As the labor market continues to change, economists are intrigued as some industries are adding jobs by the thousands while others are making similar-sized layoffs. For example, as companies like TikTok, Google, and Microsoft make significant cuts to their workforce, we can’t help but liken it to pandemic times and wonder if we’re seeing the next monumental wave of layoffs. Past layoffs were repercussions of overhiring. Now we’re seeing a different pattern, one far more preventable.
Companies are hiring duplicate roles.
For example, Tesla recently laid off 10% of their workforce, citing duplicate roles in the way of their next growth phase. Shortly after, job board giant Indeed made an 8% cut to their workforce, citing similar duplication challenges. So what’s the underlying issue?
It all goes back to job descriptions.
How does a job description lead to layoffs?
In the race to fill open positions amid labor shortages and company growth, some hiring managers and HR teams are getting a bit lazy when refreshing and updating job descriptions to reflect the current position’s skills requirements.
In the past, job descriptions were written to gauge how much someone would get paid for said position; however, despite a shift in the fundamentals of hiring and onboarding over the past decade, many of these job descriptions have not been updated in years. Instead, they are repeatedly copied and pasted until they vaguely resemble the open position available.
Each new job description should be viewed as fresh content, which can then be enhanced with artificial intelligence, creating better matches through automated sourcing tools and optimizing for searches of a career site.
Unfortunately, an HR team that fails to thoroughly update and tailor each job description to the current needs of their evolving organization and the dynamic landscape of the broader hiring marketplace can inadvertently cause several issues leading to duplicate roles and subsequent layoffs.
Turnover might beat you to layoffs
These “ghosts of job descriptions past” with overlapping or undisclosed responsibilities can cause confusion during the interview and onboarding process. This can lead to new hire buyer’s remorse, operational inefficiencies, duplicated efforts across teams, and can negatively impact long-term employee retention.
Pouring more gasoline on the fire is job title inflation, which can be used to retain employees without offering additional monetary benefits and can contribute to resource overlap and confusion in the workplace.
As a result, hiring managers must weed out over- and under-qualified candidates while considering how these candidates complement existing team members. If not, they risk frustrating new and existing employees and creating future performance issues and redundancies.
Many organizations are addicted to reactive hiring, an “I need this type of person now” mindset. Catering to executives and hiring managers with this mindset can prompt a snowball approach to hiring across the organization. Instead of sticking to the strategic workforce plan the organization’s leaders likely put a lot of thought and resources into developing, this reactionary, hiring-at-speed mentality can create bad habits by leveraging dated job descriptions and starting the chain of events described above. Hiring employees with irrelevant skills for your business objectives will create redundancies that get exposed over time, leading to layoffs and damaging the employer brand.
What about the bottom line?
Layoffs happen, and that’s just a part of building businesses in dynamic markets. That being said, creating duplicate roles that lead to operational inefficiencies, layoffs, or turnover can be preventable in many cases. However, unknowingly bringing on duplicate positions can cost the organization big bucks in redundant salary, benefits, training, and onboarding, and more. A management team partnering with the HR team can proactively ensure they are cognizant of the damage lazy job descriptions cause and can make simple changes to prevent these from hitting the market and causing an unfortunate chain of events.
All this to say that decision-makers may see layoffs as the only option to cost-cutting to reach their business goals, but this can further damage your employer brand, making it more difficult to recruit in the future. Employee retention may also take another hit here as morale dips and employees question the safety of their jobs.
Update your job descriptions
To avoid these issues, the solution is quite simple. HR teams should collaborate with hiring managers to regularly update job descriptions, reflecting the current and future needs of the organization. With the ongoing shift to skills-based hiring, job descriptions should be revised to focus on the skills and responsibilities needed to perform the job, not the requirements and pedigree. These should have no intrinsic bias and align with your employer brand and employee value proposition.
This update should be included in the rollout plan for strategic workforce planning each year in conjunction with HR, executives, and hiring managers to anticipate the evolving needs and immediate demands of the organization.
While layoffs seem to have become a common occurrence in today’s jobs climate, there are small things that can be done to avoid bigger issues that can lead to cost-cutting measures like layoffs. Job ads, and the job descriptions behind them, are often the first interaction the potential employee has with your company. HR teams should feel empowered to make this a positive interaction that will lead to a mutually beneficial long-term relationship between the two.
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