Job Analysis (Complete With Case Study)
Job Analysis (Complete With Case Study)
Job Analysis
Human Resource Management
Abstract 3
Job Analysis 3
Nature of Job Analysis 3
Components of Job Analysis 5
Uses of Job Analysis 6-7
Steps in Job Analysis 8-9
Methods of collecting information 10-
13
o Interview
o Questionnaire
o Observation
o Participant diary/logs
o Quantitative Job Analysis Technique
Conclusion 13
Case Study (Tropical storm Charley) 14-
19
o Questionnaire (structured & unstructured questions)
Job Analysis
Job analysis is a systematic approach to defining the job role, description, requirements,
responsibilities, evaluation, etc. It helps in finding out required level of education, skills,
knowledge, training, etc for the job position. It also depicts the job worth i.e. measurable
effectiveness of the job and contribution of job to the organization. Thus, it effectively
contributes to setting up the compensation package for the job position.
supervisor or HR specialist normally collects one or more of the following types of information
via the job analysis:
• Work Activities: First, he or she collects information about the job’s actual work
activities, such as cleaning, selling, teaching or painting. This list may also include how,
why and when the worker performs each activity.
• Human Behaviour: The specialist may also collect information about human behaviours
like sensing, communicating, deciding and writing. Included here would be information
regarding job demands such as lifting weights or walking long distances.
• Machines, tools, equipment & work aids: This category includes information about tools
used, materials processed, knowledge dealt with or applied (such as finance or law), &
services rendered (such as counselling or repairing).
• Performance standards: The employer may also want information about the job’s
performance standards (in terms of quantity or quality levels for each job duty).
Management will use these standards to appraise the employees.
• Job context: Information included here are about such matters as physical working
conditions, work schedule and the organisational and social context – for instance, the
number of people with whom the employee would normally interact. Information
regarding incentives might also be included here.
Job Description:
Job description refers the requirements an organization looks for a particular job position. It
states the key skill requirements, the level of experience needed, level of education required, etc.
It also describes the roles and responsibilities attached with the job position. The roles and
responsibilities are key determinant factor in estimating the level of experience, education, skill,
etc required for the job. It also helps in benchmarking the performance standards.
Job Worth:
Job Worth refers to estimating the job worthiness i.e. how much the job contributes to the
organization. It is also known as job evaluation. Job description is used to analyze the job
worthiness. It is also known as job evaluation. Roles and responsibilities helps in determining
the outcome from the job profile. Once it is determined that how much the job is worth, it
becomes easy to define the compensation strategy for the position.
Job
Analysis
Job Description
& Job
Specification
Job Evaluation –
Performance
Recruitment & Wage & Salary
Appraisal Training
Selection Decisions
Requirements
(Compensation)
• Recruitment & Selection: Job Analysis provides information about what the job
entails and what human characteristics are required to perform the job. This
information, in the form of job description and specifications, helps management decide
what sort of people to recruit and hire.
• Compensation: Job analysis is crucial for estimating the value of each job & its
appropriate compensation. Compensation (such as salary and bonus) usually depends
upon the job’s required skill and education level, safety hazards, degree of responsibility
and so on - all the factors we can assess through job analysis.
• Training: The job description should show the activities and skills – and therefore the
training - that job requires.
• Discovering unassigned duties: Job analysis can also help reveal unassigned
duties. For example, a company’s production manager says Mr. X is responsible for a
dozen or so duties, such as production scheduling and raw material purchasing. However
any reference of raw material inventory management was missing. On further study, the
manager finds that none of the other manufacturing people are responsible of inventory
management. Thus a manger has uncovered an essential unassigned duty with regards to
job analysis.
Steps in Job Analysis:
There are six steps in doing a job analysis.
(1) Decide how you’ll use the information, since this will determine the data you collect and
how you collect them. Some data collection techniques - like interviewing the employee
and asking what the job entails are good for writing job description and selecting
employees for the job. Other technique like the position analysis & questionnaire do not
provide qualitative information for job description. Instead, they provide numerical
ratings for each job; these can be used to compare jobs for compensation purpose.
(2) Review relevant background information such as organisation charts, process charts and
job description.
a. Organisation charts show the organisation wide division of work, how the job
in question relates to other jobs, and where the job fits in the overall
organisation. The chart should show the title of each position and by means of
interconnecting lines, who reports to whom and with whom the job incumbent
communicates.
b. A process chart provide more detailed picture of the work flow. In its simplest
form a process chart shows the flow of inputs to and the outputs from the job you
are analysing. Finally, the existing job description, if there is one, usually
provides a starting point for building the revised job description. In the figure
below the quality control clerk is expected to review components from suppliers,
check components going to the plan managers and give information regarding
components quality to these managers.
