JOB ANALYSIS

Manpower planning is concerned with determination of quantitative and qualitative requirements

of manpower for the organization. Determination of manpower requirements is one of the most
important problems in manpower planning.

Job analysis and job design, provide this knowledge. Before going through the mechanism of job
analysis and job design, it is relevant to understand the terms which are used in job analysis and
job design.

Job: A job may be defined as a “collection or aggregation of tasks, duties and responsibilities
which as a whole, are regarded as a regular assignment to individual employees,” and which is
different from other assignments, In other words, when the total work to be done is divided and
grouped into packages, we call it a “job.”

Each job has a definite title based upon standardized trade specifications within a job; two or
more grades may be identified, where the work assignment may be graded according to skill, the
difficulty of doing them, or the quality of workmanship.

Thus, it may be noted that a position is a “collection of tasks and responsibilities regularly
assigned to one person;” while a job is a “group of position, which involve essentially the same
duties, responsibilities, skill and knowledge.” A position consists of a particular set of duties
assigned to an individual.

Task: It is a distinct work activity carried out for a distinct purpose.

Duty: It is a number of tasks.
Position: It refers to one or more duties performed by one person in an organization, There are at
least as many positions as there are workers in the organization; vacancies may create more
positions than employees.
Job: It is a type of position within the organization.
Job Family: It is group of two or more jobs that either call for similar worker characteristics or
contain parallel work tasks as determined by job analysis.
Occupation: It is a group of similar jobs found across organizations.
Career: It represents a sequence of positions, jobs, or occupations that a person has over his
working life.

Job Analysis Defined

According to Michael L. Jucius, “Job analysis refers to the process of studying the operations,
duties and organizational aspects of jobs in order to derive specifications or as they called by
some, job descriptions.”
According to DeCenzo and P. Robbins, “A job analysis is a systematic exploration of the
activities within a job. It is a basic technical procedure, one that is used to define the duties,
responsibilities, and accountabilities of a job.”

According to Herbert G Herman “A job is a collection of tasks that can be performed by a

single
employee to contribute to the production of some product or service provided by the
organization. Each job has certain ability requirements (as well as certain rewards) associated
with it. Job analysis process used to identify these requirements.”

Flippo has offered a more comprehensive definition of job analysis as, “Job analysis is the
process of studying and collecting information relating to the operations and responsibilities of a
specific job. The immediate products of the analysis are job descriptions and job specifications”
Thus, job analysis involves the process of identifying the nature of a job (job description) and the
qualities of the likely job holder (job specification).

Uses of Job Analysis

As summarized in Figure 3.2 the information generated by the job analysis is used as a basis of
several interrelated personnel management activities:
1. Achievement of Goals: Weather and Davis have stated, “Jobs are at the core of every
organization’s productivity, if they are designed well and done right, the organization makes
progress towards its objectives. Otherwise, productivity suffers, profits fall, and the organization
is less able to meet the demands of society, customer, employees, and other with a stake in its
success.”
2. Organizational Design: Job analysis will be useful in classifying the jobs and the
interrelationships among the jobs. On the basis of information obtained through job analysis,
sound decisions regarding hierarchical positions and functional differentiation can be taken and
this will improve operational efficiency.
3. Organization and Manpower Planning: It is helpful in organization planning, for it defines
labour in concrete terms and co-ordinates the activities of the work force, and clearly divides
duties and responsibilities.
4. Recruitment and Selection: Job analysis provides you with information on what the job
entails and what human requirements are required to carry out these activities. This information
is the basis on which you decide what sort of people to recruit and hire.
5. Placement and Orientation: Job analysis helps in matching the job requirements with the
abilities, interests and aptitudes of people. Jobs will be assigned to persons on the basis of
suitability for the job. The orientation programme will help the employee in learning the
activities and understanding duties that are required to perform a given job more effectively.
6. Employee Training and Management Development: Job analysis provides the necessary
information to the management of training and development programmes. It helps in to
determine the content and subject matter of in training courses. It also helps in checking
application information, interviewing test results and in checking references.
7. Job Evaluation and Compensation: Job evaluation is the process of determining the relative
worth of different jobs in an organization with a view to link compensation, both basic and
supplementary, with the worth of the jobs. The worth of a job is determined on the basis of job
characteristics and job holder characteristics. Job analysis provides both in the forms of job
description and job specification.
8. Performance Appraisal: Performance appraisal involves comparing each employee’s actual
performance with his or her desired performance. Through job analysis industrial engineers and
other experts determine standards to be achieved and specific activities to be performed.
9. Health and Safety: It provides an opportunity for identifying hazardous conditions and
unhealthy environmental factors so that corrective measures may be taken to minimize and avoid
the possibility of accidents.
10. Employee Counselling: Job analysis provides information about career choices and personal
limitation. Such information is helpful in vocational guidance and rehabilitation counselling.
Employees who are unable to cope with the hazards and demands of given jobs may be advised
to opt for subsidiary jobs or to seek premature retirement.

Steps in Job Analysis

1. Determine the Use of the Job Analysis Information: Start by identifying the use to which
the information will be put, since this will determine the type of data you collect and the
technique you use to collect them.
2. Collection of Background Information: According to Terry, “The make-up of a job, its
relation to other jobs, and its requirements for competent performance are essential information
needed for a job evaluation. This information can be had by reviewing available background
information such as organization charts (which show how the job in question relates to other jobs
and where they fit into the overall organization); class specifications (which describe the general
requirements of the class of job to which the job under analysis belongs); and the existing job
descriptions which provide a starting point from which to build the revised job description”.
3. Selection of Jobs for Analysis:
To do job analysis is a costly and time-consuming process. It is hence, necessary to select a
representative sample of jobs for purposes of analysis. Priorities of various jobs can also be
determined. A job may be selected because it has undergone undocumented changes in job
content. The request for analysis of a job may originate with the employee, supervisor, or a
manager.

