Assignments and Job Descriptions
The first step to successful performance is ensuring that the employee is clear about what she or she is assigned to do. What is the employee's role within the organization? What are the duties and responsibilities? You might say "That's what the University's job descriptions are for." If you look at them closely, though, you will realize that those job descriptions are general in scope because they are used for positions in many different departments at each of the three Arizona universities.
In contrast, each position in a department has its own unique set of duties and responsibilities. For example, not all secretaries perform exactly the same combination of tasks, though much of what they do is similar. An exact description of the duties and responsibilities an employee needs to perform can be provided by writing (or updating) a department (or functional) job description. It can range from a simple list of a few tasks to a detailed description of many paragraphs, but it should be specific to the position(s) in a particular department or unit. It should include the phrase "and other related duties as assigned" to cover unexpected or occasional tasks and should be updated as often as is needed to keep it current.
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