Responsibilities pile up while outdated tasks never get formally subtracted, and one seat’s drift cascades into the roles around it. As a result, job descriptions rarely keep pace with how a role actually evolves, especially as AI reshapes what the work requires. However, replacing an "underperforming" employee is usually the wrong response. Auditing job descriptions regularly, rather than treating hiring as the fix, is the more effective long-term move.
By Lisa Heay, Vice President of Business Operations at Heinz Marketing
In today’s rapidly evolving professional landscape, particularly with the accelerating integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into workflows, many organizations are grappling with a pervasive issue: the disconnect between an employee’s formal job description and the actual demands of their role. This often leads to the perception of underperformance, prompting a knee-jerk reaction to replace the individual. However, a closer examination by operational leaders and HR professionals reveals a more nuanced problem rooted in organizational design, not individual deficiency. The fundamental challenge lies in the static nature of job descriptions, which frequently fail to adapt to the dynamic shifts in responsibilities and the introduction of new technologies.
The problem often begins subtly, with incremental additions to an employee’s workload. A manager might ask an employee to "just handle this" additional task, or a new software tool is implemented, requiring someone to take ownership. When a team member departs, their responsibilities are often absorbed by colleagues without a formal reassessment of the existing roles. These additions, while seemingly minor in isolation, accumulate over time. Without corresponding subtractions or formal acknowledgments of evolving duties, the original job description becomes an increasingly inaccurate representation of the employee’s daily reality. This drift can be particularly pronounced in operational roles, where the focus is on the tangible allocation of resources and time. Capacity reports and resourcing plans, often managed by operations departments, directly highlight where employee time is being spent, frequently revealing a significant divergence from stated job functions. When a role becomes vacant, the process of drafting a new job description often serves as the first formal recognition of this gap, juxtaposing the outdated expectations with the current workload.
Furthermore, the advent of AI has significantly amplified this phenomenon. Roles that once centered on specific, labor-intensive tasks are now being redefined by the need to manage, direct, and refine AI-generated outputs. For instance, a content creator’s role may have previously been primarily focused on writing. Today, it increasingly involves crafting effective prompts for AI, meticulously editing AI-generated drafts, verifying factual accuracy, and discerning when AI-generated content requires substantial human revision or complete rewriting. The emphasis shifts from pure creation to strategic oversight and the infusion of a unique human perspective. Similarly, a demand generation specialist might transition from building campaigns from the ground up to primarily reviewing AI-generated campaign structures and determining their readiness for deployment. The crucial element here is that the AI now performs tasks that previously consumed significant human effort, yet these foundational tasks are rarely formally removed from the employee’s responsibilities. The expectation remains that the employee can perform the entire scope of the original role, even as AI streamlines parts of it.
This pervasive "drift" in job roles can have a cascading effect throughout an organization. When one position absorbs additional duties or continues to perform tasks that could be automated, it alters the expectations and responsibilities of adjacent roles. Handoffs between teams or individuals may become misaligned, and assumptions about ownership can become outdated. This interconnectedness means that addressing a single "underperforming" seat in isolation can feel like a Sisyphean task, as the neighboring roles may have also absorbed similar shifts and require their own reassessment.
The Subtle Erosion of Job Scope: A Chronology of Drift
The evolution of job roles is rarely a sudden, dramatic event. Instead, it is typically a gradual process characterized by a series of small, often unnoticed changes.
- Initial Stage: The Incremental Addition: A new project arises, or a manager identifies a need for a specific skill. An employee is asked to take on an additional task, often framed as a temporary or minor expansion of their duties. This might involve managing a new reporting requirement, coordinating with an external vendor on a trial basis, or learning a new software feature to assist a colleague.
- Mid-Stage: The Absorption and Normalization: As these additional tasks become more frequent and integrated into the daily workflow, they begin to be treated as part of the employee’s standard responsibilities. Colleagues and managers become accustomed to the employee handling these duties, and the original scope of the role begins to blur. This stage is often characterized by a lack of formal documentation or communication about the changing nature of the job.
