4 - Job Analysis and Job Design

Why do we analyze jobs:

  • Connecting jobs to strategy

  • Increased productivity and efficiency

  • Safer and healthier jobs

  • Compensation and rewards

  • Managing performance

  • Avoiding job overload

  • Outsourcing and aoffshoring

  • Job satisfaction and motivation, employee retention

  • Technology and resource requirements

  • Understanding what jobs will be impacted and replaced by automation

  • Training needs

  • Recruitment and selection

  • Determining reasonable accommodations and essential duties for people with disabilities

  • Reworking jobs for injured workers


Framework: workflow analysis

  • Informed decisions about jobs take place through workflow analysis

  • With the knowledge gained from the workflow analysis, we can start to assign tasks to certain jobs and positions



The nature of jobs is related to an organization’s structure (and culture)

  • Structure involves the placement of power and authority in the organization

    • Examples: functional, divisional (product, consumer, geographical)



How do we analyze jobs?

  • Job analysis

    • Process of getting detailed information about jobs

    • Analyzing jobs and understanding what is required to carry out a job

    • Provides essential knowledge for staffing, training, performance appraisal, and many other hr activities


Conducting john analysis

  • Where do we get information about jobs?

    • Incumbents

      • Interview

      • PAQ–Questionaire with 194 items that include information input, mental processes, work output

    • Observation

    • Customers

    • External job analyst

    • O*Net


From job analysis to job description

  • Once we have analyzed a job, we can create a job description


What are KSAOs?

  • Knowledge

    • Something you could write out or explain

    • Declarative

      • Knowing information

    • Procedural

      • Knowing how

  • Skill

    • Can be demonstrated

    • Occurs over time

    • Produces tangible work outcomes

    • Includes physical, mental, and social

  • Ability

    • Capacity to develop

      • Learn quickly and deeply

    • “Born leader”, “naturally smart”


Knowledge: a body of information that can be applied directly to the performance of tasks

  • Business and management, manufacturing and production, engineering and technology, mathematics and science, health services, education and training, arts and humanities


Skill: an observable competence for working with or applying knowledge

  • Content (e.g., reading comprehension, writing, math, science), processes (e.g., critical thinking, learning strategies), social skills, complex problem-solving, technical skills, system skills (e.g., judgment, decision making, analysis), resource management (time, financial, material, personnel)


Ability: an enduring trait that is useful for learning about and performing a range of tasks

  • Verbal ability, idea generation and reasoning, quantitative, memory, perception, strength, endurance


Other attributes

  • Personality traits, values and interests, training and experiences


Teaching KSAOs

  • Knowledge= principles of learning, pedagogy

  • Skill: utilizing canvas and online tools to present information

  • ability= effective communicator

  • other= committed to helping students learn


Conflict management KSAO

  • knowledge= how to de-escalate a heated situation. How to work toward collaboration and cooperation

  • skill= complex problem-solving in difficult situations

  • Ability- effective communicator. Empathetic. Ability to stay calm

  • other= persevering attitude. Caring


Competency-based job analysis

  • Competency – the “must haves”

    • What capabilities do we want all employees to have

      • Occupational groups (not just jobs)

      • Levels of the organization

      • The entire organization

    • Core competencies differentiate an organization from its competition– they create a company’s competitive advantage in the marketplace

      • We must recognize the characteristics and capabilities that help us achieve those as an organization and link competencies to our strategy and value proposition



Competency-based job analysis

  1. Level of the organization

  2. Across occupational groups

  3. Across an entire organization


Job design

  • Generally speaking, job analysis is for existing jobs. Job design is for new jobs (but we can redesign existing jobs too.


Design for efficiency

  • Industrial engineering or scientific management

  • “The one best way”

  • Identify the most efficient sequence of motions

  • Often assembly line-type work

  • Repetitive

  • Boring

  • Jobs may seem meaningless

  • Must attempt to avoid RSI (repetitive stress injuries)


Design for motivation

  • A model that shows how to make jobs more motivating is the job characteristics model developed by Richard Hackman and Greg Oldman

  • Jobs scoring high in terms of a combination of these five areas resulted in higher job satisfaction than those scoring low

  • For a job to be intrinsically motivating, all five areas must be present to some extent


Motivation through personal management

  • Job enlargement

    • Increases the number of different tasks in a given job by changing the division of loabr 

      • Reduces boredom and fatigue and may increase motivation

        • Examples include job extension and job rotation

  • job enrichment

    • Increases the degree of responsibility a worker has over a job

      • Increases involvement and thus increases worker’s interest

  • self-managed and self-directed work teams, 

  • Telework


Motivation through scheduling


Design for safety and health

  • Job safety analysis also called job hazard analysis

  • Ergonomic job design


ergonomics

  • Study of the interface between an individual’s physiology and characteristics ofthe  physical work environment

  • The goal is to minimize physical strain on the worker by structuring the physical work environment around the way the human body works

  • Redesigning work to make it more worker-friendly can lead to increased efficiencies


Design for mental capacity

  • Designing jobs so that they can be accurately and safely performed given the way the brain processes information

  • Reducing the information-processing requirements of a job