therefore a perfect compliment to goal / OKR setting, appraisals and performance check-ins.

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9. Is the Job Canvas free to use?

The standard Job Canvas is free to use by individuals, teams and organisations. We want people to use it, share it and build upon it.

There is an investment cost for organisations who want to customise the Job Canvas (see question below) and use it commercially.

The standard Job Canvas is released under an Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike license. Users are free to use, copy and build upon the existing Job Canvas, but must give full identification and credit to Tailored Thinking.

The Job Canvas cannot be use for commercial purposes without consent from Tailored Thinking (just get in touch with us if you want to do this at [email protected]).

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10. I want to produce a customised Canvas for my organisation - what is the investment cost and price?

A customised (e.g. reflect their brand colours), be able to view the Canvases that have been created within their organisation, and be able to analyse and download the content of the Job Canvas.

To discuss the costs of producing a customised Job Canvas then please contact us directly at [email protected]

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Want to know more?

We hope that has helped clarify some of your first questions about the Job Canvas. If not, please do not hesitate to ask! You can message us on social media or email us at [email protected].

Remember, there is no such thing as a stupid question.

The 9 elements of the Job Canvas

The world of work is changing and we want to get people to look at their jobs in three dimensions (3D).

The Job Canvas helps teams work with confidence and clarity and get the best out of themselves, their people and their jobs.

The Job Canvas has 9 distinct elements. We will explore each in turn below and the questions we encourage you to ask yourself when you are completing the Job Canvas.

1. Core Value

What core value, task or service do you deliver to others (internally or externally)?

What problems do you solve?

What benefits do you provide?

Why does your job exist ?

What are you doing that someone else is not doing?

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2. Key Activities

What are the critical activities of your job?

Which activities are key to creating and delivering value to others?

What activities and services do others require from you?

What things do you spend your time doing?

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3. Key Resources

What are the tools, documents and systems which are critical to the successful delivery of your role?

What resources and tools (systems, equipment, documents) do you need to exist in order for you to do your role?

What could you not survive without?

During the pandemic if you worked from home, what tools, systems and resources did you need access to?

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4. Key Partners

Which people and teams do you rely on to do your job?

Which individuals do you rely on?

Which teams support you to do your job?

Who are the key suppliers of services (internally and externally) which you need?

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5.Key Customers

Who are the people who benefit from your work?

Who are your key customers, clients and stakeholders?

Who do you create and provide value to?

Who depends on your work in order to get their own work done?

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6. Customer Relationships, Service & Delivery

How do you engage and deliver your services to others?

What kinds of relationships do people want?

What service level agreements or standards do you have in place (if any)?

What hours do you need to work?

Where do you need to deliver your work?

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7.Engagement & Communication

What ways do you connect with people (internally and externally)?

How do you communicate with others - email, Slack, meetings, writing reports etc?

What technology do you use?

What informal ways do you connect with colleagues?

What flexibility do you have in terms of delivery?

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8. Strengths, skills & competencies

What skills, strength and knowledge do you use in your job?

What knowledge and skills do you need to do your job?

What personal strengths are needed?

What qualifications are required?

What core competencies are needed?

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9. Key Deliverables

How do you identify and capture the value you provide to others?

What are your core deliverables?

What objectives do you have for the year in terms of delivery and output?

What objectives do you have as a team or organisation?

What Service Level Agreements and standards do you have to deliver?

And that’s a wrap! The 9 key elements to map out your job.

Providing you with a structured and clear way of presenting jobs which is easy to understand, customise, develop and review.

Click here for more information on the Job Canvas.

Please reach out to us if you have any further questions. We’d love to hear from you!

Are you a career adventurer?

It’s time to think of your career as an adventure.

Often when we think about careers we think about a climbing a ladder.

Yet the reality for many of us is that a safe and sturdy ladder doesn’t exist. Consequently, the next step on our career path is often uncertain or unclear.

At Tailored Thinking we find it useful to think of your at a career as an adventure, or set of adventures . An adventure is exciting, bold and sometimes scary. There are opportunities to take risks and to learn and develop.

Rather than having an expectation that your career should be neatly defined, thinking about your career as an adventure encourages you to grow, learn and develop.

The (fabulous) team at Amazing If, encourages to consider our careers as squiggly. Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis talk about why people should embrace squiggly careers.

Firstly, they believe that a career is personal to the individual, there is no one size fits all career. Secondly, having a squiggly career enables and encourages people to develop in different directions. Sarah and Helen explain this further in their TEDx talk.