When the employee requests an analysis it is usually because new job demands have not been
reflected in changes in wages. Employee’s salaries are, in part, based upon the nature of the work
that they perform. Some organizations establish a time cycle for the analysis of each job. For
example: A job analysis may be required for all jobs every three years. New jobs must also be
subjected to analysis.
4. Collection of Job Analysis Data: Job data on features of the job, requited employee
qualification and requirements, should be collected either form the employees who actually
perform a job; or from other employees (such as foremen or supervisors) who watch the workers
doing a job and there by acquire knowledge about it; or from the outside persons, known as the
trade job analysis who are appointed to watch employees performing a job. The duties of such a
trade job analyst are (i) to outline the complete scope of a job and to consider all the physical and
mental activities involved in determining what the worker does.; (ii) find out why a worker does
a job; and for this purpose he studies why each task is essential for the overall result; and (iii) the
skill factor which may be needed in the worker to differentiate between jobs and establish the
extent of the difficulty of any job.
5. Processing the Information: Once job analysis information has been collected, the next step
is to place it in a form that will make it useful to those charged with the various personnel
functions. Several issues arise with respect to this. First, how much detail is needed? Second, can
the job analysis information be expressed in quantitative terms? These must be considered
properly.
6. Preparing Job Descriptions and Job Classifications: Job information which has been
collected must be processed to prepare the job description form. It is a statement showing full
details of the activities of the job. Separate job description forms may be used for various
activities in the job and may be compiled later on. The job analysis is made with the help of these
description forms. These forms may be used as reference for the future.
7. Developing Job Specifications: Job specifications are also prepared on the basis of
information collected. It is a statement of minimum acceptable qualities of the person to be
placed on the job. It specifies the standard by which the qualities of the person are measured. Job
analyst prepares such statement taking into consideration the skills required in performing the
job properly. Such statement is used in selecting a person matching with the job.

Methods for Collecting Job Analysis Data

As discussed earlier, information is to be collected for job analysis. Such information may be
collected by the trained job analysis, superiors concerned and job holders themselves. Job
information is collected through the following methods:
1. Participant Diary/Logs: Workers can be to keep participant diary/long or lists of things they
do during the day. For every activity he or she engages in, the employee records the activity
(along with the time) in a log. This can provide you with a very comprehensive picture of the
job, especially when it’s supplemented with subsequent interviews with the worker and his or her
supervisor. This method provides more accurate information if done faithfully. However, it is
quite time consuming. Further, each job holder may maintain records according to his own way
which presents problems in analysis at later stage. Therefore, it has limited application.
2. Interview: There are three types of interviews you can use to collect job analysis data:
individual interviews with each employee; group interviews with groups of employees having
the same job; and supervisor interviews with one or more supervisors who are thoroughly
knowledgeable about the job being analyzed. The group interview is used when a large number
of employees are performing similar or identical work, since this can be a quick and inexpensive
way of learning about the job. As a rule, the worker’s immediate supervisor would attend the
group session; if not, you should interview the supervisor separately to get that person’s
perspective on the duties and responsibilities of the job.
3. Critical Incidents: In this method, job holders are asked to describe incidents concerning the
job on the basis of their past experience. The incidents so collected are analyzed and classified
according to the job areas they describe; A fairly picture of actual job requirements can be
obtained by distinguishing between effective and ineffective behaviors of workers on the job.
However, this method is time consuming. The analyst requires a high degree of skill to analyze
the contents of descriptions given by workers.
4. Technical Conference Method: This method utilizes supervisors with extensive knowledge
of the job. Here, specific characteristics of a job are obtained from the “experts.” Although it is a
good data gathering method, it often overlooks the incumbent worker’s perception about what
they do on their job.
5. Job Performance: Under this method, the job analyst actually performs the job under study to
get first-hand experience of the actual tasks, and physical and social demands of the job. This
method can be used only for jobs where skill requirements are low and can be learnt quickly and
easily. This is a time-consuming method and is not appropriate for jobs requiring extensive
training.
6. Functional Job Analysis: Functional job analysis (FJA) is employee- oriented analytical
approach of job analysis. This approach attempts to describe the whole person on the job. The
main features of FJA include the following:
 The extent to which specific instruction are necessary to perform the task
 The extent to which reasoning and judgment are required to perform the task
 The mathematical ability required to perform the task and
 The verbal and language facilities required to perform the task.
7. Observation Method: Using this method, a job analyst watches employees directly on the
job.Observations are made on various tasks, activities, the pace at which tasks are carried out,
and the way different activities are performed. This method is suitable for jobs that involve
manual, standardized, and short job cycle activities. This method also requires that the entire
range of activities be observable; possible with some jobs.
8. Questionnaires: The method is usually employed by engineering consultants. Properly
drafted
questionnaires are sent out to job-holders for completion and are returned to supervisors.
However, the information received is often unorganized and incoherent. The idea in issuing
questionnaire is to elicit the necessary information from job –holders so that any error may first
be discussed with the employee and, after corrections, may be submitted to the job analyst.
This technique is time consuming and generally does not yield satisfactory results because many
employees do not complete the questionnaire or furnish incorrect information because of their
own limitations. The use of questionnaire is recommended only in case of those technical jobs
where the job contents are not completely known to the supervisor or the operation is too
complex to observe. There are certain standardized questionnaires developed by a few agencies
which are used by various organizations for job analysis. Most of these questionnaires are of two
types: position analysis questionnaire and management position description questionnaire that
are described as follows: