Job Description Guidance - Professional Services
Introduction
When advice is required regarding job design and structure, please contact your HR Business Partnering team in the first instance.
All Professional Services roles must be graded before they can be advertised for recruitment.
For information and advice on recruiting to your vacancy, please refer to the University’s recruitment and selection guidance.
The UBJES process is not required for a role in the Research and Teaching job family. Instead the appropriate academic career pathway and role profile will need to be selected to determine the grade. The relevant pathway and Faculty specific template should be used.
General advice about using the job description template
- Follow the section by section guidance below to complete the template.
- The Professional Services job description template exists for the dual purposes of grading and recruitment, and where possible the sections are common to both purposes.
- Managers should be aware that the job description is indicative of the requirements of the role, and therefore may need to provide staff appointed to the role with a more detailed list of specific duties as part of their induction and orientation to the role.
- Use plain English to describe the role, explain any necessary acronyms, and avoid assumptions that the reader will understand the process or technique being referred to.
- Use a font size of 11 or more so that the document is easy to read.
- Avoid use of web-links since all information must be contained in the job description.
- Ensure that no grades, names or the gender of any current, past or future role-holders are included in the job description when submitting for job evaluation.
The following sections need to be completed:
The Job Title
The University is implementing a suite of generic job titles and therefore advice should be sought from HR re appropriate titles for any new roles. If the submission is a re-evaluation you may wish to take the opportunity to revise the current job title with advice from HR as well as obtain consensus from the role holder(s).
Section 1: Job Description
- Faculty/School/Professional Services Division: Name of the Faculty, School or Division where the role is based.
- Faculty/School or Division Address: State the full address of where the role is based.
The following information should only be completed once the role has been graded and is ready to be submitted for recruitment.
- Job Family/Grade: Professional/Administrative or Operational Services or Technical Services
- Grade: Grades A-M
- Salary range: The salary range advertised must be in line with the University's Starting Pay Policy. Any salary offer made outside of the terms of the policy will not be supported so please seek advice from HR before talking to candidates.
- Hours of work: Number of contracted hours per week
- Contract type: Open-ended or fixed term (state length of contract if fixed term).
- Work pattern: Full or part time (if part time specify days to be worked, for example 5 mornings a week, 2 ½ days per week). Indicate if job share is available.
- Vacancy Reference Number: HR will complete this box.
Section 1.1: Main Job Purpose
The main job purpose outlines the overall contribution the job makes, or alternatively “why” the role exists.
- Job Purpose = what is done (verb); to what or whom (area of impact) and with what result.
- The statement should be succinct and no more than two or three sentences.
- Consider what is it that the job is intended to achieve, what would not get done if the job did not exist, what is the particular contribution that the job makes.
- The main job purpose should not be a list of how the job is done.
Section 1.2: Main Statement of Responsibility
This section includes the key responsibilities of the job or “what” the role is intended to achieve.
For Professional/Administrative roles only:
- A set of Professional and Administrative Grade Descriptors exist to help identify the level of role required. The Descriptors should be used as a guide and only describe typical types of responsibilities for each level of Professional/Administrative role, from grades D to M and therefore should not be directly duplicated.
For all roles
Aim for 10-12 main statements of responsibility that you would expect the role to fulfil.
Additional Responsibilities
- This section may be used within a generic job description to describe any specific or additional responsibilities over and above those identified in the generic job description. Advice should be sought from HR to ensure that such additions do not change the grade of the role.
- Consider the overall purpose of the job and the key areas in which results must be achieved to fulfil that purpose
- Each responsibility should be distinct and describe an important aspect of the role in which results must be achieved with the focus on what is required and not how the role is fulfilled.
Section 1.3: Relationships
- Line manager, Line manager to (where appropriate)
- Please complete the job title of the line manager and, if the role-holder line manages staff, the titles of their roles; do not include names.
Section 1.4: Job Hazards/Safety Critical Duties (Pre-employment health screening)
- In line with the Equality Act 2010, the statement of responsibilities must outline any potential Job Hazards Information for Job Descriptions (PDF, 367kB), particularly when specific health checks are required due to the nature of the role
- The Job Description should identify the requirement for a DBS check
Please refer to the guidance notes at: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/hr/resourcing/practicalguidance/appointment/checks.html
Section 2: Person Specification
Section 2.1: Relevant Experience, Skills, Knowledge, Qualifications, Communication and Interpersonal Skills
Detail the experience, skills and knowledge, relevant qualifications, communication and interpersonal skills, that are essential for the effective performance of the job. The requirement for these should be recognisable in the main responsibilities.
