There’s one thing I never saw coming when I started writing position descriptions.
The legal risk.
Not just employment law or Fair Work stuff. I expected that. I’m talking about something deeper. Something people overlook until it’s right in front of them.
Psychosocial hazard exposure.
Role ambiguity. Workload confusion. Poor support structures.
All of it becomes a workplace health and safety issue if it leads to psychological harm.
And position descriptions sit right at the centre of it.
I didn’t fully get that at first. I thought PDs were about clarity, sure — good for hiring, helpful for performance management, maybe handy in a restructure.
But I didn’t understand how critical they were to risk management. Until I saw it play out firsthand.
We were working with a client going through a major restructure. Teams had changed, reporting lines were fuzzy, and people were struggling. Not just with the work, but with how they felt about the work. Anxious. Drained. On edge all the time.
Then came the claim.
A formal complaint of role-based psychosocial risk.
And the PDs were the first thing called in.
They were a mess.
Outdated. Generic. Vague as hell.
Full of filler lines like “supports team activities” and “completes other duties as directed.”
It made it worse. Because in the absence of clarity, everyone had made up their own version of what the role was. And when those versions clashed, people suffered.
That was the turning point for me.
Ambiguity Is a Compliance Problem, Not Just a Culture One
We talk about ambiguity like it’s a soft problem. A leadership issue. A communication thing.
It’s not.
It’s a hazard. A real one. Defined under Australia’s WHS legislation.
If someone can’t tell what their job includes — or excludes — that creates stress.
If their role keeps shifting informally, or they’re expected to pick up tasks with no clarity, that creates risk.
If they’re held accountable for outcomes that were never written down, that creates a psychological load that builds until it breaks something.
WHS codes of practice are crystal clear:
Role clarity is a core control for reducing psychosocial hazards in the workplace.
And yet, most organisations don’t link their PDs to that obligation.
They treat PDs like admin. Something to update once a year, maybe. Something HR owns, not safety.
That’s not good enough.
You wouldn’t ignore a physical safety control. You wouldn’t say, “Well, the ladder is a bit unstable but we’ll just see how we go.”
But with PDs? We do that every day.
The Small Shifts That Make a Big Difference
So what do I do now, when I write a PD?
I treat it as a compliance tool. Not in a dry, bureaucratic way — but as something that plays a real part in keeping people safe and supported.
I make sure the role purpose is clear and specific.
I define the key responsibilities in terms of outcomes, not vague activity.
I clarify decision rights — where autonomy sits, and where it doesn’t.
I check for scope creep — are we stacking three roles into one just because someone’s capable?
And most importantly, I test it by asking:
If this role got challenged today, could the PD help defend how it’s been designed?
Would it reduce the load on the person doing it?
Would it protect the manager assigning work?
This is where WorkLuma’s lens kicks in.
Every PD should serve four purposes:
- Anchor the role in clear outcomes
- Define boundaries to reduce ambiguity
- Support fair, consistent performance conversations
- Provide evidence of compliance with psychosocial risk controls
I’m not writing this as theory. I’ve seen it in practice. I’ve seen the difference between a PD that protects, and one that exposes.
The former gives you confidence.
The latter gives you headaches, claims, and meetings you don’t want to be in.
Here’s the part no one says out loud:
When you get PDs right, people don’t just perform better — they feel better.
They trust the system more.
They’re less anxious. Less likely to burn out. More likely to speak up early, because they know what’s expected of them and what’s not.
It’s one of the cheapest, simplest, most powerful forms of preventative care in your workplace.
And yet most people still treat it like admin.
Don’t be most people.