Handbook of Model Job Descriptions

The Handbook of Model Job Descriptions is an indispensable, IoD-endorsed toolkit for managers and HR professionals who need accurate, accountability-based job descriptions without starting from scratch. Barry Cushway distils decades of HR and job-evaluation expertise into more than 200 model descriptions spanning administration, engineering, finance, IT, legal, sales, and the voluntary sector, plus a modular library of common job elements (advice, budgets, projects, strategy, supervision) that can be mixed and matched to fit any role. The book explains why job descriptions matter—for recruitment, job evaluation, performance management, training, and legal protection—and teaches a repeatable method for writing outputs-focused accountability statements. Whether you are filling a vacancy, running a grading exercise, or redesigning your organization, this handbook turns a tedious task into a fast, professional, and consistent process.

What it argues

An inferred framework describing how the design and maintenance of job descriptions (design levers) shape role clarity and process consistency (psychological/behavioral states) which in turn drive HR outcomes such as effective recruitment, fair job evaluation, and performance management. The model is implicit in the book's guidance on why and how to write and apply job descriptions.

Key ideas it contributes

• Accountability-Based Drafting — The practice of composing job descriptions around outputs and accountabilities rather than exhaustive task lists, expressed in a standardized format specifying what is done, to what, and for what purpose.
• Use of Model Templates and Job Elements — The extent to which an organization builds job descriptions by selecting, adapting, and combining standardized model descriptions and modular job elements rather than authoring each from scratch.
• Regular Description Maintenance — The ongoing updating of job descriptions to reflect genuine, permanent changes in work, preventing divergence between documented and actual responsibilities.
• Role Clarity — The shared, accurate, and unambiguous understanding among jobholder, manager, and organization of a role's purpose, responsibilities, and expected outputs.
• Documentation Consistency — The uniformity and comparability of job descriptions across an organization in format, level of detail, and accountability language, enabling equitable comparison and evaluation.
• HR Process Effectiveness — The effectiveness of downstream HR processes—recruitment, job evaluation, performance management, training, and organizational change—that rely on accurate job information.