Industrial/Organizational Psychology: Workforce Planning, Job Analysis, and Job Evaluation

Vocabulary flashcards covering the key terms and concepts from the lecture notes on workforce planning, job analysis, job descriptions, and job evaluation.

Workforce Planning

Process to estimate labor demand and evaluate supply to meet demand; aims to have the right number of people with the right competencies in the right jobs at the right time; synonyms include Human Resource Planning, Succession Planning, Building Bench Strength, Strategic Staffing.

Strategic Staffing

Process to identify and address the staffing implications of an organization’s business strategies and plans.

Practical Benefits

❑ Direct and substantive effects of workforce planning

❑ Examples:

❑ Ensure replacements are available to fill important vacancies

❑ Provide realistic staffing projections for budgeting purposes

❑ Provide clear rationale for linking expenditures for training, retraining, development, career counseling, and recruitment efforts

❑ Help maintain and improve a diversified workforce

❑ Help prepare for restructuring, reducing, and expanding the workforce

Process Benefits

❑ Indirect effects of workforce planning

❑ Examples:

❑ Provides organizational members the opportunity to think about the future

❑ Allows the organization to align and centralize efforts in the context of decentralization

❑ Integrates various organizational actions for the purpose of reinforcing the strategy

Traditional Workforce Planning

Approach that analyzes supply/demand gaps and creates a plan; identifies three gap types (staffing levels, skill gaps, mix of both) and follows four steps: data collection, current workforce analysis, regression-based staffing predictions, and staffing ratios.

Workforce Analytics

Quantitative analysis of the relationship between key business metrics and staffing variables (e.g., demographics, cost, job categories, outcomes).

Forecasting and Scenario Modeling

Method using multiple future assumptions; each scenario has its own staffing implications, unlike traditional planning which uses a single assumption.

Strategic Workforce Planning

Workforce planning embedded in the organization’s strategic planning process, often with senior leaders setting overall directions.

Human Capital Planning

Like strategic workforce planning but with a focus on segmentation (Strategic, Core, Requisite, Non-core), less specificity, and defined time frames.

Job Analysis

Process of studying positions, describing duties and responsibilities, and grouping positions into categories; serves as input for recruitment, selection, performance appraisal, compensation, training, career planning, organizational management, and litigation protection.

Job Description

Written result of a job analysis; a brief to 2–5 page summary describing duties, tasks, required skills, training, experience, responsibilities, working conditions, and relations to other jobs; used for advertisements, postings, and internal communications.

Job Title

An accurate title describes the nature of the job, its power and status level, and the competencies needed to perform the job (Martinez, Laird, Martin, & Ferris, 2008).

Brief Summary

briefly describe the nature and purpose of the job. This summary can be used in help-wanted advertisements, internal job postings, and company brochures.

Compensation Information

This section of the job description should contain information on the salary grade, whether the position is exempt, and the compensable factors used to determine salary.

Salary grade

A cluster of jobs of similar worth

Job Context

Environmental factors of a job, including stress level, work schedule, physical demands, responsibility, temperature, coworkers, danger, and disability considerations.

Work Activities

Tasks and activities involved in a job, organized into meaningful categories to make the description readable.

Tools and Equipment Used

List of tools and equipment required to perform work activities; often listed separately to aid identification.

Work Performance

Description of how an employee’s performance is evaluated and the standards expected.

Job Competencies (KSAOs)

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Other Characteristics needed to perform a job; often referred to as competencies.

Who will conduct job analysis

• Trained individual in the Human Resources department.

• Job incumbents, supervisors, or outside consultants

How often should a Job Description be updated?

• a job description should be updated if a job changes significantly.

• With high-tech jobs, this is probably fairly often.

• An interesting reason that job descriptions change across time is job crafting—the informal changes that employees make in their jobs (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001)

Which employees should participate?

• For organizations with relatively few people in each job, it is advisable to have all employees participate in the job analysis.

• In organizations in which many people perform the same job (e.g., teachers at a university, assemblers in a factory), every person need not participate.

KSAO

Abbreviation for Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Other Characteristics.

Knowledge

Body of information needed to perform a task.

Skill

Proficiency to perform a learned task.

Ability

Basic capacity to perform a range of tasks; inherent capability.

Other Characteristics

Attributes not covered by knowledge, skills, or abilities (e.g., personality, motivation, licenses, degrees, experience).

Compensable Job Factors

Factors that differentiate the relative worth of jobs (e.g., level of responsibility, physical and mental demands, education, training/experience, working conditions).

Internal Pay Equity

Fairness of pay comparisons within the organization to ensure equal jobs are paid fairly.

External Pay Equity

Fairness of pay comparisons with the external job market to attract and retain employees.

Salary Surveys

Questionnaires sent to other organizations to compare compensation for similar positions; used to assess external pay equity.

Job Evaluation

Process of determining the monetary worth of a job; involves selecting compensable factors, defining levels and weights, and comparing total points to salary data.

Wage Trend Line

Graphical representation showing the relationship between job points (from a point-factor method) and typical salary ranges.

PAQ (Position Analysis Questionnaire)

Standardized job analysis method with 194 items across six dimensions (information input, mental processes, work output, relationships, job context, and other variables); widely used but not highly sensitive.

JSP (Job Structure Profile)

Revised version of the PAQ; increases discriminatory power and emphasizes the use of the job analyst rather than the incumbent.

JEI (Job Elements Inventory)

Job analysis method with 153 items, designed to be readable at approximately a tenth-grade level.

FJA (Functional Job Analysis)

Job analysis method assigning a percentage of time spent on data (things, information), people (clients, coworkers), and things (machines, tools, equipment) to functions and tasks.

O*NET (Occupational Information Network)

National job analysis system replacing DOT; provides information on occupations (work activities, context, organizational context) and worker characteristics (abilities, work styles, values, knowledge, skills, education) plus labor market data.

CIT (Critical Incident Technique)

Method to identify actual incidents of excellent or poor job performance; involves collecting incidents, categorizing them, and validating categories with multiple raters.

JCI (Job Components Inventory)

Inventory providing information about perceptual, physical, mathematical, communication, decision-making, and responsibility skills needed for a job.

AET (Ergonomic Job Analysis)

German ergonomic method (216-item) assessing work objects, equipment, work environment, tasks, and demands of work.

JAI (Job Adaptability Inventory)

132-item inventory assessing a job incumbent’s adaptability across eight dimensions (emergency/crisis handling, stress, problem-solving, uncertainty, learning, interpersonal, cultural, physical adaptability).

PRPRF (Personality-Related Position Requirements Form)

107-item instrument assessing personality dimensions aligned with Big Five to determine job-related personality requirements.

PIC (Performance Improvements Characteristics)

48-item instrument identifying which of seven main personality traits are needed for a job to improve performance.

Task Statements

Written statements describing specific actions and objects; used in task inventories to specify what is done, where, how, why, and when.

Task Analysis

Process of identifying and rating tasks to determine essential KSAOs and relevant tests; involves frequency and importance ratings.

Essential KSAOs

Critical knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics required to perform key tasks successfully.

Test Methods for KSAOs

Various methods (interviews, work samples, ability tests, personality tests, biodata, integrity tests, assessment centers) used to tap essential KSAOs at hire.

Task Inventory

A questionnaire listing tasks for incumbents to rate on scales such as importance and time spent.

Work Crafting

Informal changes that employees make in their jobs over time (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001) influencing job descriptions and duties.

Ammerman Technique

A job analysis method in which a group of job experts identifies the objectives and standards to be met by the ideal worker.