New Job Description does not describe any of the tasks I actually do

[Lou2623]

My employer has told all staff that we must start sharing roles.There are 12 Clerical Operatives who do basic (identical) reception&admin roles. There are 3 medical secretaries who type up medical referrals to the local hospitals (a specialised job). I am one of the med secretaries and we work 36hrs/wk. I and the other 2 med secretaries have been re-issued with a job description where our title has changed to Clerical Operative - rather than Med Secretary.There are no details at all of any of the actual work we do every day as medical secretaries, it simply states 3 words 'other secretarial duties' in the middle of a list of admin duties that are currently being done by the 12 Clerical Operatives. From a practical point of view, the secretarial tasks of typing/sending & monitoring referrals takes 90% of our daily time, the work is highly responsible and high priority. However this is not reflected in the new job description by the words 'other secretarial duties'. To what extent is our employer obliged to write factual, honest information about our real day to day tasks in our job description and can they change our title when it does not describe the 90% of the work we do every day? None of the Clerical Operatives are qualified to do Med Secretary work anyway so we will get no help when if we get behind with our own work. The organisation is not taking on any new staff in the near future and is not out-sourcing, I know this for certain. Can anyone give comments on this. Thank you.

[teaboy2]

Re: New Job Description does not describe any of the tasks I actually do

Well for a start they can not change your duties willy nilly as they are contractual duties/terms for your role, and likely in your employment contract, and need your signed agreement in order to change any term of your contract. Are they forcing this on you all, or have they requested you sign in agreement to the changes? Has there been any consultation about this?

[Lou2623]

Re: New Job Description does not describe any of the tasks I actually do

Thank you for feedbackTeaBoy. Our contracts are identical regardless of job title.they are very vague and the only thing that differs from one persons contract to the next is the front page stating the relevant person's job title, hours per week (in my case 36) and rate of pay. Even the phlebotomists have the same contract with a different page at the front for their own job title etc. they sent a letter saying there will be changes. Then an informal meeting -where they told us what they had decided to do. our genuine concerns about priorities were basically made out to be winging and hinting that we were exaggerating& just making a fuss.What they said in the meeting doesn't even match what is on the JD(????) Fortunately we asked another person to sit in on the meeting so we have a witness. I find it a joke but no idea how to deal with it to get it sorted swiftly and relatively peacefully.

[teaboy2]

Re: New Job Description does not describe any of the tasks I actually do

Under the employment rights act 1996 section 1 (4)(f) your contract is required to contain both your job title and brief description of the work your employed to do - This brief description must be accurate, it can not be vague or universal otherwise there can be no consideration (contract consideration) for the term. Which basically means there is nothing to give you an idea as to what your duties are in the role and therefore you can not make any reasonable consideration of the offer employment as a result. As you wouldn't know what it is you were signing up for to do! That's why a brief description of duties would usually include, General cleaning of work area/desk, answering customer phone calls, processing invoices and purchase orders, processing orders, making outbound calls to customers and suppliers, general daily/weekly reporting to supervisor/manager etc etc etc. (that's for a sales office role).

Anyway, how long have you been in your current role performing your current duties? As you may have an argument under custom and practice which would make your duties an implied term of your contract, especially if the duties listed in your written contract are vague (i.e. other secretarial duties, when your actually doing specialist and sensitive task).

Also job title is a term of your contract, so that also can not be changed without your written consent.