Job Analysis and Evaluation

What is a job?

A way to organize tasks & responsibilities

What is a task?

Basic elements of jobs. What people do & how they do it.

What is a job analysis?

Systematically collects & organizes information about jobs

• Breaks down the job into its constituent parts

Systematically collects & organizes information about jobs. Break down job into constituent parts.

• Tasks

• Responsibilities

• Working Conditions

• Outputs

Job Description Sections

Job Title

Brief Summary

Work Activities

Tools and Equipment Used

Job Context

Work Performance

Compensation Information

Job Competencies

Job Title

Describes the nature of the job

Assists in employee selection and recruitment

Affects perceptions of job worth and status

• Job Evaluation Results

• Employees feeling of personal worth

Affects clarity of resumes

Brief Summary

Useful for recruitment advertising

Should be written in an easy-to-understand style

Jargon and abbreviations should not be used

Work Activities

Include task statements.

• List only one activity per statement

• Statements should be able to “stand alone”

• Should be written in an easy-to-understand style

• Specific

Not all job analysis approaches are the same.

Functional Job Analysis

Structured for quantitative analysis of work using FJA’s seven scales (things, data, people, worker instructions, reasoning, math, and language).

How is it formatted?:

• What the worker does (action verb + object)

• Why the worker does it (purpose or expected outcome)

• How the worker does it (tools, procedure, aids).

Job analysts need to be able to score the tasks numerically for selection or classification

Job Context

“Lifestyle factors”

Work schedule

Level of responsibility and discretion

Ergonomic Information

• Physical and Psychological Stress

• Indoors vs. Outdoors

• Lighting/heat/noise/physical space

• Clean vs. dirty environment

• Standing/sitting/bending/lifting

Work Performance

Describes how performance is evaluated,

Might include

• Standards used

• Frequency of evaluation

• Evaluation dimensions (conflict management, networking skills, etc.)

• The person doing the evaluating

Compensation Information

Compensable factors

• Risk / Consequences of error

• Responsibilities

• Authority

• Education

• Experiences

But not “salaries” since salary changes.

Job Competencies

Common Names

• Job competencies

• Knowledge, skill, ability, and other characteristics (KSAOs)

• Job specifications

Technically

• KSAOs are building blocks an individual possesses that enable them to perform a job

• Competencies are broad clusters of KSAOs applied to performance in organizational contexts, usually tied to behaviours or outcomes valued by the organization

Competencies vs KSAOs

Communication

• Draws on knowledge of grammar, skill in writing, ability to tailor messages. More than one KSAO

Leadership

• Draws on social knowledge, skills in motivating, personality traits like extraversion

What are essential KSAOs?

Knowledge

• A body of information needed to perform a task. A collection of discrete but related facts and information about a particular domain acquired through formal education or training

Skill

• The proficiency to perform a certain task. A practiced act.

Ability

• A basic capacity for performing a wide range of different tasks, acquiring a knowledge or developing a skill

Other characteristics

• Personal factors such as personality, willingness, interest, and motivation and such tangible factors as licenses, degrees, and years of experience

Dictionary of Occupational Titles

Developed in the 1930s. 13’000+ occupations. Job specific & makes comparisons across jobs difficulty.

Task Oriented

• No direct information on required KSAOs of job context

Discontinued in favour of O*Net

O*Net

Occupational Informational Network

• A U.S. database that provides detailed information on job tasks, skills, abilities, and work contexts across occupations.

National Occupational Classification System

Not as easy to navigate, but Canadian specific

Observation

Job Shadowing

Analyst watches perform job

• Qualitative details (how tasks are done, tools used, interactions)

• Quantitative details (frequency, duration, sequence) can be collected

Problems with Observation

• May alter behaviour

• Intimidating

• “Mental” activities do not have observable “behaviours”

• Dangerous in certain jobs to observed

Questionnaires

Standardized with predetermined job elements that incumbents rate.

• Cheap and quick

• Could be ambiguous applied to some jobs.

Difficulties

• Unique or specialized jobs

• Multiple choice doesn’t allow for open ended questions or highlighting the nuance outside the question’s ability answer

• Handling objects,” “communicating with people,” is what it says, when the example is what surgeons actually do.

  • Pick the form of your job analysis carefully

Focus Groups

Allows you to gather data using some of the employees instead of all them. Just need to ensure the selection is random, as you want a mix of experienced and not experienced people

Subject Matters Experts (SME)

• Job incumbents

• Managers