Thinking differently about your career

Here are 2 exercises to get you started to think about different career options, pathways and adventures.

1) An exercise for crafting your career adventure

This exercise involves peering into the future and considering what you might be doing from a career perspective in 5 , 10 or even 25 years’ time.  We recommend sketching out 2 or 3 different career scenarios or adventures you might have. Questions to consider are:

• In 2 – 25 years’ time what would be your dream job be internal and/or external to your current organisation?

• What will you be doing – what would a typical day or week look like? (what will you be doing, who will you be engaging with, what knowledge and skills will be using)

• What skills and experiences will you need to develop further to be able to fulfil this career adventure?

Having a clear image of a future work self can enable and encourage us to create, find and seize opportunities to do things in our current jobs that we might not otherwise have had the courage or conviction to try.

2) Craft your career with job crafting

The secret of many people with fulfilling and engaging jobs isn’t that they have waited to find the perfect job, instead they have created, or crafted that role themselves. You can read about job crafting in more detail here.

One way to take positive control of your job and career is through a concept called “job crafting”. Job crafting enables us to find opportunities for growth and innovation from within the jobs we already have.

Some questions that might get you started with job crafting:

• What skills or knowledge are you most interesting in developing further? Why is this? (skill crafting)

• What are your strongest relationships at work? (relationship crafting)

• What relationships would you like to build further? (relationship crafting)

• What gives you the greatest sense of accomplishment in your work? Why do you think this is? (purpose crafting)

• What changes could be made to your job to improve your health and wellbeing? (wellbeing crafting)

If you approach job crafting with a combination of curiosity and commitment you start to shift your work in a positive direction that will make it more enjoyable and stimulating in the present and ultimately more rewarding in the future.

Careers are things that you build rather than things that you are given. Whether linear, up, down, small, big or simply squiggly we wish you all the best with your career. Happy adventures.

To learn more about job crafting and how it is linked to career growth and progression you can download our free job crafting guide here.

Do we practice Job Crafting subconsciously?

In this guest blog Manahil Syed, Recruitment and HR Officer and MBA student shares her insights and recent findings from her study on job crafting.

This was a fascinating research project sponsored by Tailored Thinking and we were so impressed with it that we convinced Manahil to write a blog on it!

Job crafting sounds self-explanatory, to some extent. Like a sculptor carves a stone, inch by inch, in the same way, we can carve or modify various aspects of our job. But the size of the chisel is limited by our job description defined in HR’s books.

If we closely look at job crafting, we all practice at least some aspects of it. For example, we all have had that one annoying repetitive task at our jobs that we just want to get done with as soon as we can. Our pursuit of streamlining such tasks would fall under the ambit of job crafting.

Job crafting is generally divided into three types of activities, task, relational, and cognitive.

Task Crafting:

We can practice task crafting subconsciously by adjusting our routine tasks to our preferences in order to make them enjoyable. Moreover, a significant portion of task crafting is based on new tasks that you partake in or new approaches for routine tasks.

For example, your task is to arrange quotations from suppliers for required material. You must present all these quotations in a comparable form to the decision-making body, after removing all ifs and buts from quotations. Instead of manually doing all this, you decide to change the process and develop a standardised form which each vendor has to complete as part of their quotation. Needless to say, this is being done with the consultation of your supervisor. 

Relational Crafting:

Once done, you visit a colleague that you are on friendly terms within the IT department and ask him to provide consultation regarding uploading this form on the company’s portal so that you can download it in the desired format. Your colleague/friend does not directly deal with such stuff and he invites you for a cup of tea at the company’s cafeteria so that he can introduce the relevant person to you. All three of you discuss the feasibility, in terms of cost, time, and resources, of doing this exercise. Somehow, you manage to execute your plan and the new portal is up and running. Now you simply have to download the worksheet from the portal and review it for any bugs and present it to the decision-making body.

Cognitive Crafting:

After a successful presentation, you feel relaxed and elevated as you have brought in a structural change to your job description. You imagine positive word-of-mouth about your contribution to the company and how other departments will try to follow the lead of digitization.

This hyper-simplified example was presented to highlight aspects of job crafting. The whole thing starts with your overt motivation to improve your work and save yourself some extra time. A gap was identified, which even left unattended would not have affected your performance, when looked at from the supervisor’s point of view. The mere act of kicking off this project would come under the umbrella of task crafting, whereas approaching your supervisor and other colleagues for executing it comes under relational crafting. When the project is completed, your accomplishment-based gloating stems from your contribution to the company. Anything, that is out of the scope of your pre-defined work might come under job crafting. It is unlikely that anyone would make such a claim, that he/she does not work over and beyond the pre-defined scope.

