Preparing the job description for Professional & Support roles

Template job description for Professional & Support Roles

Hay job level profiles

Introduction; Format and timing; General advice on writing the job description; Purpose of the job; Main duties of the jobholder; Working relationships & contacts; Dimensions; General responsibilities; Person specification; Organisational chart

Introduction

This guidance has been designed to help line managers produce an accurate job description and person specification for the purposes of recruitment and selection to new roles. Line managers wishing to replace staff leaving existing roles should revisit the current job description, i.e. those submitted to for HayJE evaluation, and highlight any significant changes to Human Resources when making the instruction to recruit.

The new, or significantly revised, job description will be subject to Hay evaluation, the exact mechanism and timescale of this process is under discussion. In order to ensure that all job descriptions are up-to-date and in a consistent format for the purposes of the evaluation, you will need produce this in the standard template format. If after reading this guidance you require further assistance with completing the job description document please contact your Human Resources Adviser.

This guidance has been adopted from the information provided by Victoria Booker and Roland Baskeyfield for the National Framework Agreement job evaluation exercise.

Format and timing

• The job description document must be a true and accurate reflection of the responsibilities of the job.

• If the new job is one to be carried out by a number of people (within the Faculty and/or School/Department), a generic document must be completed. If this is an additional job to one that is filled and has already been evaluated then you must use the current evaluated job description.

• The line manager and the Head of Department/Dean of Faculty (where this is not the line manager) must then sign off the job description document.

• Incomplete job descriptions, e.g. those with blank sections or without appropriate sign-off will be returned for completion. Please write ‘not applicable’ against sections that are not relevant to the job.

• You will be advised upon submission of the timescale for evaluating the role prior to advertising. Please be aware that new posts cannot be advertised until they have undergone evaluation.

General advice on writing the job description

• The purpose of completing a job description is to set out the main duties of the post and to convey what is expected of the job holder, clearly and concisely.

• The job description should not become an inventory of every task, but should not assume that potential applicants or the members of the job evaluation panel have any prior knowledge of the job. Therefore, you need to write a job description that will be understood by anyone outside of your Department/School.

• Use plain English to give essential information about the job, avoiding the use of acronyms and ‘jargon’ that may not be widely recognised outside of the job or School/Department/Sector.

Purpose of the job

This should be a short, clear statement outlining the aim of the job and the contribution that it makes. It is helpful to construct the sentence in terms of what is done, to what, and why. For example, the job purpose of a Laboratory Technician might be:

To provide practical technical support to students in the laboratories to enable them to complete the practical work associated with their course safely and efficiently.

In the above statement it is clear WHY the job exists.

Main duties of the jobholder

Once the overall purpose of the job is clear, the job should be broken down into the main areas of responsibility. Consider wat are the principal areas of work in which the job must produce results in order to achieve its purpose? Most jobs will have between 8 and 12 main areas of responsibility. As with the Job Purpose, the main responsibilities should also be concise, clear statements, which show what is done, to or with what, and why. Here is an example:

Undertake routine boiler maintenance procedures to ensure that boiler efficiency is maintained.

This can be broken down into three parts:

Area of work: Boiler maintenance

Responsibility: Undertake boiler maintenance procedure

Result required: Ensure boiler efficiency is maintained

Further examples:

To be responsible for 5 clerical and administrative staff, guide and allocate work to ensure that an effective service is given to academics and students.

Source, store and maintain the laboratory equipment required to meet the technical needs of the laboratory staff.

Sometimes the main areas of work in which the job holder will need to get results are clearly identifiable. In other cases you may find it easier to first list separately all the tasks and activities and then group them into obvious areas.

Try to ensure that the duties convey how much freedom the job holder will have to make decisions and the constraints within which they will operate. This may be an indication of how much freedom there is to organise and prioritise the workload or that of any people the job supervises. It could be the level of authority and/or autonomy the job holder has to make decisions or authorise work to be done. This will give a picture of the nature and impact that the job has, and on what part(s) of the College.

Working relationships & contacts

Detail the most significant internal and external relationships, and the nature of the contact to give a feel for the sorts of communication undertaken in the job. This will give an indication of the types of people the job holder will be expected to deal with and, particularly, why. Is it to pass on information, to co-ordinate or liaise with, to persuade, negotiate, etc. For example:

• Daily contact with students to deliver training

• Liaise with external suppliers on a weekly basis to ensure timely delivery of goods

• Engage in negotiations and consultation with the trade unions with the aim of reaching agreement on various staff issues

Dimensions

Here you may give information, which is relevant to the understanding of the scale of your job. It could include details such as:

• Number of staff supervised, and the level of supervision

• Number of programmes or modules the jobholder had responsibility for coordinating

• Size of research grant administered

For Example:

To provide administrative support to 5 academic staff, covering a total of 100 students.

Try to keep to brief, clearly laid out statements to make it easier for the potential applicants and evaluators to read and absorb the information. Exceptionally, some jobs will not have readily definable dimensions; if so, please ask for advice from your Human Resources Adviser.

General responsibilities

All job descriptions should include the following standard responsibilities (already incorporated within the template):

• To adhere to the College’s Equal Opportunities policy in all activities, and to actively promote equality of opportunity wherever possible

• To be responsible for your own health and safety and that of your colleagues, in accordance with the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) and relevant EC directives.

• To work in accordance with the Data Protection Act and to ensure that all new systems are reported to your Data Protection Controller.

• To undertake such other duties as may be reasonably expected.

• To provide a healthy and comfortable working environment, smoking is prohibited throughout the College, except in specially designated areas.

Person specification

Please complete the person specification incorporated into the template. The Person Specification should describe the knowledge, skills, experience, and qualifications required to perform the job to a satisfactory standard. It is important to convey what the job requires, rather than what is desirable, as these may be different. For example, you may have believe that a graduate level qualification would provide useful insight, however, an A’ Level standard qualification is the requirement for the job.

What particular professional or technical qualifications or skills are needed? Is there particular knowledge required, for example of IT systems? Does the jobholder need to have knowledge of particular regulations and is a general understanding enough or would a detailed working knowledge be required? What sort of background would be needed, would it be necessary to have experience of working in a particular field, if so in what context and at what level? Are supervisory or management skills required?

Organisational chart

Please attach the agreed organisational chart for the School/Department, clearly showing the job and its position in terms of reporting relationships between that of senior/junior staff and peers. If one does not already exist, please draw one up; a chart should be included for the job to go forward to the panel. Organisational charts can be created within Word and PowerPoint. To create an organisation chart in either program, from the toolbar click Insert, Picture and Organization Chart.