Write a formal role description with Claude

A formal role description is the document you reach for when something goes wrong: a performance review, a disciplinary step, a dispute about what the job includes. It helps only if it describes the real job. Claude writes a clean, structured description in about 30 minutes, and the prompt restricts it to the duties the manager gave you, because the model's instinct is to fill the page with standard duties from other companies.

Get the real duties from the manager

Ask the manager what the person in this role actually does week to week, how performance is measured, and whom they report to. Write the duties as the manager says them, then turn each into an action: "reconciles supplier statements monthly", "prepares the weekly cash report for the finance director". Collect the KPIs as well; a duty with a KPI attached is a duty both sides understand.

Check the job title against the national occupational classification. The formal title often differs from what the team calls the role, and the document should use the formal one.

The prompt

Role: you are an HR manager who writes formal role descriptions. Context: role: {{title per the classification}}. Reports to: {{whom}}. Duties from the manager: {{list}}. Performance indicators: {{KPIs}}. Task: write the role description using only the duties provided. Start each duty with a verb. Add qualification requirements, rights and responsibilities. Format: sections General provisions, Tasks and duties, Rights, Responsibility, Qualification requirements, Interaction. No long dashes.

"Using only the duties provided" is the important line. The Interaction section is where the model tends to be most useful beyond your list, since it spells out whom the role works with and on what.

Remove duties the role does not have

Read the draft with the manager's list next to it. Claude sometimes adds duties that are standard for similar roles in other industries, such as "participates in the annual budgeting process" for a role that has never touched a budget. Delete them. Then look for vague lines: "performs other assignments of the manager", "ensures efficient operation of the department". They sound harmless and make evaluation and discipline harder, since nobody can say whether they were met.

The rights section deserves a look too. It should describe what the person may actually do: request documents from other departments, sign certain papers, access certain systems. Generic rights ("to take part in discussions") add nothing.

Agree, approve, sign

Send the text to the manager for confirmation and to a lawyer for review. Then approve it by internal order and have the employee sign that they have read it. The signature matters most: a role description the employee never saw carries little weight in a dispute.

What to do

1. Collect the real duties, KPIs and reporting line from the manager.
2. Check the job title against the national occupational classification.
3. Run the prompt in Claude with only those duties.
4. Remove generic duties the person does not perform and vague lines such as "other assignments".
5. Agree the text with the manager and a lawyer.
6. Approve it by internal order and have the employee sign that they have read it.

A useful role description

It describes real duties, rights and responsibilities, the title matches the classification, and the employee has signed it.

Plans

Role descriptions fit the free plan. Pro at 20 USD per month (17 with annual billing) adds Projects, where you can keep your template and the classification extract; Team at 25 USD per seat with annual billing keeps team data out of training by default. See Claude pricing, the HR administrator's version of this task and Claude vs ChatGPT.