Information Components
input form the input from
plant manager Suppliers
(3) Select representative positions. Why? Because there may be too many similar jobs to
analyse. For example, it is usually necessary to analyse the jobs of 200 assembly workers
when a sample of 10 jobs will do.
(4) Actually analyse the job – by collecting data on job activities, required employee
behaviours, working condition, and human traits & abilities needed to perform the job.
For this step, use one or more of the job analysis methods.
(5) Verify the job analysis information with the worker performing the job & with his or her
immediate supervisor. This will help confirm that the information is factually correct and
complete. This review can also help gain the employees acceptance of the job analysis
data and conclusions by giving that person a chance to review and modify your
description of the job activities.
(6) Develop a job description and job specification. These are two tangible products og the
job analysis. The job description is a written statement that describes the activities
and responsibilities of the job, as well as its important features, such as working
conditions and safety hazards. The job specification summarises the personal
qualities, traits, skill and background required for getting job done. In maybe in a
separate document or in the same document as the job description.
Methods of collecting Job Analysis Information:
There are various ways to collect information on the duties, responsibilities and activities of the
job. In practice, we can use anyone of them, or we can combine the techniques that best fit our
purpose. Thus, an interview might be appropriate for creating a job description, whereas the
position analysis questionnaire maybe more appropriate for quantifying the worth of a job for
compensation purposes.
Conducting the job analysis usually involves a joint effort by an HR specialist, the worker, & the
worker’s supervisor. The HR specialist might observe and analyse the job and then develop a job
description and specification. The supervisor and worker may fill out questionnaires listing the
subordinate’s activities. The supervisor and worker may then review and verify the job analysed
conclusions regarding the job’s activities and duties.
In practice, firm usually collects jobs analysis data from multiple “subject matter experts” using
questionnaires and interviews. They then average data from several employees from different
departments to determine how much time a typical employee spends on each of several specific
tasks. The problem is that employees who have the same job title but work in different
departments may experience very different pressures. Therefore, simply adding up and
averaging the amount of time that, say, HR assistance need to devote “interviewing candidates”
could end in misleading results. The point is that we must understand the job’s departmental
context – the way someone with a particular job title spends his or her time is not necessarily
the same from department to department.
The Interview
Managers use three types of interview to collect job analysis data – individual interview with
each employee, group interview with groups of employees who have the same jobs & the
supervisor interviews with one or more supervisor who know the job. They use group interviews
when a large number of employees are performing similar or identical work, since it can be a
quick and inexpensive way to gather information.
Whichever kind of interviews we use, we need to be sure the interviewee fully understands the
reason fro the interview since there is a tendency for such interviews to be viewed, rightly or
wrongly, as “efficiency evaluation”. If so, interviewees may hesitate to describe their jobs
accurately.
Pros & Cons
The interview is probably the most widely used method for identifying the job’s duties &
responsibilities and its wide use reflects its advantages. It is a relatively simple and quick way to
collect information, including information that might never appear on a written form. The
interview also provides an opportunity to explain the need for and function of the job analysis.
And the employee can vent frustration that might otherwise go unnoticed by the management.
Distortion of the information is the main problem – whether due to outright falsification or
honest misunderstanding. Job analysis is often a prelude to changing a job’s pay rate.
Employees therefore may legitimately view the interview as the efficiency evaluation that may
affect their pay. They may then tend to exaggerate certain responsibilities while minimising
others.
Typical Questions
What are the major duties of your position? What exactly do you do?
What are the education, experience, skill and (where applicable) certification and
licensing requirements?
What are the basic accountabilities or performance that typifies your work?
What are your responsibilities? What is the environmental and working condition
involved?
What are the jobs physical demands? The emotional and mental demands?
Interview Guidelines
There are several things which should be kept in mind while conducting a job analysis interview.
1. The job analyst and supervisor should work together to identify the workers who know
the job best.
2. Quickly establish rapport with the interviewee. Know the persons name, speak in easily
understood language, briefly review the interview purpose and explain how the person
was chosen for the interview.
3. Follow a structured guide or checklist. One that lists questions and provides space for
answers. This ensures you to identify crucial question ahead of time and that all the
interviewers (if there are more than one) cover all the questions.
4. When duties are not performed in a regular manner – for instance when the worker
doesn’t performs the same job over and over again many times a day- ask the worker to
list his/her duties in order of importance and frequency of occurrence. This will ensure
that you don’t overlook crucial but infrequently performed activities.
5. Finally, after completing the interview, review and verify the data. Specifically review the
information with the worker’s immediate supervisor and the interviewee.
Questionnaires
Having employees fill out questionnaires to describe their job-related duties & responsibilities is
another good way to obtain job analysis information.
We have to decide how structured the questionnaire should be and what question to include.
