Job Analysis Process and Its Importance to Organization - Coursework Example

1. Job Analysis Process and Its Importance to Organization In managing human resources, managers are faced with complex tasks such as deciding where to place employees in order to make use of their potential, determining how to identify he employees’ needs, understanding how to set performance measurement standards, knowing how to identify jobs, and establishing how to eliminate unnecessary jobs. To help solve these issues, Schmitt (2012, p.29) recommend organizations to conduct a job analysis. The process entails investigating the requirement of a job in order to determine its nature and the criteria of the person most appropriate to handle the job. While trying to address these challenges, managers must effectively fulfil the selection and recruitment of human resources and balance the responsibilities and performance satisfaction processes in line with the organization’s requirements. An effective job analysis process will thus ensure that an organization hires the right employees, assesses their training and development needs, and determines their performance standards (Gatewood, Field, & Barrick, 2008, p. 58). Managers should follow the eight-step job analysis process in order to handle the human resources issues they face. Identify job analysis purpose: Before spending any time, energy, or resources on collecting human resource data, human resource (HR) managers should have a well-defined purpose for the process. Therefore, this stage is meant to determine the need for the job analysis process and the desired or expected output. This step guides the organization in ensuring that the job analysis process is restricted to the intended purpose. Determining the analyst: Another very important stage of the process is determining who will conduct the analysis process. It can be conducted either by an organization’s HR department or by independent job analysis consultants. Though costly, job analysis consultants can make perfect analysts as their decisions, methods, and guidelines are not biased. Further, consultants do not have personal likes and dislikes for any job being analysed, which helps them give unbiased advice (Schmitt, 2012, p. 31). Selecting the method: This stage entails determining how to carry out the job analysis process. The approach to be taken must be planned in order to ensure that the specific job is investigated; this will ensure that the organization does not waste its resources by employing a method that will not provide accurate results. Strategic decision-making: It is at this step that crucial strategic decisions are made. Such decisions determine the level of employee involvement, the amount of details to be collected or recorded, the data sources, the methods of data collection, and the methods to be used in data analysis (O’Driscoll & Kalliath, 2003, p. 69. This step ensures that the procedure of job analysis is well-defined, thus saving time that would rather be spent when making such decisions at a later stage. Training the analysts: At this step, the HR manager trains the analyst about how to carry out the process. The training process may differ; in some organizations, it is an independent analyst who trains the analysts. Preparation for the process: Information regarding the process should be shared within the organization through an effective communication method. The importance of communication is to ensure that the employees are aware of and are prepared to willingly support the analyst. Data collection instruments like questionnaires, feedback forms, and interview schedules should be prepared at this stage (O’Driscoll & Kalliath, 2003, p. 70). Data collection: At this step, job related data is collected by the analyst. Data can include employees’ academic qualifications, skills and abilities related to the specific job, required human character or personality working conditions, behaviour, reporting hierarchy, duties and responsibilities, and job activities (O’Driscoll & Kalliath, 2003, p. 71). Data verification: Collected data should be well-documented in order to determine its authenticity. This is an important step as the information reviewed is to be used in analysing a specific job. Developing job specification and job description: This is the stage when the collected data is segregated to become useful information for the organization. The job description will elaborate on the activities, roles, duties, and responsibilities for a particular job, while the job specification is a statement setting out the criteria required for an employee to qualify for a specific job (Schmitt, 2012, p. 33). The job criteria are set based on academic qualifications, skills, personality traits, and experience. 