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UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION

JOB ANALYSIS AND PERFORMANCE

REQUIREMENTS

BPS 241 - HUMAN RESOURCE

MANAGEMENT

LECTURE 3
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Outline of Lecture 3

• Specifying Performance Requirements

• Motivating Employees/ Job Design/ Pay for Performance
• Core Abilities, Skills and Motivational Characteristics
• Performance Indicators and Job Analysis Techniques
• Job Design, Job Description and Job Specification
• Job Design in Small and Medium Enterprises
• Principles for Job Design
• Design for efficiency, mental capacity, motivation, health and
safety
• Uses of Job Descriptions and Job Specifications
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Specifying Performance Requirements

• Motivating Employees
- Motivation starts with good employee morale, the mental
attitude of employees toward their employer and jobs.
- High morale = sign of a well-managed organization.
- Poor morale shows up in many ways, including
absenteeism, employee turnover, strikes, falling productivity,
and rising employee grievances
• Job Design
- To produce any given product or service, a company
requires that a number of tasks be performed.
- Tasks are grouped together to form jobs.
• Pay for Performance
- Rewarding performance through pay for performance factors.
- Adequately paying for the compensable factors in a job; core
abilities, extra effort, skills, qualifications, extra hours of work, extra
assignments etc.
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Core Abilities, Skills and Motivational Characteristics

Maslow’s Hierarchy-of-Needs Theory
• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: Theory of motivation proposed
by Abraham Maslow. According to the theory, people have five
levels of needs that they seek to satisfy: physiological, safety,
social, esteem, and self-actualization.
Based on these assumptions:
• People’s needs depend on what they already possess.
• A satisfied need is not a motivator; only needs that remain
unsatisfied can influence behavior.
• People’s needs are arranged in a hierarchy of importance;
once they satisfy one need, at least partially, another emerges
and demands satisfaction.
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Goal-Setting Theory
• Goal: Target, objective, or result that someone tries
to accomplish.
• Goal-setting theory: Theory that people will be
motivated to the extent to which they accept specific,
challenging goals and receive feedback that
indicates their progress toward goal achievement.
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Indicators of Performance and Job Analysis Techniques

• What does it mean to analyze a job?
Job Descriptions (work to be done) + Job Specifications
(necessary personal features) = JOB ANALYSIS

• Job Analysis is the process of gathering and organising

detailed information about various jobs within the organisation.

• This enables managers to better understand the processes

through which they are performed most effectively.

• Job description & Job specifications are documents

containing a list of purposes, tasks, duties, responsibilities,
skills and abilities that a job entails.
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Job Analysis and Strategic HRM Competencies

• Organizational Design
- Organizing work flow - Human resource planning
- Role definitions
• Human Resource Management
- Job evaluation - Training & Development
- Recruitment & Selection - Placement & Orientation
- Appraisals - Career Planning
- Promotions - Labour Relations
• Work & Equipment Design
- Job design - Methods improvement - Safety
• Additional Uses
- Rehabilitation counseling - Job Classification
- HR research
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Job Design, Job Description and Job Specification

Job design

is about choosing appropriate combinations of tasks to form

jobs

once jobs have been designed, they can be described in

documents which indicate duties, tasks and responsibilities in
the job called the job descriptions.

Separate documents which are used as guidelines for

recruitment, selection, placement and development which
define the minimum qualifications necessary to perform a job is
called job specification.
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Job Design in Small and Medium Enterprises

• In SMEs, often jobs are not fully planned/designed:
a combination/ allocation of tasks can emerge from
day to day needs and activities.
• In SMEs, job contents often need to be kept flexible
and employees’ roles can change quickly.
• This is not negative, it is simply the result of an
informal and flexible process that is typical of small
size firms.
• That is why formal documents like job descriptions
and specifications are not always present.
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Principles for Job Design

Design for efficiency

Design for Design for

Job
mental capacity motivation

Design for Health and Safety

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Job Design
Design For Efficiency Job