- When completing this section it may be helpful to refer to the set of Professional and Administrative Grade Descriptors, ‘Qualifications, knowledge skills and experience’ section of the relevant descriptor
- When determining the person specification requirements for the role, consider how these will be assessed during the selection process using the following criteria: A – application form; I – Interview; T – Test or scenario; O – other (eg focus group, presentation)
- Establishing this helps both the hiring manager identify tangible requirements for the role in order for the roleholder to be successful and gives the applicant a sense of what the hiring manager will focus on at different stages of the selection process.
- Include details of the nature and context of each type of experience required, remembering that experience does not necessarily have to be gained in an identical environment.
- Avoid specifying a required length of experience. Using such a requirement, particularly where it is for a lengthy period, could potentially be seen to be discriminatory.
- Indicate if there is a job requirement to maintain professional accreditation through appropriate updating of skills and knowledge.
- The level of skill or knowledge required may in some cases be indicated by reference to particular qualifications or types of training. If quoting specific qualifications or training accreditations, such as a degree, append with ‘or equivalent’.
- Do not include age-related criteria in job and person specifications, selection criteria and advert wording. Avoid words like "young", "recently qualified" and "mature", as these could potentially be seen to be discriminatory.
- There can be a tendency to overstate formal qualification requirements, so think carefully about whether having specific knowledge or skills, proven through experience, is more important.
Section 2.2: Additional Responsibilities and Additional Skills, Knowledge and Experience
These sections only apply in JDs that will be generic – that is where the role content will differ between role holders whilst the role purpose remains the same. This could be because the JD will apply in different areas or within one area but with a slightly different specialism/focus.
If there is only one role holder or all of the role holders have the same responsibilities, then these sections should not exist and everything should be covered in the Standard Responsibilities and Standard Skills, Knowledge & Experience.
The additional sections will usually be highlighted yellow so they can be picked from each time the JD will be used to tailor the role. The wording of the additional sections should remain intact unless it is designed to be tailored (for example by including options in square brackets, such as ‘[team/project/service]’).
New additional sections should only be added by following the ‘Changes that can be made by HRBPs to JDs already in the new template’ section of this guidance. The purpose of the additional sections is not so that managers can add whatever they like to the JD.
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Section 3 Job Evaluation
Section 3 (3.1-3.4) is neccesary to supplement the job description for the purpose of evaluating the role through the UBJES process.
Section 3.1: Typical Work Activities (across a day/week or month)
Please describe in more detail the typical work activities relating to the key and representative responsibilities of the role in a maximum of ONE PAGE of A4.
- Explain how the role-holder will fulfil the responsibilities of the role.
- Explain the steps that are involved, who else is involved and how qualifications, skills, knowledge and experience are used.
- Typical work activities seek to clarify the nature and scope of planning and organising and typical planning decisions made by the role-holder and typical organising timescales (daily, weekly, monthly etc).
- Include a typical or frequent decision the role-holder might have to make
- Include a typical or frequent problem the role-holder will likely encounter in their day-to-day work.
Section 3.2: Organisation Chart(s)
- Provide an organisation chart, showing the whole School/Division in broad outline and indicate where the role sits in the larger structure.
Section 3.3: Additional Statistical or other relevant information
- Provide any relevant statistics that can give a fuller understanding of the job. These can relate to the operational (e.g., service provision, number of customers and/or students), financial (e.g., budgets, grants and contracts) or staffing (e.g., number of employees supervised) aspects of the job.
- This can also include any other relevant contextual or specific School/Department/Team information that may help for job evaluation purposes
Section 3.4: Relevant Physical and Environmental Information
Describe any physical and environmental information which is not covered elsewhere e.g. relevant information about physical effort or working conditions.
Section 3.5: Key Contacts
Identify up to 5 most significant internal and external relationships that the role has outside of the line management chain, and the overall purpose of the contact.
