Goodkin who is a partner in the Los Angeles office of law firm Rutter Hobbs & Davidoff, gave her tips at a recent webinar hosted by BLR.
4 Major Reasons You Need Job Descriptions
Just for openers, said Goodkin, there are four major reasons for having job descriptions:
1. Knowing What to Look for When Recruiting
Given a well-crafted job description, a business can recruit wisely, focusing on the skills and attributes really needed in a particular position.
2. Evaluating a Candidate with a Disability
A description that accurately depicts the essential functions of a job can be crucial in helping you decide whether someone with a disability can do the job—as well as providing a good defense if you get sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
3. Exempt/Non-Exempt Classification
Good job descriptions help employers properly classify employees as exempt or nonexempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
4. Performance Evaluation
Finally, accurate job descriptions are a great foundation for (at least annual) performance evaluations and/or if termination becomes necessary, says Goodkin.
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ADA Compliance—No Snap Judgments
As for ADA compliance, says, Goodkin, the role of the job description is to define what’s truly necessary to the performance of any job. That helps an employer determine—without making dangerous snap judgments that could lead to liability—whether an individual can perform all the essential functions of a job in spite of a disability.
If the person can’t manage a marginal or occasional duty, the employer can consider moving that to someone else’s job. But employers are not required to reallocate essential functions nor to create a position that someone with a disability feels he or she is able to perform.
The Exempt/Nonexempt Problem
Goodkin stressed how valuable accurate job descriptions can be in helping employers properly classify their workers. However, Goodkin emphasizes that job titles are not meaningful for classification—calling someone a manager doesn’t mean the person really is one.
5 Categories of Exemptions
Goodkin finds that of the five exemption categories (administrative, executive, professional, outside salespersons, and some computer workers), the administrative exemption creates the most confusion. What’s important there is to distinguish between production functions and those that are truly administrative, such as purchasing, advertising, public relations, quality control, HR, and legal/regulatory compliance. The key question to answer affirmatively is, “Is the individual assisting the proprietors in running the business?”
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Who Writes It?
Goodkin strongly recommends that HR and the relevant line manager be jointly responsible for writing job descriptions. And, unless it’s a new position, she urges the line manager to talk with the incumbent before creating or updating the description.
Especially when employees have considerable autonomy, she noted, they may be devoting significant time to duties that their managers didn’t know about.
Or there may be duties that employees are no longer doing, for example, when a computerized system is now used to make decisions that employees used to make.
In tomorrow’s Advisor, the Anatomy of a Job Description, plus an introduction to BLR’s extraordinary collection of pre-written job descriptions.