CHAPTER 04

Job Analysis
 CONTENTS

✓ Structures Based on Jobs, People, or Both

✓ Job-Based Approach: Most Common
✓ Job Analysis Procedures
✓ What Information Should Be Collected?
✓ How Can the Information Be Collected?
✓ Job Descriptions Summarize the Data
✓ Job Analysis: Bedrock or Bureaucracy?
✓ Job Analysis and Globalization
✓ Judging Job Analysis
JOB ANALYSIS
❑ Job analysis is the systematic method of discovering and describing differences
and similarities among jobs.
❑ Two products result from job analysis.
▪ A job description is the list of tasks, duties, and responsibilities that make up
a job - observable actions.
▪ A job specification is the list of knowledge, skills, abilities, and other
characteristics necessary to perform the job.
STRUCTURES BASED ON
JOBS, PEOPLE, OR BOTH
❑ The process begins by looking at people at work.
❑ Job-based structures look at what people are doing and the expected outcomes.
✓ Skill- and competency-based structures look at the person.
❑ The underlying purpose remains the same for both.
✓ Collect and summarize work content information that identifies similarities
and differences.
✓ Determine what to value.
✓ Assess the relative value.
✓ Translate the relative value into an internal structure.
 JOB-BASED APPROACH:
MOST COMMON
❑ Job analysis provides the underlying information and identifies the content of the
job, leading ultimately to an internal structure.
✓ This content is input for job descriptions, job evaluation, and job structure.
❑ Major decisions in designing a job analysis.
✓ Why are we performing job analysis?
✓ What information do we need?
✓ How should we collect it?
✓ Who should be involved?
✓ How useful are the results?
 WHY PERFORM JOB
ANALYSIS?
❑ Nearly every HR function uses job analysis.
❑ An internal structure based on job-related information provides a work-related
rationale for pay differences.
❑ Employees who understand the rationale can see where their work fits into the
bigger picture.
✓ It can direct their behavior toward organization objectives.

❑ In compensation, job analysis has two critical uses:

✓ It establishes similarities and differences in the work content of the jobs.
✓ It helps establish an internally fair and aligned job structure.

❑ The key issue is to ensure the data is useful and acceptable.

JOB ANALYSIS PROCEDURES
❑ Job analysis usually collects information about specific tasks or behaviors.

❑ A group of tasks performed by one person makes up a position. Identical

positions make a job, and broadly similar jobs combine into a job family.

❑ The U.S. government developed a step-by-step approach to conducting

conventional job analysis.

✓Develop preliminary information.

✓Interview jobholders and supervisors.

✓Use the information to create and verify job descriptions.

WHAT INFORMATION SHOULD
BE COLLECTED?
❑ Start by reviewing information already collected to develop a framework for
further analysis.

✓Job titles, major duties, task dimensions and work flow information may already
exist.

✓However, it may no longer be accurate so verify existing information.

❑ Collect sufficient information to adequately identify, define, and describe a job.

❑ Categorize information by:

✓The job job identification and job content.

✓The employee - characteristics and both internal and external relationships.

JOB DATA: IDENTIFICATION AND CONTENT
❑ Identification includes:

▪ Job titles, departments, the number of people who hold the job and whether it
is exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act.

❑ Job content is the heart of job analysis.

▪ Data involves the elemental tasks or units of work, with emphasis on the
purpose of each task.

▪ There is also an emphasis on the objective of the task.

▪ Task data reveals the actual work performed and its purpose or outcome.
EMPLOYEE DATA
❑ Describe each factor of employee characteristics, and their relationships, and
rate each for its importance to the job.

❑ The Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ), groups work information into seven
basic factors and includes 194 items.

❑ A more nuanced view focuses on the nature of interactions.

▪ Interactions are the knowledge and behaviors involved in searching, monitoring, and
coordinating required to do the work.

▪ Some interactions are transactional, or routine, and some more tacit, or complex and
ambiguous.

▪ Tacit interactions are believed to add greater value than transactional tasks.
 ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS
AND THE ADA
❑ The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires the essential elements of a
job be specified.

▪ Essential elements are those that cannot be reassigned to other workers.

▪ If an applicant can perform the essential elements, the applicant can perform
the job.

▪ Reasonable accommodations must be made to enable qualified persons to

perform those elements.

▪ The law does not make allowances for special pay rates or special benefits.
LEVEL OF ANALYSIS
❑ The level at which analysis of a job begins influences whether the work is
similar or different.

❑ If job data suggest the jobs are similar, pay the jobs equally.
▪ If jobs are different, the pay can differ.

❑ Using broad descriptions closer to the job-family level increases flexibility.

▪ Employees can switch tasks without job transfer requests and wage adjustments.

❑ A countering view is that a promotion to a new job title is part of the

organization's network of returns.
▪ Reducing the number of titles reduces opportunities for promotion.
HOW CAN THE INFORMATION
BE COLLECTED?
❑ Conventional methods are questionnaires, interviews, and observation.
❑ Employee involvement increases their understanding of the process, however, the
results are only as good as the people involved.

