What is job analysis?
The foundation of human resource management is job analysis, and the effectiveness of that analysis has a big impact on subsequent modules. Job analysis, a crucial and common human resource management technique, is sometimes described as a systematic process to determine the knowledge, responsibilities, and abilities necessary to carry out the work.
It serves as the foundation for all human resource management initiatives, including data collection for practices like hiring, training, performance evaluation, and pay structure. Businesses can locate the issue, discover gaps through an analysis of the current task, design the work to be more productive or incentive-driven, erase the old hierarchical structure, and replace it with a more flexible and liquid organizational structure.
The majority of businesses, especially small and medium-sized ones, make the following mistakes in their understanding of the work analysis: The majority of companies view work analysis, job descriptions, and workflow equivalents as concepts of work norms; however, once implemented, the written staff manual system is seen as the company system and is unable to change over time as the business develops.
Some enterprise departments are in disarray, the duties and rights of managers are unclear, and job analysis is of no use; some businesses lack work design, with the internal status being determined solely by verbal descriptions of the direct reports. Because the management of these organizations does not understand how vital strong work design and process design are to assisting businesses in gaining a competitive advantage.
The methods of job analysis
Method of observation
The observation approach involves an outside analyst seeing a worker execute their duties. For several days, they frequently observe the worker as they go about their work, attend meetings, and assess their workload to comprehend the key responsibilities of the position. While watching, the analyst makes thorough notes about the project, including the tools that are used, how much time is spent on tasks, and who is involved in getting the job done.
Interviewing Methodology
Since an interview approach enables you to ask incumbents and supervisors questions individually or in groups, it is a useful tool for job analysis. Open-ended questions, unstructured questions, and structured questions are all varieties of interviews. Using this technique, interviewers can discover a candidate’s attitude about their job and the responsibilities that go along with it. An analysis of the employee’s job is required. The interview questions should be carefully chosen to provide sincere and genuine feedback or gather reliable data. Additionally, it’s usually a good idea to interview multiple people to get a range of responses to avoid mistakes. After then, it can be made universal and used for the whole group.
Questionnaire Method
Another commonly used job analysis method is getting the questionnaires filled from employees, their superiors, and managers. However, this method also suffers from personal biases. Great care should be taken while framing questions for different grades of employees.
To get true job-related info, management should effectively communicate to the staff that the data collected will be used for their good. It is very important to ensure that it won’t be used against them in any way. If it is not done properly, it will be a sheer waste of time, money, and human resources.
Job analysis example
Example:
A mid-sized company called Millenials Generation makes and sells delicious pastries that are distributed through supermarket networks. The Executive Director stated that pertinent goals were never achieved and that most workers appeared to be unclear about their roles. He engaged a consultant to help him resolve this issue. Through reassignment, this expert discovered numerous places that needed improvement. For instance, nobody in the company performed the duty of production planning.
Despite their being a purchasing department under the Operations Department, some purchases of raw materials were being made by a sales assistant. The two departments that handled inventory control worked independently. The marketing manager lacked the technical know-how to complete that duty. The investigation led to the redesign of various jobs, and job descriptions were created for every position. The Director then made adjustments so that positions and their occupants would conform to the final descriptions.
Job analysis process
An efficient and accurate method of job analysis is quite relieving. It enables them to keep the staff of the proper caliber, evaluate their performance using practical benchmarks, determine their needs for training and development, and raise productivity. Let’s talk about the job analysis method and see how it accomplishes its goals.
- Finding the Goal of a Job Analysis: Well, a process is useless unless its goal is found and clearly stated. Determining the process’s necessity and desired outcome is hence the first step in the procedure. Spending money, time, and human resources are meaningless if HR managers don’t understand why data needs to be collected and what they will do with it.
- Choosing the person who will conduct the job analysis is the second-most crucial phase in the process. Some businesses prefer to have their HR staff do it, while others use consultants who specialize in job analysis. Job analysis consultants could be quite beneficial since they provide unbiased guidance, opinions, and techniques. When it comes to evaluating a job, they have no personal preferences.
- The next phase in the process is choosing how the job analysis procedure should be carried out. To research a particular work, a prepared strategy for carrying out the entire procedure is necessary.
- Making Strategic Decisions: The moment to make strategic decisions is now. Choosing the level of employee involvement in the process, the amount of information to be gathered and recorded, the sources from which the data is to be gathered, the data collection techniques, the processing of the information, and the segregation of the collected data are all important considerations.
- The next step is to train the job analyst on how to carry out the process and make use of the chosen methods for gathering and recording job data.
- The next step after creating a job analysis process is to share it with the rest of the organization. To ensure that workers give the job analyzer their full support, HR managers need to carefully convey the entire situation. During this phase, paperwork, questionnaires, interviews, and feedback forms must also be prepared.
- Data collection: The next step is to gather information about the job, such as the employees’ educational backgrounds, the abilities and skills needed to perform the job, the working environment, the tasks involved in the job, the reporting structure, the required characteristics of people in general, and employee behavior.
- Documentation, Verification, and Review: Accurate documentation is made to confirm the reliability of the data collected before it is reviewed. This is the last bit of information that is utilized to outline a certain position.
- Creating the job description and specification is the next step in organizing the data that has been gathered. The roles, responsibilities, tasks, and activities of the job are described in the job description, whereas the educational requirements, work history, character qualities, and skill set needed to do the job are specified in the job specification.
Therefore, the job analysis method aids in determining the value of a particular work, making the best use of human talent, removing unnecessary tasks, and defining realistic performance assessment requirements.
Importance of job analysis
Planning for Human Resources
Information from job analysis helps plan human resources. The job analysis is what determines the type of job, the qualifications needed, and how long it will take the average person to complete a task. It serves as the basis for predicting an organization’s need for and availability of human resources. Additionally, it is important for the organization’s HR information system and inventory. Thus, it aids in the task division, which is a crucial component of human resource planning.
Selection and Recruitment
Job analysis gives the firm the information it needs to recruit and select personnel. A thorough understanding of the job description (work requirements) and job specification is required to ensure the success of an employment program (requirement of job holder). They both contribute to the efficient running of the employment program.
Educating and Developing
The goal of training and development is to assist employees in acquiring the skills necessary for their positions. The organization’s demand for training and development is ensured by current description and specification declarations. The need for training and development can be determined by contrasting the knowledge and abilities of current employees with the degree of performance that is expected. This contributes to the effectiveness of training and development content.
Compensation Administration
Information from a job analysis is crucial for managing employee remuneration. It aids in the administration of salaries and wages by outlining the skills needed to execute a particular profession as well as the dangers and risks associated with doing so. To determine salary surveys, it is helpful to rank the job. Thus, it supports pay decisions.
Performance Evaluation
The actual work completed by the employees is compared to the established standards to evaluate their performance. Through the provision of precise performance requirements for each job, job analysis aids in the evaluation of employees’ work performance. It evaluates each employee’s real performance to the established benchmarks.
Knowledge of Duties
Through a job description statement, job analysis gives useful details on the obligations of an incumbent. It also lists the duties and qualifications needed for each job.
Safety and Health
During the job analysis process, certain risky operational, environmental, and personal practices are found; as a result, safety may be improved. Taking the necessary actions to ensure proper safety and prevent unhealthy situations, helps to recognize hazardous environments.
Reengineering jobs
To improve the engineering design of employment, job analysis gives useful information on the content and skill requirements of jobs. It offers information that enables management to alter positions so that workers with particular traits and qualifications can fill them.
Occupational counseling
Comprehensive work descriptions and specification statements make it possible to provide rehabilitative counseling and vocational coaching.