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DO SMEs IN GHANA NEED JOB DESCRIPTIONS?

 

t is not uncommon to hear the following responses from owners of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) in Ghana when you ask whether their staff have job descriptions:

 

‘Staff already know what they should do on the job. Most of them have been doing this work for years’.

 

‘This work is not complex. I don’t think they need job descriptions to understand what is required of them’.

 

‘We have job descriptions for our staff. Although we have not written them down yet, staff have been informed about their roles and responsibilities’.

 

We at CDC Consult have observed, as a result of working with a large number of SMEs in various sectors of the Ghanaian economy, that Ghanaian SMEs disregard job descriptions and treat the whole concept like a complete waste of time.

 

Because of their size and limited scope of operations, SME owners question whether they really need written job descriptions for their staff. They believe it is too formal and involves too much paperwork. Therefore, SME owners virtually reduce job descriptions to verbal instructions given to new employees within their first few weeks on the job. Once the staff find their feet and appear to be doing fairly well, it is assumed that they know what is expected of them or that the job is so simple that they do not need job descriptions. In the rare cases where job descriptions exist, they are often outdated.

 

Overlooking this simple document can however lead to gradual disintegration of business processes and even affect the growth and profitability of the business.

 

How? 

 

Job descriptions define the general tasks or functions and responsibilities of a position, or the position specification. They also indicate the position the jobholder directly reports to and specify the qualifications needed by the person occupying the job, or the person specification. Job descriptions also provide performance indicators for the position. In other words, indicator which must be in place to demonstrate that the jobholder has indeed performed his responsibilities.

 

When a job description is not written or is ambiguous, it may create a situation where employees focus only on the mundane or recurrent aspects of the job. In other words, the tasks they are familiar with and undertake regularly. This is because there is no guiding document or set of ideas to help them look beyond the mundane. They therefore neglect to identify other tasks they can execute to make their jobs more beneficial to the business or more interesting for themselves.

Job descriptions are required for recruitment so that the person undertaking the recruitment is guided by the person specification in the job description to identify the ideal candidate who fits the description. It also enables the applicants understand the role they are applying for as well as clarify the employer’s expectations of them right from the beginning.

 

A job description defines the job holder’s role and accountability. Thus it provides indicators by which a person’s work can be measured. Without a job description it may be difficult for a person to be held accountable for the role or for the employer to objectively measure the job performance of the employee since there is no reference document.

 

Having a written job description also ensures that all necessary business activities, duties and responsibilities are covered by one job or another thus no responsibility is left to nobody in particular. It also ensures that there is no duplication of functions. In other words, a situation where two or more staff perform the same task thus creating confusion.

 

Job descriptions also enable employees to quickly formulate or demonstrate the skill and behaviour set required for their roles. Thus ensuring that new employees settle in quickly or ‘hit the ground running’. They also make it easy to determine the training and development needs of the jobholder since it is easy to compare the current skills of the jobholder to the skills he/she is supposed to have and demonstrate as per the job description.

 

In brief, job descriptions enable the business to structure and manage roles in a uniform way, thus increasing efficiency and effectiveness in terms of recruitment, training and development, organisational structure, work flow and activities among others.

 

In spite of the importance of this document, SME owners believe that it is such a simple document which can be overlooked without any consequences to the business or its employees, how wrong! Job descriptions form the foundation for many important business processes as already indicated and such SME owners ignore this document to the disadvantage of their own businesses.

 

It’s about time SMEs put in place best practice in managing their businesses if they really want to grow from SMEs into large and sustainable businesses.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 9:18 am and is filed under Organisational & Human Resource Management Section. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.