Indicating Grant Funding in Job Descriptions

Maintaining signed job descriptions for grant-funded positions is a best practice and serves to document an employee’s time and effort.

Rationale

Job descriptions for grant-funded positions should identify the funding source(s) and percentage of salary paid with grant funds to ensure the employee’s understanding of how much time should be spent on activities covered by grant funds. This can be done in the title section of the job description.

Documenting the funding source and percentage is required for grants covered by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) Ed-Flex waiver, which eliminates the requirement for a semi-annual certification of single-funded positions stating that the employee worked solely on covered programs. This waiver is allowable if the employee’s job description clearly states that the employee is assigned 100 percent to the program or single cost objective.

Annual Signature

Generally, all job descriptions should be reviewed regularly and when an employee changes jobs. When an update occurs, employees should review and verify receipt of the new job description. For grant-funded positions, the employee and their supervisor should sign and date the job description annually.

The TEA New Education Department General Administrative Regulations (EDGAR) FAQ explains that this is considered an internal control activity signifying the employee’s understanding of their respective job duties. Auditors and monitors often consider the lack of a signed job description to be an indicator of poor internal controls. In combination with other poor controls, this could lead to an audit or monitoring finding or a comment.

Resources

The following resources in the Writing Job Descriptions collection in the HR Services Resource Library (member login required) have been updated to address the use of job descriptions as a best practice for grant management:

• Job Description Format
• Job Description Writing Suggestions
• Purpose of Job Descriptions