Job descriptions

legal aid for employers

If you believe that job descriptions are just another routine part of the recruitment process, think again because UK employers are now using job descriptions to prevent discrimination and avoid potential litigation.

While four in five (82%) employers use job descriptions for some or all of their posts, more than one in five (21.2%) organisations deliberately use job descriptions in recruitment and selection to prevent unfair discrimination and for defending cases when it is claimed to have occurred. This figure rises to almost one in three (31.5%) among public sector organisations.

The results are released in the new issue (776) of IRS Employment Review (www.irsemploymentreview.com), published by LexisNexis IRS.

The findings are based on responses from 254 HR departments surveyed in February and March 2003. Other findings include:

Public sector organisations are more likely to have job descriptions for every post - more than nine in 10 (96.2%) use them for all positions in the organisation. Two in three (66.6%) private sector service organisations use job descriptions for all posts, compared with under half (40.9%) that do so in manufacturing and production organisations.

One in seven (13.6%) considered that the culture of their organisation did not support the formality of job descriptions.

Sending out job descriptions to potential candidates is an effective way of adding a dimension of self-selection to the recruitment process.

Seven in 10 (69.8%) employers use job descriptions when appraising employees.

Four in 10 (39.6%) organisations make specific reference to job descriptions in employeesí contracts

Almost three-quarters (72.8%) of respondents use person specifications in their organisations. The majority of these are in the public sector (91.2%) where we would
expect to find the use of more formal, transparent selection and development criteria.

More than half (55.6%) of those surveyed use job descriptions to identify training and development needs for their staff.

IRS Employment Review researcher, Noelle Murphy said:

ìNo longer is the job description just one element of the recruitment process; today, it is much more influential than many people may realise. The adoption of the EUís equal treatment Directive will mean that areas such as sexual orientation, religious belief, political views and age will soon be included in discrimination. HR practitioners need to ensure that any criterion used in job descriptions or person specifications, which could be viewed as discriminatory against a protected group, is objectively justifiable. It must be genuinely necessary in the performance of the role, and must not be a device to benefit members of one group of the population. If employers want to avoid litigation, they should audit job descriptions and person specifications. If they donít, they could find themselves facing expensive legal proceedings.î

The full survey is published in the current edition (776) of IRS Employment Review or can be found on its website