Conduent, a strategic partner of HRTMS, just released the result of their 2018 Compensation Survey. This year’s survey asked 116 U.S organizations, ranging from small (less than 500 employees) to very large (greater than 25,001), a series of questions related to compensation philosophies, attraction and retention tools, pay equity, employee engagement, and of course job descriptions.
Participants were asked a number of questions regarding their current job description management process, starting with how intertwined their job descriptions were with other HR systems. While Compensation (20%) and Recruiting (14%) were listed as the two areas most impacted by job descriptions, 58% (up from 45% last year) said that job descriptions affected Talent Management in its entirety. It seems like our mission of elevating the role of job descriptions in HR, especially in Talent Management, is paying off (being a bit facetious). FLSA remains the top compliance concern when it comes to their job descriptions. Even without the changes to the FLSA, as we expected this time last year, HR still sees how imperative job descriptions are to classifying employees accurately.
Over half of those surveyed reported that they find job description maintenance a challenge. It’s no surprise then that when asked to rate their job description satisfaction on a scale from 1 to 10 (10 being the highest), NOT ONE respondent said that they were completely satisfied with their job descriptions! The highest proportion at 36% rated their satisfaction at a 7. They also cited challenges coordinating efforts with managers and other team members (47%) and a lack of resources like manpower and time (35%) as their top concerns. Although 28% report being happy with the state of their job descriptions, 24% complained that their job descriptions were inaccurate and 22% said that their job descriptions were outdated. These findings illustrate that we still have a lot of work to do on improving the way we manage our job descriptions.
That leaves us with why more people aren’t happy with their job descriptions. Could it be attributed to the tools we use to manage our job descriptions? This year, a staggering 84% of respondents still use Word and shared drives (71%) to write and store their job descriptions. Word is great for many tasks, I’m writing this blog post in Word right now, but it is not meant to be a management tool. Yes, it can work for smaller organizations just fine, but if you are trying to use Word for a large organization, it can only lead to a high rate of discontent.
One positive statistic that came out of this survey was that 72% stated that they were familiar with Job Description Management Software. Last year, that number was 62% and only 26% the year before. This increase is significant in that it shows us that people are becoming more aware of their options. No longer is HR forced into using Word and shared drives for JDM, they can now explore other options that may be a better fit for their organization.