Can my employer change an agreed JD?

[Daffodil101]

I’ve been with my current employer for 10 years. I was the first person they ever employed from my professional field within this particular department. As such, they didn’t have a clearly defined job description so they made one up as-best they could.

After a number of years my role had changed and developed so with my managers agreement we met and re-wrote the job description to more accurately reflect what I actually do. We both agreed it and sent to HR to check it still matched my pay scale.

And then there followed a period of everything going very quiet, the JD being mysteriously lost, forgotten about etc. 15 months went by, during which I constantly tried to chase it up and got nowhere.

Now my manager says she wants to change my JD back more to how it used to look. In an email she said there was no need to substantially change it, then she said verbally that she wanted to completely change the title.

However, she doesn’t see how this changes what I do. She expects I will carry on as before. I have been working to the current JD for about 4 years, albeit this wasn’t acknowledged until 15 months ago.

She says the reason for this is lack of need for the role, yet the role developed in response to service needs.

Any thoughts?

Would the newly defined role align to a higher earning potential in another company? and do they suspect you could use the job description to request a pay rise?

No and yes, respectively.

The job I’m doing is definitely more akin to higher paid jobs.

And I guess that’s actuslkyvyes and yes!

If they write you a new description, the just work to rule. If it's not in your job description, don't do it. Every time they ask, tell them it's not in your job description. And start looking for a job paying you what you deserve.

So they can actually do this you reckon?

If I remove the specific things that define the new JD, nobody else can do them

I suspect that someone has become uneasy and realised you could use the updated job description to support another job application, or request to be financial remunerated. We’ve had similar occur where reviewing JD suddenly highlighted long standing employees were over preforming and under paid. The company did cough up for some of them...

It's not your problem if no one else can do those jobs. They don't want you doing them; if they did then it would be in your job description.
Well, they do want you doing them but they don't want to pay you what the role deserves. So they are hoping you will just keep working for them on the cheap. Don't do them. Stick to your description.

Are you sure you want to stay there? Could you, as they have found out due to the JD review, have a greater worth on the open market, which has now caused them to rethink how much of your role description they formally want you to do. Things that have crept into your day to day work, may have become above and beyond what they are willing to pay for, so they're being a bit cheapskate by trimming things back "on paper" but probably wouldn't object if you continued to include that offering.

A contract of employment is a two way agreement. JDs can be what the company decides they need, the employee is willing to do and thereby having alignment in scope. So a project manager may have a core set of skills that are universally recognised, but a company is within their rights to tailor it to meet their business needs, with substantive changes in consultation with the employee. Large organisations tend to be prescriptive in standard role specs, it tends to be more flexible in SME.

Only you can decide whether you're comfortable with them not being willing to nail their colours to the mast, and reflecting your worth in remuneration/benefits.

The signs are they're fine with you enhancing your role with value add contributions, potentially until you decide to vote with your feet, only then will they be dragged into the real world of fairly recognising skills and remunerating according to the worth of their business.

according to the worth of their business

By this ^ I mean according to the benefit and value you add to their business.

Is there something else happening at work that means the JD will be checked, OP? Because this sounds to me like the manager had the job description rejected by HR (assuming she sent it in the first place) and never said at the time, carried on as usual and is now about to be (or has been) found out. If it needs to be 'changed back', then the old one was formally approved at some point I doubt this so you could try and nail them down to the date.

Yes, they can change the job description. Whatever the new one is, just stick to it. The role will change over time, I would expect that.

Can you use the revised JD to update your CV and put it out there? give your linked in profile a spruce up and set your status to 'I am looking'

The disadvantages of working-to-rule:

1. Career-limiting in terms of losing out on 'stretch' opportunities that enable a professional to gain rich experience on the job, and to be supported by their employer to increase the chances of promotion;

1. Perception-wise, a negative attitude will limit the professional as someone who isn't prepared to 'go the extra mile' so wouldn't be considered for a management position;

1. It masks the root cause of the problem - the employer cannot have it both ways. They cannot keep putting upon an employee by being happy for them to continuously increase their contributions, but as soon as the employee wants to discuss a formalisation of those activities into a job description decide to back pedal furiously (either by going quiet and hoping the problem will disappear or rewrite history by telling the employee you don't need to do all that great stuff you used to do because we won't recognise it on your JD.)

Some really useful replies, thank you. The JD was definitely originally accepted by HR, it came unstuck because they backtracked on their original decision that the substantial revisions required a re-look at the pay grade. Two months later they said they no longer thought it was substantially different. I queried this and made a formal request that they look at the pay grade, as it was they who had originally drawn attention to the need to re-evaluate.