If this is the case, then why do we need to know about job crafting?

My research at the University of Sheffield, in collaboration with Tailored Thinking, suggests people who knowingly practice job crafting have a greater level of workplace well-being as compared to people who obliviously practice it. This is related to the dynamics of awareness, cognition, and perception. A person using a smartphone of a prestigious and renowned brand is likely to have a better experience as compared to a person who uses a smartphone of an unknown brand. 

At the end of the day, we are all trying to do our best at balancing various aspects of our lives; get comfortable with whatever we have. Job crafting helps us by activating various primitive motivators to get the job done. Its benefits have the potential to go beyond one’s workspace.

Task crafting stimulates your creative problem-solving skills, relational crafting can help you develop relations that become long-term, even when you leave the job. Cognitive crafting helps in picturing yourself as an integral cog in the wider system.

It is better to practice job crafting knowingly as its benefits are much greater than the meagre cost of simply equipping yourself with its rudimentary knowledge.

If you want to find out more you can download our job crafting guide here.

Also, you can connect with Manahil on LinkedIn here.

Why it's time to ditch the Job Description

Over my career I’ve written, reviewed, edited and formally evaluated (high) hundreds of job descriptions and role profiles. And do you know what? I don’t think I’ve ever met a job description that I have really liked.

For many years, like many people professionals, I’ve tolerated job descriptions as a necessarily evil, something that was just a (frustrating) part of normal organisational and HR life.

More recently, as I’ve been more actively exploring the psychology, practices and processes of what makes people healthy, happy and highly productive at work, I’ve realised how destructive and damaging our reliance on job descriptions can be.

We’ve developed a form of “learned helplessness” when it comes to job descriptions – widely recognising their limitations, but using them as the only approach to capturing how and what people should do in their jobs. 

You could think of them like a blister on the foot of organisations caused by ill fitting footwear, yet despite wincing, we’ve never thought to change the shoes we are wearing.

Why Job Descriptions don’t deliver

The first job descriptions were developed over a hundred years ago to bring order and rigour to organisational structures, yet we have not developed this tool to keep pace with modern working practices.

The job description has failed to keep pace with changes in how we think about, describe and do work. Consequently, there are a number of ways in which they can bring more harm than help to organisations.

Here are 7 key reasons why I think job descriptions don’t deliver:

1. They are static documents which box people in - they don’t encourage innovation or personalisation

2. They are out of date as soon as they are written

3. They are often works of fiction - they don’t describe how a job is actually done

4. They take time to complete and are not easy to update

5. They don’t capture the true value or purpose of a role

6. They get lost across the organisation

7. They don’t provide organisational or people insight

1) They are fixed and box people in

One big barrier that stops people from being fully engaged and energised by their work is that they feel restricted and constrained in how they are able to perform their jobs.

Many of us are familiar with the concept of glass ceilings as an invisible (and corrosive) barrier that stops people – particularly women and people from ethnic minorities – from progressing within organisations.

I believe that traditional job descriptions can have the unfortunate impact of creating glass walls. These are invisible barriers on people which stop them from adapting, improving and shaping themselves and their jobs.

The consequence:

The hidden cost of rigid and homogenous job descriptions is huge. They can limit a sense of personalisation, development and growth which are the very things that makes people come and feel alive at work [1].

2) They are out of date as soon as they are written

Job descriptions by their nature reflect a snapshot in time. The consequence of this is that they are out of date as soon as they are written and their value and usefulness diminishes once they have been created.

As Alex Killick, Director at Leading Kind, once put it to me:

“Job Descriptions are like a brand new car, as soon as they drive off the forecourt they lose their value.”

The consequence:

The fact that documents are out of date as soon as they are written means that people don’t regularly refer to them. They derive no value or benefit in doing so. And any relevance a descriptions might have diminishes the longer that someone has been in their role.

3) They are often works of fiction

When they are created job descriptions often describe a wish-list of all the task and responsibilities that we expect (or perhaps hope) someone will complete in their job.

The reality is that job descriptions and role profiles don’t accurate capture what people actually do in their day-to-day work.

In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who - if they have had a job description produced for them - feels that it wholly captures, or gets to the heart or true DNA, of what they do or why they do it.