2. Methods of Job Analysis Organizations can use a variety of approaches when conducting job analysis. An important consideration when undertaking job analysis is to decide who is to conduct the job analysis. In many cases, a member of the HR department is tasked with coordinating the process, which can also involve managers, supervisors, and employees. The most commonly used methods are observation, questionnaires, specialized methods, and interviews. A combination of these methods may be used based on an individual situation and the organization’s focus (Compton, Morrissey, Nankervis & Morrissey., 2009, p. 72). Using the case of U.S. Bank, this part of the paper will focus on commonly used methods of job analysis. U.S. Bank has recently been losing its customers to competitors, and Todd Berkley, the new manager for sales and customer retention, has been taking this situation seriously. By employing a competitive strategy to retain and gain more clients, the bank has focused on eliminating some of its customer service problems that are leading to client loss. The new manager realized that the new strategy has affected most of the human resource policies and procedures. A better approach to handle the angry customers and emphasize customer service was to write new job descriptions for all its employees, from the teller to the vice president. Each new job description included the new customer-related service guidelines for each position. Further, the bank had to train its employees and employ new hiring standards that would focus on hiring service-oriented employees (Gatewood et al., 2008, p. 44). Below are the common job analysis methods that were used by U.S. Bank. Interview To collect job analysis data, HR managers use three types of interviews: individual interviews meant for each employee, group interviews meant for employees with similar roles, and supervisor interviews for supervisors who understand the employee’s job. Group interviews are preferred when focusing on employees with identical roles because this approach can be quick and less expensive to gather data. The employees’ supervisor must attend the session; if this is not possible, the supervisor can be interviewed separately in order to get his or her perspectives on the duties and responsibilities that should be included in the job description. No matter which approach is taken, the interviewee needs to be fully aware of the purpose of the interview so that he or she is prepared to provide accurate information about his or her job (O’Driscoll & Kalliath, 2003, p. 73). U.S. Bank used group interviews in which tellers, guards, and managers had their interviews conducted in the appropriate groups. Todd Berkley’s main aim was to conduct job analysis in the shortest time possible in order to ensure that the employees’ roles were well-defined before the bank lost all its clients (Gatewood et al., 2008, p. 47). Questionnaires This method entails the employees filling out questionnaires describing their duties and responsibilities. The management must focus on the structure of the questionnaire is an important issue to focus on along with the questions to be included in it. This focus is vital to help an employee who may have a number of duties and responsibilities determine which to include and which to omit. Another scenario is the use of an open-ended questionnaire which may not limit the responses provided by the employee. The best questionnaire for job analysis purposes is one that contains both open-ended questions and structured questions. This approach would have been useful for U.S. Bank because it is time-saving and less expensive. US bank did not use this approach since there were no adequate guides to assist the staff in filling out the questionnaires. Observation Observation is employed when the job being analysed is characterized by observable physical activities. In contrast, when a job involves mostly mental activity, such as a lawyer, it becomes difficult to observe the job and obtain crucial information based on observation. If the analysis is to be successful, observation should used along with interviewing. Observation entails observing an employee do some work in one cycle (Vinod & Sridharan, 2011, p. 129). The cycle in this case refers to the time taken to complete some specific job; the cycle can therefore be minutes, hours, or days based on the work. Following the observation, the analyst makes notes of all the job activities that are of concern. After gathering adequate information, the analyst can interview the worker to either clarify some issues or seek some additional information. Alternatively, the analyst can interview the worker while observing some of the activities that would be helpful when analysing the job (Harley, 2009, p. 83). This approach would be applied to selected members of the staff like tellers and accountants because their duties entail several physical activities. Therefore, US Bank only used this method in analysing the tellers and the accounts considering the nature of their work. Participant Diary/Logs For this approach, the workers are requested to keep an updated diary of the activities they do during work. The employee should not omit any activity that he or she does including the time of doing the activity. If accurately recorded, this information can be very useful in describing a specific job when it is subsequently combined with the information derived from an interview with the employee or his or her manager (Harley, 2009, p. 86). The main challenge when using this approach is that the worker may provide inaccurate information by either exaggerating some tasks or underplaying others. However, this challenge can be mediated by analysing how the tasks are chronologically arranged. Another challenge with this approach is that the worker may forget to update the diary. This problem can be handled by the use of a pocket dictating machine that reminds the worker at random times to update the diary/log (O’Driscoll & Kalliath, 2003, p. 74). U.S