You can take several approaches to crafting position descriptions. Depending on your department and your style, you may choose any of the following methods:

• Talk with employees and/or their managers about their work, soliciting their input to incorporate into your ideas about how to describe the position.
• Draft position descriptions for your employees’ jobs. Discuss your drafts with them to ensure they understand your expectations and standards for the position.

It's important to think structurally about the position, rather than describing the unique qualities of the individual currently holding it. Try the following tactics:

• Think broadly in terms of outcomes, responsibilities, and accountabilities, rather than simply listing tasks and duties.
• Cluster responsibilities into broad functional areas, such as project management, customer contact, supervisory responsibilities, etc.
• List activities or tasks underneath each broad functional area.
• Strive for clarity, especially when using terms with multiple connotations.
• Remove ambiguity regarding our equal employment opportunity values to decrease risk of not being in compliance.

Position descriptions will be used to monitor and evaluate employees and will be written behaviorally, using action verbs. You should do the following:

• Begin each task-oriented sentence with an action verb (i.e., analyze, coordinate, plan).
• Be as specific as possible when describing tasks and responsibilities, using the following right and wrong examples for guidance:

Wrong: "Be professional"

Right: "Observes work rules and practices covered during the orientation process concerning punctuality and breaks"

Wrong: "Provide good customer service" 

Right: "Meets agreed-upon deadlines for faculty members with an established two-week deadline for submission"

In the spirit of continuous improvement and process review, position descriptions should evolve in response to emerging priorities or shifts in organizational and departmental needs. Be sure to assess and update position descriptions in the following ways regularly:

• Let employees know that their position descriptions are subject to change at any time.
• Ensure that employees understand the difference between their Classification Standard and their position description—although it may be valid when someone says, "That's not in my position description," it may indeed be in their classification standard.
• Review position descriptions when discussing performance expectations and development plans for the coming year with employees.
• If changes identified in your annual plan involve fundamental additions or deletions to the existing functions described in position descriptions, you may need to incorporate those changes into your employees' position descriptions.

The draft position description should be submitted to Employment Services for a final review, revision, and approval. Once approved, the position description will be routed for approvals.