Some questionnaires are very structured checklists. Each employee gets an inventory of perhaps
hundreds of specific duties or tasks (such as “change and splice via”). He or she is asked to
indicate whether or not he/she performs each tasks and, it so, how much time is normally spent
on each. At the other extreme, the questionnaire can be open-ended and simply ask the
employee to “describe the major duties of your job.” In practice, the best questionnaire often
falls between these two extremes.
Whether structured or unstructured, questionnaires have both pros & cons. A questionnaire is a
quick and efficient way to obtain information from a large number of employees, its less costly
than interviewing hundreds of workers, for instance. However, developing any questionnaire an
testing it can be expensive and time-consuming.
Observation
Direct observation is specially useful when jobs consist mainly of observable physical activities –
assembly – line worker and accounting clerk are examples. On the other hand, observation is
usually not appropriate when the job entails a lot of mental activities (lawyer, design–engineer).
Nor it is useful if the employee only occasionally engages in important activities, such as a nurse
who handles emergencies. And reactivity – the workers changing what he or she normally does
because you are watching – can also be a problem. Manager often use direct observation and
interviewing together. One approach is to observe the worker on the job during a complete work
cycle. Here you take notes of all job activities. Then after accumulating as much information as
possible, you interview the worker. Ask the person to clarify points not understood and to
explain what are the activities he or she performs that you didn’t observe.
Participant Diary/Logs
Another approach is to ask workers to keep a diary/log of what they do during the day. For
every activity he or she engages in, the employee records the activity in a log. This can produce a
very complete picture of the job, specially when supplemented with subsequent interviews with
the worker and the supervisor. The employee, of course, might try to exaggerate some activities
and underplay others. However, the detailed, chronological nature of the log tends to mediate
against this.
Some firms take a hi-tech approach to diary/logs. They give employees pocket dictating
machines and pagers. Then at random times during the day, they page the workers, who dictate
what they are doing at that time. This approach can avoid one pitfall of the traditional diary/log
method: relying on workers to remember what they did hours earlier when they complete their
logs at the end of the day.
Conclusion
From Job Analysis, specific details of what is being done and the skills utilized in the job are
obtained. Job Analysis enables the managers to understand jobs and job structures to improve
work flow or develop techniques to improve productivity.
Application Case
Tropical Storm Charley
In August 2004, tropical storm Charley hit North Carolina and the Optima Air Filter Company.
Many employees’ homes were devastated and the firm found that it had to hire almost 3
completely new crews, one for each of its shifts. The problem was that the “Old-timers” had
known their jobs so well that no one had ever bothered to draw up job descriptions for them.
When about 30 new employees began taking their places, there was general confusion about
what they should do and how they should do it.
The storm quickly became old news to the firm’s out-of state customers- who wanted filters, not
excuses. Phil Mann, the firm’s President, was at his wits end. He had about 30 new employees,
10 old-timers, and his original factory supervisor, Maybelline. He decided to meet with Linda
Lowe, a consultant from the local universities business school. She immediately had the old-
timers fill out a job questionnaire that listed all their tasks, duties & responsibilities. Arguments
ensued almost at once- Both Phil & Maybelline thought the old-timers were exaggerating to
make themselves look more important, and the old-timers instead that the list faithfully
reflected their duties. Meanwhile, the customers clamoured for their filters.
Questions:
Should Phil & Linda ignore that old-timers’ protests and write up the job descriptions as
they see fit? Why? Why not?
Solution: No, Phil & Linda should never ignore the old-timers’ protest. Since its the old–timers
who have full knowledge about the tasks, duties & responsibilities they used to perform.
Ignoring them may result to turbulence among the workers and they’ll feel cheated hence
leading to lower productivity.
Writing job description without the information acquired from old-timers would be like
climbing mountain without a guide. Since they know the nature and requirement of the job very
well, they must be asked about the information of the job before writing a job description.
To resolve the problem I would have used a questionnaire with both structured as well as open-
ended questions. That would have lead to lesser confusion and misinterpretation by Phil &
Maybelline. (The Job Information Sheet is given below which consist of both structured and
unstructured questions)
Question:
How would you have conducted the job analysis? What should Phil do now?
Solution: I would have conducted the job analysis in one of the two ways. Either I would have
used questionnaire (with both structured as well as unstructured questions) or the interview
method.
In the interview method, after collecting the information, I would further proceeded to get the
information reviewed and verified by the immediate supervisor of the interviewee and the
interviewee.
Phil should now use the information, which is verified and reviewed by supervisor and worker
both, for the training purpose of the new worker. The information consists of task, duties &
responsibilities of the workers. When the workers will be trained accordingly they’ll know what
to do and how to do, resulting in lesser confusion and time-wastage & increase in productivity so
that Optima Air Filter Company comes back on track.
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
2. If the incumbent supervises others, list them by job title; if there is more than one employee with the
same title, put the number in parentheses following.
