Position descriptions are often treated as administrative documents. They are updated when a vacancy arises, used during recruitment, then filed away once the person starts.
That approach misses much of their value.
A well-designed position description provides a practical link between the organisation’s requirements and the contribution expected from an individual role. It should clarify why the role exists, what it is accountable for, the authority it holds, the capability required to perform it and the basis on which performance will be assessed.
For professional associations and other relatively lean organisations, this matters. Roles are often broad, structures change quickly and employees may take on new responsibilities as the organisation develops. If position descriptions do not keep pace, the organisation can gradually lose clarity about who is responsible for what and what level of performance is actually expected.
Role clarity matters
There is a sound evidence base for taking role clarity seriously.
Safe Work Australia identifies lack of role clarity as a psychosocial hazard. It includes situations where workers are uncertain about their responsibilities, reporting relationships, priorities or the standards expected of them. Safe Work Australia specifically identifies clear position descriptions, responsibilities and expectations as part of the controls organisations can use to address this risk. Safe Work Australia guidance.
Role clarity also has a relationship with performance. A frequently cited meta-analysis by Tubre and Collins examined the research on role ambiguity and job performance and found a negative relationship between the two. In practical terms, uncertainty about what a role requires can affect a person’s ability to perform it effectively. Journal of Management article.
The Fair Work Ombudsman takes a similarly practical view. Its guidance recommends setting clear performance expectations from the outset, including through a position description or performance plan. Fair Work Ombudsman guidance.
A position description will not solve every issue with structure, performance or workload. It does, however, provide an important foundation.
What should a good position description do?
At a minimum, a position description should connect five things:
- Purpose – Why does the role exist and what contribution is it expected to make?
- Accountability – What outcomes or areas of work is the role responsible for?
- Authority – What decisions can the role make, and where does authority sit?
- Capability – What does the person need to be able to do, and at what level?
- Performance – How will the organisation know whether the role is being performed effectively?
These elements need to make sense together.
If someone is accountable for an outcome but does not have the authority or capability required to deliver it, the problem is unlikely to be solved through performance management.
Equally, if a position description contains a long list of tasks but does not identify the expected outcomes, it can be difficult for the employee or manager to distinguish activity from performance.
Move beyond the list of duties
Traditional position descriptions often concentrate heavily on tasks:
- Prepare reports.
- Attend meetings.
- Liaise with stakeholders.
- Manage correspondence.
- Coordinate projects.
These activities may all be part of the job, but they tell us relatively little about the level at which the role is expected to operate.
Consider stakeholder management. One role may respond to member enquiries using established procedures. Another may build relationships with senior government officials, advise an executive team and influence external policy. Both could be described as “managing stakeholder relationships”.
The difference is in the complexity, judgement, autonomy and influence required.
The Australian Public Service Work Level Standards provide a useful example of this principle. APS classifications distinguish work according to factors including complexity, accountability, independence and decision-making, rather than simply describing different lists of tasks. APSC Work Level Standards.
This is a useful discipline for any organisation developing position descriptions.
The question is not only: What does this person do?
It is also: At what level are they expected to do it?
Connect the role to capability
This is where a position description becomes more useful as an organisational tool.
A person may understand their responsibilities but still not have the capability required to perform them at the expected level.
Capvera’s Professional Associations Capability Standard (PACS) was developed to make this distinction clearer for professional and membership organisations. Read more about PACS.
PACS considers capability across professional, personal, leadership, digital and operational domains, with four proficiency levels:
Support
Guide
Improve
Shape
The levels recognise that capability changes as the complexity, judgement, autonomy and organisational influence of a role increase.
For example, financial capability might look very different across three positions:
| Role context | Capability requirement |
|---|---|
| Coordinator | Understand budgets, process expenditure accurately and work within established financial controls. |
| Manager | Manage a budget, interpret variances, prioritise expenditure and make informed resource decisions. |
| Executive | Interpret organisational financial performance, assess financial risk and contribute to decisions about sustainability and investment. |
Simply writing “financial management skills required” into each position description does not capture these differences.
The same issue applies to leadership, stakeholder engagement, digital capability, policy, project management and communication.
This is why a good position description should identify both the capability required and the level at which that capability needs to be demonstrated.
Link the position description to performance
Position descriptions and performance management are often developed separately.
The position description identifies responsibilities. The annual performance plan contains a different set of objectives. The manager may then have additional expectations that have never been formally articulated.
A stronger approach is to connect the three.
The position description establishes the ongoing role.
The performance plan identifies the specific priorities and measures for the period.
The performance conversation considers both what was achieved and the capability demonstrated in achieving it.
