Ask the Experts: Job Description, Expectation & Email

On Jan 10, 2025

In the latest installment of New Jersey Business Magazine’s Ask the Experts column, HR professionals working with the New Jersey Business & Industry Association respond to executives’ inquiries on three interesting workplace issues:

What should we include in a job description?

Accurate and carefully crafted job descriptions are essential for attracting and keeping new employees, setting clear performance expectations, and serving as a critical line of defense in many types of employment litigation. Effective job descriptions include:

• Job title: Create a title that accurately reflects the position. Avoid cutesy terms like “ninja” or “guru.” If applicable, use the title to indicate where the position fits in a career ladder (e.g., a senior manager).
• Exemption status: Indicate whether the role is exempt from minimum wage and/or overtime.
• Position summary: Provide a brief, high-level overview of the position’s purpose and duties.
• Essential functions: List the 3–5 most critical responsibilities and tasks.
• Qualifications: Identify the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics that an individual must have to perform the job duties.
• Supervision: Indicate how this position is supervised or to whom the person in this position will report.
• Work environment: Give an idea of the nature of the location (e.g., remote or corporate) and working conditions. Be sure to include any physical requirements of the job, noise levels, and/or temperature.

We have an employee who’s no longer meeting expectations. The owner is afraid to hold them accountable because they’re over 40 and therefore in a protected class. What can we do?

In general, you shouldn’t let an employee’s protected class status deter you from holding them accountable to your performance expectations. After all, everyone belongs to protected classes. Being in one simply means you can’t be treated differently because you’re in that class.

Now, if your organization has a history of bias in the workplace or of holding members of a certain protected class accountable for poor performance when others aren’t, then you’d be looking at a higher risk of a discrimination claim. Assuming that’s not the case, there’s really no cause for alarm.

If you decide to talk to this employee about their performance, don’t reference their age. Instead, focus on how their performance isn’t meeting your expectations and what needs to change. As always, document the performance issues and the steps taken to address them.

Are we allowed to look through an employee’s email while they are still employed?

The short answer is yes. As a general rule, employees should not have an expectation of privacy when using company computers or email accounts. That said, you should have both a legitimate business reason for doing so and a policy that puts employees on notice that you do – or could – review their email. If you decide to monitor employee email, you should include a handbook policy that says something along the lines of, “All company supplied technology belongs to the company and not the employee. The company routinely monitors usage patterns for its email and internet communications. Although encouraged to explore internet resources, employees should use discretion in the sites that are accessed.” 

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