❑ Quantitative methods move the questionnaire online for a quantitative job

analysis (QJA) - statistical analysis is possible.
❑ Jobholders assess each item as to its importance to their job.
❑ Questions are grouped around five factors, and subcategorized.
❑ Results help prepare a job profile based on compensable factors.
❑ They can be tailored to the needs of the organization.

❑ If important job aspects are omitted or importance is unrecognized, the

resulting job descriptions will be faulty.
 WHO COLLECTS AND WHO
PROVIDES THE INFORMATION ?
❑ Analysis is best done by someone trained for such analysis and thoroughly
familiar with the organization and its jobs.

❑ The decision on the source of the data hinges on ensuring consistent, accurate,
useful, and acceptable data.

▪ Principal sources are the jobholders and supervisors.

▪ Managers two levels above give a valuable strategic view of jobs.

▪ Sometimes, subordinates or other employees that interact with the job may
be included.
WHAT ABOUT DISCREPANCIES?
❑ Differences in job data may arise among the jobholders.

❑ If employees and supervisors disagree on what is part of the job, the manager
should collect more data.

❑ Holding a focus group to discuss discrepancies, and asking participants to sign

off on the revised results ensures agreement.

❑ Disagreements can help clarify expectations, learn better ways to do the job,
and document how the job is performed.

❑ Support of top management and union officials is essential.

JOB DESCRIPTIONS SUMMARIZE THE
DATA
❑ The summary of the job itself is the job description.
▪ Job specifications can be used for hiring.

❑ It may be useful to refer to generic job descriptions that can be tailored to a

specific organization.

❑ Managerial or professional job descriptions often have detailed information on

the job, its scope, and accountability.
▪ They capture the relationship between the job, the person performing it, and the
organization objectives.

❑ The final step in the job analysis is to verify the accuracy of the resulting job
description.
 JOB ANALYSIS:
BEDROCK OR BUREAUCRACY?
❑ Disagreement centers on the issue of flexibility.

▪ Organizations are using fewer employees to do a wider variety of tasks in

order to increase productivity and reduce costs.

▪ Reducing jobs and cross-training can make work more fluid and employees
more flexible.

❑ Generic job descriptions can increase flexibility.

❑ Traditional job analysis may reinforce rigidity.

❑ In some organization, analyzing work content is now conducted as part of work

flow and supply chain analysis.
JOB ANALYSIS AND GLOBALIZATION
❑ Offshoring is the movement of jobs beyond a country's borders.
▪ Hourly compensation differ across countries.

▪ There are productivity differences across countries as well.

▪ Availability of qualified workers and proximity to customers are issues.

▪ Both low-skill jobs and white-collar jobs are at risk for offshoring.

❑ As firms spread work across multiple countries, there is a need to:

▪ Analyze jobs to maintain consistent job content or to measure the ways jobs
are similar or different.

▪ One challenge is that norms or perceptions of what is or is not part of a

particular job may vary across countries.
JUDGING JOB ANALYSIS –
RELIABILITY
❑ Reliability is a measure of the consistency of results among various analysts,
methods, sources of data, or over time.
▪ A necessary, but not sufficient, condition for validity.

❑ Using multiple raters and average ratings increases reliability.

❑ Outcome of a job analysis depends greatly on who conducts it.

❑ Research on employee and supervisor agreement on the reliability of job

analysis information is mixed.

❑ To increase reliability is to understand and reduce differences.

▪ Quantitative job analysis helps.
▪ Take care not to eliminate rich responses while eliminating differences.
▪ Training can improve reliability.
 JUDGING JOB ANALYSIS –
VALIDITY AND ACCEPTABILITY
❑ Validity examines the agreement of results among sources and methods.

▪ If several job holders, supervisors, and peers respond in similar ways, the
information is likely valid.

▪ A sign-off on results does not guarantee validity.

❑ If job holders and managers are dissatisfied with the process, they will likely not
buy into the resulting job structure or pay rates.

▪ Analysts collecting information through interviews and observation are not

always accepted due to the potential for bias.

▪ Quantitative approaches may not be accepted if they collect too much

information for too many purposes.
 JUDGING JOB ANALYSIS –
CURRENCY AND USEFULNESS
❑ To be valid, acceptable, and useful, job information must be up to date.
▪ Out-of-date job information only hinders not only pay practices and decision-making,
but also hiring, training, and development.

❑ Develop a systematic protocol for evaluating when job information needs

updated.

❑ Usefulness refers to the practicality of the information collected.

▪ Job analysis provides information to help determine how much to pay for a job and
whether the job is similar or different from other jobs.
▪ If done in a reliable, valid, acceptable way, job analysis can be used to make pay
decision and is therefore useful.
▪ Multiple purposes may require more information than required for pay decisions.
JUDGING JOB ANALYSIS –
A JUDGMENT CALL
❑ In the face of all the difficulties, managers bother with job analysis for the
information needed to determine pay.
▪ Differences in work determine differences in pay.

❑ If work information is required, the issue becomes how much detail is needed to
make these pay decisions.
❑ Collect enough information to:
▪ Help set individual employees' pay.
▪ Encourage continuous learning.
▪ Increase the experience and skill of the work force.
▪ Minimize the risk of pay-related grievances.
❑ The response to inadequate analysis is to collect more useful analysis.