Laureen Knudsen Fortune 1000 Chief Transformation Officer helps organizations redefine work via Professional Identity. Top 100 Women in TechgettyTwo people can have the same title, the same responsibilities and identical job descriptions, yet one may consistently create more value than the other.Every manager has worked with employees who contribute far beyond the requirements of their role. They identify risks before they become problems, build trust across teams, navigate ambiguity, connect ideas others miss and help organizations make better decisions. Still, many of those contributions never appear in a job description.Job descriptions were designed to define work, establish responsibilities and create consistency across an organization. They were never intended to capture everything that made a person valuable. As AI assumes more tactical work, that limitation becomes impossible to ignore.Leaders are being forced to answer a more fundamental question: What continues to define a role as technology changes how the work is performed?The Five Dimensions Of Human ContributionTo redesign jobs effectively, organizations need to understand what remains across five dimensions: the work, the knowledge, the skills, the human capabilities and the value.The human capabilities dimension is especially important because it captures the qualities that distinguish exceptional performance from average performance. Judgment, empathy, creativity, collaboration, ethics and storytelling determine how people apply their knowledge and skills when the work is complex, ambiguous or changing.Years before generative AI entered the workplace, I found myself confronting this reality while managing teams through transformation and workforce reductions. I maintained a spreadsheet for every member of my organization. It included responsibilities, technical expertise, experience and the capabilities associated with each role.However, it also documented something else. It captured the qualities that often determined whether a project succeeded, a customer stayed, a team aligned around a difficult decision or a transformation moved forward. It helped answer questions like:• Who consistently exercised strong judgment?• Who built trust across organizations?• Who demonstrated empathy during difficult situations?• Who brought creativity to complex problems?• Who collaborated effectively across teams?• Who was known for doing the right thing when the right decision was also the hardest one?• Who could tell a story that helped people understand and embrace change?Those qualities rarely appeared in workforce planning discussions, yet they were often the reason individuals created disproportionate value. When reductions were unavoidable, that visibility changed the outcome. Because I had mapped human capabilities alongside traditional performance data, my teams consistently retained more people than comparable teams managing the job descriptions alone.When discussions about staffing reductions occurred, I would often ask a simple question: Which of these capabilities are we prepared to lose?The conversation changed immediately. Instead of discussing positions, we discussed contributions. Instead of debating headcount, we debated capabilities. What became clear was that many of the qualities that made people valuable had little to do with the tasks listed in their job descriptions and everything to do with how they applied their human capabilities to the work.​Shifting To Professional IdentityAI did not create this problem, but it did expose it. Organizations have spent decades defining talent through responsibilities, activities and required skills. As technology assumes more of the tactical work, leaders need a richer way to understand human contribution. That requires a shift from thinking about jobs to thinking about professional identity.Professional identity is how a person understands and communicates the combination of their knowledge, skills, human capabilities and the value they bring to the problems they solve. Understanding it is only the first step. Organizations also need a practical way to make it visible.One approach is what I call a "professional identity profile," which makes those dimensions visible in a way that traditional workforce tools overlook. A job description explains what a role does. A professional identity profile explains how human capabilities create value and provides a framework for redesigning work as technology continues to reshape it.Organizations that understand this distinction are the ones I've found are more likely to make better hiring decisions, develop talent more effectively and redesign work more intelligently. They are often better equipped to recognize and retain the capabilities that drive innovation, adaptation and long-term success.Job descriptions helped organizations manage work. Shifting to professional identity profiles is what I believe will help them understand human contribution. In a world where technology increasingly performs the tactical work, that distinction may become one of the most important competitive advantages an organization can develop.​​Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?