- Late Stage: The Disconnect and Perceived Underperformance: Years may pass, and the employee’s actual responsibilities may bear little resemblance to their original job description. New technologies, such as AI, further complicate this by automating previously manual tasks or introducing entirely new skill requirements. When the output or efficiency of the employee begins to fall short of expectations, the immediate conclusion is often that the individual is underperforming, rather than recognizing that the "seat" itself has become misaligned with the evolving demands of the business.
- AI Acceleration: The integration of AI acts as a significant accelerant in this process. For example, a marketing role might have once focused heavily on manual data analysis and campaign setup. With AI tools, much of this can be automated. The employee’s role then shifts to overseeing AI outputs, interpreting complex AI-driven insights, and ensuring ethical and strategic deployment. The original tasks are not necessarily removed; new, higher-level tasks are added, leading to an even greater disconnect.
The AI Factor: A Double-Edged Sword
The rapid integration of AI technologies is profoundly reshaping the nature of work across numerous industries. While AI offers significant potential for increased efficiency and productivity, it also exacerbates the existing problem of outdated job descriptions. For roles focused on content creation, AI tools can now generate drafts, suggest headlines, and even optimize content for SEO. However, the human element remains critical for strategic direction, nuanced voice, and factual accuracy. This means the content role is not diminished but transformed, requiring new skills in prompt engineering, AI output editing, and critical evaluation.
Consider a scenario in demand generation. Historically, this role involved significant manual effort in building campaigns, segmenting audiences, and crafting messaging. AI can now automate many of these processes, from generating initial campaign frameworks to suggesting targeting parameters. The demand generation professional’s role is thus shifting from extensive manual execution to strategic oversight, data interpretation of AI-driven results, and the refinement of AI-generated plans. The crucial point is that the original, labor-intensive tasks are often not formally subtracted from the job description. Instead, new responsibilities related to AI management are added, leading to an overloaded and misaligned role. This dual pressure – the accumulation of new responsibilities and the failure to remove outdated ones – places significant strain on employees and can lead to suboptimal performance, not due to a lack of skill or effort, but due to a flawed job design.
The Cost of Misdiagnosis: Why Replacing Talent is Often a Costly Error
When a role appears to be underperforming, the most common organizational response is to seek external talent. This approach, however, often overlooks the substantial costs and complexities associated with hiring and onboarding new employees. The recruitment process itself is resource-intensive, involving job postings, candidate sourcing, interviewing, and background checks. Once a candidate is selected, the onboarding period can be lengthy, during which the new employee must familiarize themselves with the company’s culture, internal processes, and specific business context. This ramp-up time means that the perceived benefits of a "fresh start" are often delayed, and the cost of lost productivity during this transition can be significant.
Moreover, an existing employee, even if struggling with an ill-defined role, possesses invaluable institutional knowledge. They understand the company’s history, its key stakeholders, the nuances of internal politics, and the historical context of projects and initiatives. This tacit knowledge is difficult to transfer and can take a new hire considerable time to acquire. In specialized fields, such as B2B go-to-market strategies, finding individuals who not only possess strong foundational skills but are also adept at navigating the complexities of AI integration can be a significant challenge. The market for such "unicorns" is often competitive, further increasing recruitment time and costs. Therefore, the instinct to replace an employee due to perceived underperformance often represents a misdiagnosis of the problem, leading to a solution that is both expensive and potentially less effective than addressing the underlying structural issue.
The Ripple Effect: How One Misaligned Seat Impacts the Entire Team
Organizational structures are interconnected systems, and a misaligned job role rarely exists in isolation. When a single position accumulates unaddressed responsibilities or continues to perform tasks that could be automated, it inevitably impacts the roles of colleagues. For example, if a marketing coordinator is overloaded with administrative tasks due to an outdated job description, this can create bottlenecks for the marketing manager who relies on their support. Similarly, if an operations analyst continues to manually generate reports that could be automated, this may delay critical decision-making for the leadership team.
This ripple effect can manifest in several ways:
- Shifted Handoffs: The expected flow of work between individuals or teams can become disrupted. Colleagues may find themselves waiting for tasks that are delayed due to an overburdened team member, or they may have to pick up the slack, leading to their own increased workload and potential burnout.