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
3. Check those activities that are part of the incumbent's supervisory duties.
π Training
π Performance appraisal
π Inspecting work
π Budgeting
5. JOB DUTIES: Describe briefly WHAT the incumbent does and, if possible, HOW he or she does it.
Include duties in the following categories:
a. Daily duties (those performed on a regular basis every day or almost every day)
_______________________________________________________________________
b. Periodic duties (those performed weekly, monthly, quarterly, or at other regular intervals)
_______________________________________________________________________
c. Duties performed at irregular intervals
_______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
7. Is the incumbent performing duties not presently included in the job description? If so, describe.
______________________________________________________________________________
8. EDUCATION: Check the box that indicates the educational requirements for the job (not the
educational background of the incumbent).
π None
π 1 to 6 months
π 6 months to 1 year
π 1 to 3 years
π 3 to 5 years
π 5 to 10 years
10. LOCATION: Check location of job and, if necessary or appropriate, describe briefly.
π Outdoor
π Indoor
π Underground
π Pit
π Scaffold
π Other (specify)
11. ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS: Check any objectionable conditions found on the job and
note afterward how frequently each is encountered (rarely, occasionally, constantly, etc.)
π Dirt
π Dust
π Heat
π Cold
π Noise
π Fumes
π Odors
π Wetness/humidity
π Vibration
π Other (specify)
12. HEALTH AND SAFETY: Check any undesirable health and safety conditions under which the
incumbent must perform and note how often they are encountered.
π Elevated workplace
π Mechanical hazards
π Explosives
π Electrical hazards
π Fire hazards
π Radiation
π Other (specify)
13. MACHINES, TOOLS, EQUIPMENT, AND WORK AIDS: Describe briefly what machines, tools,
equipment, or work aids the incumbent works with on a regular basis:
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
14. Have concrete work standards been established (errors allowed, time taken for a particular task, etc.)?
If so, what are they?
______________________________________________________________________________
15. Are there any personal attributes (special aptitudes, physical characteristics, personality traits, etc.)
required by the job?
______________________________________________________________________________
16. Are there any exceptional problems the incumbent might be expected to encounter in performing the
job under normal conditions? If so, describe.
______________________________________________________________________________
17. Describe the successful completion and/or end results of the job.
______________________________________________________________________________
18. What is the seriousness of error on this job? Who or what is affected by errors the incumbent makes?
______________________________________________________________________________
[Note: This form is obviously slanted toward a manufacturing environment, but it can be adapted quite easily to fit a
number of different types of jobs.]
Job Description (Example Overview)
The example below is for a sales person who is selling financial service
products. About 75% of his/her time is spent in the office and the other 25%
is out on the road making presentations to customers. The job requires a
Certified Financial Planners designation and requires heavy duty lead
generation.
Job Requirements
A: Summary of Position
Researches and identifies target client sectors for financial product services.
Develops and implements a sales process to include initial contact, follow up,
presentation and closing procedures. Maintains records of contacts and sales
status including contact reports, sales projections and quota ratios.
B. Job Duties
Research and Create targeted new client lists within Delhi/NCR territory
Makes initial contact with potential clients
Performs routine and regular follow up with potential clients
Performs routine and regular follow up with former clients
Visits potential clients and makes sales presentations
Closes sales
Maintains regular record reporting sales activity
Employee Requirements
D. Licenses/Certifications
CFP - Certified Financial Planner
Indian Driving License
Success Factors
A. Grow Sales
Increase market channel penetration by 30% in first Year
Develop 3 secondary channels in first 180 days
Grow referral-based sales from 15% to 20% in first year
Comments____________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
HR Representative___________________________________
Department Manager__________________________________
Date Completed______________________________________
Structured Questionnaire (Example)
Indicate the equipment that is operated as a regular part of the responsibilities of the job:
Word processor
Other Activities:
Review documentation for new positions and positions that have been revised.
Orient new subordinates concerning policy and procedures, work rules, and performance
expectation levels. Review position responsibilities.
Plan, delegate, communicate and control work assignments and special projects concerning
subordinates.
Establish and maintain specific work goals and objectives or quantitative and qualitative work
standards to be achieved by subordinates.
Train, develop, and motivate subordinates to improve current performance and to prepare for
higher- level jobs.
Evaluate the performance of subordinates. Document and discuss present and past
performance with each direct report. Keep supervisor informed of results.
Review salaries of subordinates and recommend changes according to policy and procedures.
Advise superiors and subordinates of developments that impact job duties. Ensure proper
communications.
Maintain discipline, recommend and administer corrective action according to policy and
procedures.
Communicate and administer personnel programs in accordance with design and objectives.
Other responsibilities:
Bibliography
Reference Textbooks
Internet Sources
http://www.hr.blr.com
http://www.jobdescrption.com
http://www.harvey.psyc.vt.edu