Bank could not use this approach considering how busy its staff is; the busy schedule would result to the staff forgetting to update their diary/log. Problems that May Occur during Job Analysis Gathering the necessary information for job analysis may be easy, but gathering legitimate information can be rather hard. Every method of job analysis presents unique problems. When interviewing a worker, the main problem in job analysis is distortion either by false information or by honest misunderstanding. Employees often perceive job analysis as an activity intended to change the job’s pay rate. Employees may thus incorrectly view job analysis as an exercise to assess efficiency, which may in turn affect their salary (Vinod & Sridharan, 2011, p. 135). In order to benefit from the perceived evaluation, the employees may decide to exaggerate some of their responsibilities and minimize others. This problem can be addressed by having a structured interview schedule that lists only the important questions. Additionally, when conducting an interview, the purpose of the interview should be well spelt in order to restrict the question to the intended purpose. Regardless of the safeguards in place during an interview, acquiring valid information that will meet the set goals can be a rather slow and complex exercise (Compton et al., 2009). In comparison with interviews, a questionnaire can be a better option because it is quick to administer and less expensive. However, whether open-ended questionnaires or closed questionnaires are used, the respondent may not be in a position to provide all the information needed (Harley, 2009, p. 75). For instance, if an employee has multiple duties, the employee may provide some and omit others. In addition, the employee may be unable to address some of the questions in the questionnaire as a result of misunderstanding. This challenge can be addressed by guiding the respondents in completing the questionnaires in a group setting to ensure that no vital information is omitted; this helps to save time and money instead of guiding respondents individually (Vinod & Sridharan, 2011, p. 137). Although the analyst may decide to use observation, not all jobs are observable, especially ones that rely on mental activities. This drawback limits this method to jobs that involve physical activities. In addition, even those jobs that rely on physical activities may not last for a long time. For instance, a nurse who handles emergency patients engages in physical activities only occasionally. This challenge can be addressed by combining observation with interview; the combination of the two methods helps to save time and money while it ensures that detailed analysis is done as opposed to using one method (Harley, 2009, p. 74). The fourth method mentioned in this paper is the use of a diary or logs. This method can be very successful as long as the worker remembers to update the diary/log with accurate information. To avoid forgetting, the worker can be provided with a pocket dictating machine that reminds him or her randomly to update the log/diary. This method also poses a challenge in that it is costly to supply all the employees with the logs/diary and it may result to the respondents listing many responsibilities given the freedom allowed. In conclusion, job analysis is a very important exercise in evaluating the HR policies and procedures of an organization. In reference to U.S. Bank, the new customer service and retention manager, Todd Berkley, has been able to handle the customers’ complaints after a successful job analysis. In order to remain competitive, the employees of the bank are required to perform several duties as defined by the new job description. For instance, the service representatives have to understand why the customers are closing their accounts and keep a detailed record of the most common complaints causing the customers to leave. To help identify, track, and solve the customers’ problems, the bank opted to instil a complaint identification initiative in all its branches. Another important aspect noted during the analysis was customers’ preferences; the sales representatives must fully understand what the customers need when they agree to open accounts with the bank (Gatewood et al., 2008, p. 55). Basically, Todd had to reanalyse all the jobs from the lowest to the highest rank, add duties to the current jobs, and create new jobs. It would have been impossible to implement the new customer service-focused strategy without first completing a thorough job analysis. References Compton, R., Morrissey, W., Nankervis, A., & Morrissey, B. (2009). Effective recruitment and selection practices (5th ed.). Melbourne: CCH Australia Limited. Gatewood, R., Field, H., & Barrick, M. (2008). Human resource selection. New York: Cengage Learning. Harley, D. (2009). Job analysis at the speed of reality. New York: Human Resource Development. O’Driscoll, M., & Kalliath, T. (2003). Organisational psychology in Australia and New Zealand. New York: Oxford University Press. Schmitt, N. (2012). The Oxford handbook of personnel assessment and selection. New York: Oxford University Press. Vinod, V., & Sridharan, R. (2011). Simulation modeling and analysis of due-date assignment methods and scheduling decision rules in a dynamic job shop production system. International Journal of Production Economics, 129(1), 127–146. Read More