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The job description is the wrong document, and most owners don’t realize they are working from it long after it has stopped doing any useful work. You wrote it before you hired the person, it describes a role rather than a human being, and it sits in a folder where no one reads it after the offer letter is signed. You know what is on yours, the person who holds the job knows what is on theirs, and the rest of the company is guessing.

The Job Card is a one-page snapshot of the actual work your employee is doing, is capable of doing, who they work with, and who they report to. Think of it as a detailed, shareable baseball card for every employee. The structural difference from a job description is that, with a Job Card, every employee in the company has one and can read everyone else’s. The CEO has a Job Card, the newest hire has one, and the person who empties the trash has one, all built on the same template. When everyone can read everyone's card, the quiet questions and lack of information that slows your business down starts to disappear.

Consider what those questions sound like in a working day. Who owns the contract review when the usual person is out, whose team is the website redesign sitting on, who is the second name on the key account, who on the night shift speaks Spanish, and who do you call when the marketing assistant needs a decision and you are in a meeting. In most small businesses these questions get asked, answered partially, asked again the next week, and answered slightly differently, which is how institutional knowledge becomes a series of hallway conversations no one writes down. The card writes them down.

At the top of every job card sits an identity block with the person's name, their current titles (most people in a small business hold two), any professional licenses they carry, whether they are a founder, the date their employment began, who they report to, and who they co-report to. The co-reports field is the one most org charts leave out and leaving it out is how the same employee ends up taking direction from two people who do not know they are both giving it.

Below the identity block sits a list of current responsibilities, written as verbs the person actually performs rather than abstract phrases that describe the role. The difference is a description that says someone is responsible for sales strategy and a card that says they develop and run the sales pipeline along with the VP of Marketing. The first tells you the job exists, while the second tells you it is being done and tells you who else is involved in doing it.

The next section names the skills and special knowledge the person brings to work, written specifically and with a level of proficiency where one applies. This is the section that earns the most value for line and entry-level roles, where responsibilities and team assignments may be thin, but skills are often the reason the company should know the person at all. A line cook who is fluent in Spanish, a warehouse hand who is certified on the forklift, a receptionist who is comfortable in QuickBooks, all of those facts belong on the card, and all of them are facts the rest of the company has a reason to know.

The next section names the internal teams the person sits on, who leads each team, and who else is on it. This is the section that does the most cross-company work, because a reader scanning the card learns in seconds that the IP team is led by the COO and that three other named people sit on it, which removes the need for anyone to ask who to talk to about a new trademark.

After teams comes a short section on business associations and outside involvement, where the card lists the professional associations, board seats, industry memberships, and nonprofit involvement that tell the rest of the company where this person's reputation lives outside the building and which doors they can open. The card then names the percentage of working hours the person actually gives the company, which is where the side-hustle conversation you had at the interview lives on past the first week. We covered the importance of that conversation in our prior article, Hiring in a Side Hustle World, and the card is the place where the answer stays current.

The card closes with a short-numbered list of immediate action items the person has committed to finish, with the names of any collaborators and target completion dates. Two to five items is typical. The action list is the part of the card the holder revisits, and the discipline of refreshing it on a regular schedule is what keeps the card from becoming another piece of paper in a drawer.

The card replaces the job description, and once your company is running on cards it quietly replaces several other documents you may not realize you have been duplicating, because the reporting line is the org chart, the team roster is the committee list, and the action list is the running plan for the period. The card also protects you when a key employee gives notice, a transition we wrote about in our prior article, What to Do When a Key Employee Gives Notice, because the replacement starts with a document that tells the company what the departing person was actually doing rather than a folder of guesses.

Free subscribers can access our Job Card template by upgrading to Premium below. Fill one in for yourself first, and hand the next one to the next person you hire.

If you need professionally drafted templates like this one and access to our growing Template Library of approximately thirty templates, simply upgrade to The Co. Letter™ Premium for $7.95/mo by clicking here.

The Co. Letter provides general business information. It is not legal, tax, or financial advice. Consult a licensed professional for guidance on your specific situation.

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