For example:
Role accountability: Improve member retention and engagement.
Capability requirement: Analyse membership data, identify trends and develop evidence-based interventions.
Annual performance measure: Achieve an agreed retention target and demonstrate measurable improvement in identified at-risk member segments.
There is now a clear line between the role, the capability required and the expected result.
That makes performance conversations more objective and gives employees a much clearer understanding of what good performance looks like.
Position description review can identify wider organisational issues
Reviewing position descriptions can also expose problems that sit beyond the document itself.
- overlapping accountability between roles
- responsibilities that no longer have a clear owner
- managers accountable for outcomes without sufficient decision-making authority
- roles that have expanded substantially without being formally reconsidered
- senior roles dominated by transactional work
- critical organisational capability concentrated in one individual
- responsibilities that have changed following restructuring or technology implementation
These are usually not writing problems. They may indicate issues with organisation design, delegations, workforce capability, workload or management structure.
This is why position description review is most useful when the role is considered in its organisational context rather than edited as an isolated HR document.
The APSC makes a related point in its guidance on management structures, noting that allocating responsibility at the appropriate organisational level supports more effective decision-making and better use of capability. APSC Optimal Management Structures guidance
A practical position description review
When reviewing an existing position description, seven questions provide a useful starting point.
| Review question | What to look for |
|---|---|
| 1. Is the role still current? | Does it describe the work the organisation needs today rather than the job as it existed several years ago? |
| 2. Is the purpose clear? | Can you explain in one or two sentences why the role exists? |
| 3. Are the accountabilities clear? | Does the document identify the outcomes the role owns rather than simply listing activities? |
| 4. Is authority clear? | Does the person have appropriate decision-making authority for the outcomes they are expected to deliver? |
| 5. Are capability requirements defined? | Does the position description identify the knowledge, judgement and behaviours required to perform the role? |
| 6. Is the required capability level clear? | Is it apparent how independently and at what level of complexity the person is expected to operate? |
| 7. Can performance be assessed from it? | Could a manager use the position description as the foundation for meaningful objectives and performance discussions? |
If several of these questions are difficult to answer, the position description probably needs more than a cosmetic update.
When should position descriptions be reviewed?
There is no need to rewrite every position description every year simply for the sake of it. Review is most useful when something material changes.
- before recruiting or replacing a role
- following an organisational restructure
- when responsibilities or reporting lines change
- when new technology changes how work is performed
- when a role has expanded significantly
- when performance expectations are unclear
- when there is persistent overlap or confusion between roles
- when workforce capability requirements change because of strategy
The review should start with the organisation and the work required, not with the wording of the existing document.
That is particularly important when replacing someone who has held a position for a long time. The question should not automatically be:
How do we replace this person?
A better question is: What role does the organisation need now?
Position descriptions as organisational infrastructure
A position description is still a relatively simple document. Its value comes from what it connects.
Strategy determines what work the organisation needs.
Organisation design determines where that work sits.
The position description defines the role and its accountabilities.
Capability describes what the person needs to be able to do.
Performance management assesses whether the expected contribution is being delivered.
When those elements are aligned, position descriptions become much more useful.
They support recruitment, role clarity, workforce planning, capability development and performance management. They can also identify where responsibilities, authority or capability are not aligned with what the organisation is trying to achieve.
In Capability to Deliver, Capvera argues for a more systematic approach to understanding the capabilities professional and membership organisations need to execute their strategy. Position descriptions are one practical place to put that thinking into operation. Read Capability to Deliver
A useful first test is therefore quite simple:
Does your position description describe the role you actually need, the capability required to perform it and what successful performance should look like?
If it does not, it may be time to review it.
References
- Australian Public Service Commission. Work Level Standards: APS Level and Executive Level Classifications. APSC
- Australian Public Service Commission. Optimal Management Structures Guidance. APSC
- Fair Work Ombudsman. Managing performance and warnings. Fair Work Ombudsman
- Safe Work Australia. Lack of role clarity. Safe Work Australia
- Tubre, T.C. & Collins, J.M. (2000). Jackson and Schuler (1985) Revisited: A Meta-Analysis of the Relationships Between Role Ambiguity, Role Conflict, and Job Performance. Journal of Management, 26(1), 155-169. DOI
- Di Leva, R. (2026). Capability to Deliver: Why Professional and Membership Bodies Need a Workforce Capability Standard. Capvera. Capvera
- Professional Associations Capability Standard (PACS). PACS
About Capvera
Capvera works with professional associations, peak bodies, institutes, colleges and member-based organisations to strengthen organisational capability and effectiveness.