In the movies, when people have to fill out forms answering questions about the minimum qualifications for their job, their job duties, what their time on the clock is spent doing, etc, its a prelude to mass firings.
Is this how it is IRL as well?
What exactly do businesses do with the info noted down on these forms?
Somewhat related: I was once the computer guy for a manufacturing company, and one day I get called me in for a meeting where one of the managers explained the whole procedure for how he takes the yearly inventory. Most of it was way over my head, but I didn’t let that bother me, because he would still be taking the inventory and I was just the helper.
He was gone the next day.
Normally, I have trouble putting two and two together, but even I was able to figure out that this guy was told by his higher-ups to pass this knowledge on to someone else before he got fired. It’s a shame I didn’t ask him more questions about the inventory.
As it turns out, when we took the inventory, it was a disaster, but for totally unrelated reasons, and him being around would not have helped.
Anyway, to get back to the OP, it is indeed helpful for management to have as many details as possible about how the different jobs get done.
The two times I was told to explain how I performed certain aspects of my job, my job was actually on the line. I made it through the first culling, but not the second one. When they emailed me for more details on things after I was gone, I was deliberately as vague as possible. Rather than take over my job like she was asked to do, my boss quit.
Wow that takes balls. “We fired you, but could you help us out with what you used to do here? For free?” I’d have sent back hello.jpg* or maybe a link to a lemon party.*
*do *not *google those at work. Seriously. You have been warned.
When I had to be changed to telecommuting, I essentially created my own position so the first thing I did was while developing the procedures was to document everything - what I did and how it needed to be done, schedules, reports needed to be pulled and who to contact with what companies. I never understood trying to have job security through making the process of ones job supersecretive or obscurely difficult.
I could give someone a file documenting every aspect of my job with very detailed instructions after about 4 weeks [I updated the directions every time we worked out a better way of doing it.]
It’s the standard expectation in Spain and most of Europe. Then again, the standard expectation is also to have a minimum of 15 calendar days warning when you get fired or leave: people getting kicked out “now” happens only if there’s a panda car waiting for them outside or if they have specific contract types which allow for it - people leaving “now” happens only under those same contracts.
I’ve seen companies do it without going into enormous detail as a way to prepare “lists of contacts” for upcoming projects. We want to speak with someone who can tell us how does our Como subsidiary handle billing, who do we call? Here, these are the people involved in billing.