The good news about job descriptions is that they lay out exactly what the person should be doing. The bad news is that an error in a job description can turn into evidence in a courtroom.

In her book, The Job Description Handbook, author Margie Mader-Clark lays out the three common legal mistakes companies commit in their job descriptions:

Vague or unnecessary physical requirements. Consider the example of the company that’s hiring warehouse workers. Everyone knows the workers will have to lift and carry objects, but no one’s sure what the max weight of the objects is. So someone says offhand, “Put 50 pounds as the requirement in the job description.” 

Then along comes someone who, because of gender or disability, can’t lift 50 pounds. But that person finds out the weight requirement was arbitrary. Next thing you know, you have a lawsuit on your hand charging you with unfairly excluding certain people from employment.

Lesson: Make sure physical requirements in a job description are real. 

Stepping-stone promises. Some companies like to use job descriptions almost as marketing tools - in which there’s a promise of a payoff. Example: “This position is a first step toward the job of assistant manager.” 

That implies a promise of future advancement, and could be portrayed by a lawyer as an employment contract. 

Lesson: Use job descriptions for their intended purpose - to describe the job at hand, not some future job. 

No connection with reality. There’s a temptation to puff up the importance of a job by using flowery terms. Example: a “janitor” becomes a “hygiene-maintenance technician.”  Besides being misleading for those (other than the author) who have to use the description in real life, the terms could be at odds with the employee’s eligibility for overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act. 

Lesson: Use the commonly understood terms, and don’t try to reinvent the wheel of job titles.

Tags: fair labor standards act, job descriptions, margie mader-clark, the job description handbook