The Job Description: The Foundation of HR Work That Is Too Often Out of Date

Few documents in HR work are taken for granted as readily, and neglected as consistently, as the job description.

Ask for the current job description of a particular post in a public authority, and the answer is often disappointing. The document exists, but it dates from a time when the tasks of the post were cut differently. Changed responsibilities, new digital tools or expanded specialist duties were never added. In some cases, no job description exists at all. Both situations have consequences that reach far beyond the personnel file.

More Than a Form

A job description sets out which tasks, responsibilities and requirements belong to a post. For staff and senior managers alike, it creates a shared definition of what is expected of the postholder. That is its central purpose: clarity and orientation for everyone involved. Anyone dealing with a post can see from it which area of responsibility and which competencies belong to it.

On this basis, a whole series of personnel and organisational decisions are made in practice. The job description is the starting point for pay grading, because it provides the legal and collective-agreement basis for assessing a post. It supports staff development, since the requirements and competency profile it contains can be compared against the postholder’s actual abilities. Training needs can then be derived in a targeted rather than arbitrary way, because the training measure can be aligned specifically with the competency needs of that particular post. Where this derivation runs into problems in practice, the reason is often simply that the underlying job description is missing or has not been kept up to date.

The job description also plays a central role in selection procedures: the requirements profile is compared against the profile of the applicants. The greater the match, the better the fit of the selection. And for strategic succession planning for key positions, the job description is likewise a point of reference: analysing the future requirements of a leadership or expert role regularly results in an update to the existing description.

When Maintenance Is Neglected

In practice, the value of the job description is frequently underestimated. This shows above all in how current it is. Changed tasks or requirements are not carried over into the document, the job description remains unchanged, and it loses much of its usefulness as a result. Where no job description exists at all, there is not even a binding basis for how the work on that post is to be carried out. This creates grading-law problems for pay classification, because the collective-agreement assignment cannot be soundly justified without a robust description of the actual duties.

For organisations with many comparable tasks, a job description does not need to be created in individualised form for every single post. Function-based job descriptions group comparable tasks together and record the associated requirements and competencies in a single role description. This considerably reduces the maintenance effort without losing accuracy for the individual post.

From Description to Grading

Job evaluation itself is carried out on the basis of the job description and the tasks and work processes it defines. Its purpose is to assess the difficulty and value of a post objectively and, on that basis, to determine its pay grading. In 2020, Germany’s Federal Office of Administration published guidance on this titled “Die Arbeitsplatzbeschreibung. Basis für tarifgerechte Eingruppierung” (The workplace description: the basis for grading in line with the collective agreement), stressing the importance of a consistent approach.

The evaluation itself proceeds in five steps. First, the tasks of the post are described in detail and precisely, without vague terms such as “assisting with” or “supporting”. Instead, the description focuses concretely on the actual work performed. Next, the time share of each task is established, with tasks accounting for more than 50 per cent of working time being decisive for grading. The third step separates out work processes: clearly defined units of work such as producing a report or processing an application. Related activities such as research, phone calls or correspondence are attributed to the relevant core task rather than assessed separately. Each work process is then evaluated on its own terms and matched against the pay-scale criteria, checking specialist knowledge, responsibility, level of difficulty and independence of execution. The final step is the overall assessment, in which the post is assigned to the pay grade whose criteria it meets to at least 50 per cent.

For civil servants, a separate route applies: the post evaluation for civil service ranks. The analytical version determines the value of a post independently of the current postholder, using objective criteria such as professional competence, responsibility, working conditions and communication requirements. It also takes into account civil servants’ particular duties of neutrality and loyalty, as well as civil-service principles such as the maintenance principle governing remuneration. The summary version is the simplified variant, assessing the post as a whole without breaking the requirements down in detail. It is suitable where the complexity of the post profile is low, saving effort compared with the analytical approach.

The Effort Is Worth It

A function-based, up-to-date job description is not bureaucratic overhead. It is the foundation for efficient, transparent HR work. It creates clarity about tasks, responsibilities and required competencies, and its effect reaches far beyond grading alone: into staff development, into succession planning, and into every decision that relies on a realistic picture of the post. Clearly defined post profiles also make it easier to optimise workflows and to compile a task catalogue as part of staffing requirement assessment projects, since the details on tasks and time shares needed there can be derived directly from existing job descriptions.

Public authorities that regularly check their job descriptions for currency and update them where needed spare themselves later disputes over grading and create the basis for well-targeted staff development. The value of the document shows most clearly where it is missing: in unresolved responsibilities, in protracted grading procedures, and in training measures that miss the actual need.

These themes are explored further in the chapter on job description and evaluation in my book Personalmanagement in der öffentlichen Verwaltung (HR management in public administration), including a concrete template for a job description and an illustration of the steps involved in job evaluation.