Objective: lower costs and greater output per worker

• Actions
 Reduce complexity of work
 Increase in task specialization

• Results
 Simple and repetitive jobs
 Reduced performance time
 Reduced learning & training time
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Job Design
Design for motivation
JOB

Less Motivation Job Characteristics More Motivation

Few tasks, few skills Task/skill Many tasks, many skills needed
needed variety

Minor impact on others Task Major impact on others

significance

Work is a small part of the Task identity Whole piece of work is completed
whole

Decisions made by others Autonomy Much freedom to make decision

Difficult to see Feedback Effectiveness readily apparent

effectiveness
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Job Design
Design for motivation JOB
Objective: to design motivating jobs
• Actions
 Job enlargement: Job design that expands an employee’s responsibilities by
increasing the number and variety of tasks assigned to the worker.

 Job rotation: Ability to work in different departments on similar of different tasks

through a multi-tasking approach where employees gain exposure and
experience to enhance performance.

 Job enrichment: Change in job duties to increase employees’ authority in

planning their work, deciding how it should be done, and learning new skills.

 Self managing work teams: People who are motivated to work in teams or
groups.

• Results
 Increased learning attitude, flexibility, skill variety, responsibility, etc.
 Remember: not all employees want more responsibility or want to learn new skills –
every person has different needs
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Job Design
Design for safety & health JOB

Objective: reduce physical strain and risks for health

Actions
 Improve the context of work: space, light, polluting agents, hours
worked, turn-taking
 Check equipment and tools for reduction of risk, effort and physical
demand
 Introduce equipment and intructions to promote safety and safe
behaviours
Results
 Reduced traumas and illnesses
 Reduced losses in production time
 Reduced absence from work for illness/absenteeism
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Job Design
Design for mental capabilities
Objective: meet mental capabilities and limitations JOB

Actions
 Consider the overall mental effort required by the tasks combined in a
single job.
 When jobs are challenging, or costs of errors can be severe, simplify
jobs mental demands providing instructions, procedures, displays,
check lists, charts, time management tools etc.
 Encourage and support employees to create these tools for their own
job
 When introducing a new technology, check if it’s increasing the intensity
of information processing, multi-task behaviors, attention
Results
 Reduced errors
 Reduced frustration, stress
 Increased productivity
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Uses of Job Descriptions and Job Specifications

 Job re-design

 Human resource planning

 Recruitment and selection

 Training and development

 Performance appraisal

 Career opportunities and planning

 Salaries and rewarding system

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In Class Activity - Guidelines

In your groups for class group assignment ;
• As a group, choose a Private/Public Company

• In group, discuss a job that is done in the Company and create

or re-design the tasks and requirements of this job in the
enterprise.

• Prepare together a job description and a job specification

for this job.
• Expected output – a page of job description and job
specification according to the provided guidelines.
• Attention: this exercise is meant to prepare students
in designing good job descriptions and
specifications.
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Writing a Job Description: Check list

Job Title The title should be descriptive and, if
appropriate, indicate the job level in the
organization

Administrative Identify the office/ department where this job

Information belongs, supervisor’s title, if other employees
report to him…

Job’s Purpose Should be brief and describe the position in

broad terms
Essential Duties Listed in order of importance and should
and Tasks include details of tasks their physical/ intellectual
requirements/environment, the relationships with
other employees required to perform the job.
Responsibilities Should list responsibilities on objectives,
resources, results, other employees, etc.
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Writing a Job Specification: Check list

Minimum Sets out the education, qualifications, training,
Qualification experience, personal attributes among other
factors that have the proficiency to correspond
with the job’s performance.
Minimum Years Defines a combination of knowledge, skills
of Experience and abilities that job holders have acquired
over the years that are essential in achieving
acceptable performance levels.
Knowledge Should articulate the body of knowledge through
Field experteeism that will enable effective performance
Skill Work based and occupational competencies that
affect task and organisational performance.
Abilities Personal attributes and capabilities job holders
requires in order to perform their jobs
satisfactorily.
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END OF LECTURE 3
Any Questions or Contributions……