- Outdated Assumptions: Assumptions about who is responsible for what become inaccurate. This can lead to duplicated efforts, tasks falling through the cracks, or a general sense of confusion and inefficiency within the team.
- Team-Wide Inefficiency: As the problems cascade, the overall productivity and morale of the team can suffer. What might have started as an issue with a single role can devolve into a systemic problem affecting multiple individuals and hindering collective progress.
This interconnectedness is why efforts to "fix" one underperforming seat can often feel incomplete. The underlying issue is not just the individual’s performance but the design of the system in which they operate. Without a holistic review of how roles interact and depend on each other, isolated solutions are unlikely to yield sustainable improvements.
Rebuilding the Seat: A Strategic Approach to Role Design
In most instances, the most effective and sustainable solution to the problem of evolving job roles is not to replace the individual but to "rebuild the seat" itself. This strategic approach involves a thorough and honest assessment of what the role needs to accomplish in the current business environment. It requires a candid conversation about the realities of the work, acknowledging both the responsibilities that have been added and, crucially, those that can now be retired.
This process typically entails:
- Rewriting the Job Description: The job description must be updated to accurately reflect the current demands of the role. This includes clearly delineating responsibilities, incorporating new skills required by evolving technologies like AI, and explicitly stating which previous tasks are no longer part of the role due to automation or strategic shifts.
- Revisiting Compensation and Expectations: A fundamental aspect of rebuilding a role involves aligning compensation and performance expectations with its new scope and value. If a role has grown in complexity and importance, its compensation level should reflect this evolution. Similarly, performance metrics must be updated to accurately measure success in the context of the redesigned role. Failing to do so can lead to a disparity where employees are performing at a higher level but are not adequately compensated or recognized for it.
- Formalizing AI Integration: When AI tools take over specific tasks, this should be formally acknowledged and documented within the job description. This clarity helps employees understand their evolving responsibilities and allows for the redirection of their efforts towards higher-value activities that require human ingenuity and strategic thinking.
- Periodic Audits: Job descriptions should not be static documents. They require regular audits and reviews to ensure they remain accurate and relevant over time. This proactive approach can prevent the gradual drift that leads to misaligned roles and perceived underperformance.
While rebuilding the seat is the preferred strategy in most cases, it is important to acknowledge that some roles may indeed become obsolete. In such situations, the honest and transparent approach is to acknowledge this and manage the role’s transition accordingly. However, this is a distinct conversation from the one most organizations need to have. Many are currently treating a fundamental design problem as a performance issue, leading to an inefficient and often demoralizing cycle of employee turnover.
The Path Forward: Embracing Design Over Replacement
If a role on your team appears to be underperforming, before any decisions are made about the individual occupying that position, it is essential to ask a fundamental question: When was this job description last rewritten to accurately reflect how the work is actually done today? For many roles that have been impacted by AI or significant workflow changes in recent years, the answer is likely that it hasn’t been updated comprehensively.
This situation highlights a "design gap" rather than a "talent gap." The good news is that design gaps are often far more readily addressable than talent gaps. By undertaking a systematic review and redesign of job roles, organizations can significantly improve efficiency, employee engagement, and overall performance. This process can be accelerated and made more effective by engaging an objective third party who can provide an unbiased perspective. External consultants or internal operations teams who are not directly involved in the day-to-day management of the role can offer fresh insights and facilitate difficult conversations. This objective viewpoint is invaluable, particularly when the person responsible for the original job description must then address the individual whose role is being redefined.
Organizations like Heinz Marketing are developing specialized audits, such as their AI Readiness Audit for B2B Go-to-Market teams, designed to help businesses navigate these complexities. These audits aim to identify where organizations stand in their AI adoption journey and pinpoint potential roadblocks. For companies planning AI investments in the next three to six months, engaging with experts can provide crucial guidance on aligning their workforce and operational structures with the transformative potential of AI. By focusing on strategic role design and regular job description audits, businesses can proactively adapt to the changing demands of the modern workplace, ensuring that their talent is aligned with their evolving needs and that their operational capacity is optimized for future success. This proactive and strategic approach to job design is not merely a best practice; it is a critical imperative for organizations seeking to thrive in the dynamic and technologically advanced landscape of the 21st century.