The consequence:

The impact of this is that employees don’t feel a sense of connection to their job description - rather than being something to be actively reviewed and discussed, it becomes something that is hidden in case it highlights gaps between the realities of what someone does and what - according to their role profile - they are expected to do.

4) They take time to complete and are not easy to update

One of my personal prejudices about job descriptions is that they are a massive time suck. Most of the job descriptions I’ve worked with are cumbersome documents which are not easy to update or amend.

Many organisations use fixed templates requiring generic text to be found, pasted into word documents and then re-formatted.

Getting to a final document often requires different versions being pinged to various stakeholders across the organisation.

The consequence:

The consequence of this is that people often disengage and detach from the process of completing job descriptions in the first instance, resulting in half-hearted and limp documents they don’t fully inspire or work for anyone.

5) They don’t capture the true value or purpose of a role

Whilst job descriptions regularly spill onto multiple pages they often fail to define or detail a core element of a job.

The purpose, or value of a job - the very reason that the job exists - is often missing or absent.

Most of us want to feel a sense of meaning in the work we do, yet we seldom design job descriptions in a way that fosters this.

We often don’t highlight the impact of the role, the people an employee helps or serves in their job, or an employee’s connection to the wider purpose of the organisation.

The consequence:

The potential impact of this is that people fail to see - or perhaps more importantly feel - how their work helps other people. Not only does a sense of meaning fuel people’s motivation but it can boost wellbeing and buffer stress and even burnout [2].

6) They get lost across organisations

A frequent frustration working in HR was trying to track down up-to-date job descriptions.

The reality is that most people didn’t update their job descriptions, and if they did they weren’t saved or easy to access or track centrally.

The consequence:

A consequence of this is that job descriptions are often documents that are hidden away on a hard drive gaining digital dust only brought out for new appointments, disciplinaries, promotions or the dreaded annual review or appraisal.

7) They don’t provide organisational or people insight

Despite most people - in theory at least - having a job description they are not easily analysed at an organisational level to gain insights into the roles that people do and the skills they need.

If you wanted to collate data about key skill and strengths or reporting lines in a specific function area then you would need to find (good luck) and analyse individual job descriptions.

Consequently, there is not a way to explore and gain insights from the vast amount of data that is included into a job description.

The consequence:

At a time where organisations are striving for data-driven and evidence-based practice it feels criminal waste that the rich data that we include in job descriptions cannot be usefully analysed.

Why technology has not improved the job description

Whilst there have been new technological development in the creation of job descriptions, to date most of the focus has been on making them easier and faster to complete.

Many HR systems offer generic checkboxes of skills, tasks and responsibilities and standardised text to enable person specifications to be quickly created. Whilst potentially saving time for the recruiting manager, innovations of this kind have not been used to improve the way we describe or define the work itself.

With the focus on making the production of job description faster we’ve missed the opportunity to make these documents better.

What’s the alternative to a job description?

If job descriptions aren’t fit for purpose and don’t reflect our modern ways of working what’s the alternative?

Rather than tethering someone to a fixed job description, proponents of more people-centred and self-managed approaches to working encourage us to trust people to take a different approach.

In Teal organisations jobs are defined by people rather than the organisation and in self managed structures such as Holocracy the job or more specifically role are defined by a collective team or circle rather than senior leaders.

The Corporate Rebels encourage us to forget fixed job descriptions and job titles, embrace job crafting and focus on Mastery and Talent instead.

At Tailored Thinking, we’ve been exploring and experimenting with a different approach we are calling the Job Canvas. This is digital tool designed to get to the value, purpose and DNA of a job and can be quickly and easily produced, updated and shared.

It’s time to take a different approach

I know at the end of these blogs I’m supposed to outline a clear call to action. I’m not expecting you to tear up or set fire to the job descriptions in your organisation or to dramatically delete them from your shared drive.

I know many organisations are reliant on job descriptions - particularly in the absence of a viable alternative. I therefore have humbler ambitions.

Next time you see, draft or review a job description ask yourself the following questions:

1) Is this adding value? - to the role holder, their colleagues or the organisation?

2) Does this create space for people to personalise or shape their roles?

3) Is this a realistic representation of the job?

And if the answer to any of these is no, then look to make a small change to make the document better.

If you have ideas to make job descriptions better then let us know. Perhaps you are a job description lover - I’d love to know why. And if there’s a different reason you have a distaste for descriptions please share.

Rob Baker

Rob Baker is the founder and Chief Positive Deviant of Tailored Thinking.

September 2021