Analyzing Work

• Work Flow in Organizations
• Work Flow Analysis
• Work Flow Design and an Organization’s Structure
• Job Analysis

Job Analysis

      PURPOSE

      Procedures

               Task-oriented

               Worker-oriented

• THE BASICS OF JOB ANALYSIS
• Uses of Job Analysis Information
• Conducting a Job Analysis
• Job Analysis Guidelines
• METHODS FOR COLLECTING JOB ANALYSIS INFORMATION

Analyzing Work

Introduction

When brothers Michael and Jack Kennedy started Railroad Associates Corporation, a contracting firm that repairs railways, they wanted an organization that would be both flexible and efficient. So the two owners decided that decision making wouldn’t be a managers-only responsibility. In fact, they skipped middle management altogether. Workers at job sites are expected to make their own decisions when questions and problems arise. That means Railroad Associates has to hire workers who are willing and able to take responsibility, and the company has to provide plenty of training. The company also gives employees access to its intranet, where they can look up budgets and schedules for the jobs they’re working on.

 But the company doesn’t just expect flexibility from its employees; it also offers flexibility to them in the form of work schedules employees can adjust when they have commitments outside of work. Once, when a truck driver’s daughter needed surgery, Michael Kennedy drove the man’s tractor trailer for the week the employee spent taking care of his daughter.

Broad responsibilities, duties like truck driving or construction tasks, and a flexible work schedule—all these are elements of workers’ jobs with Railroad Associates. These elements give rise to the types of skills and personalities required for success, and they in turn help to narrow the field of people who will succeed at the company. Consideration of such elements is at the heart of analyzing work, whether in a start-up enterprise, a multinational corporation, or a government agency.

Work Flow in Organizations

Informed decisions about jobs take place in the context of the organization’s overall work flow. Through the process of  work flow design,  managers analyze the tasks needed to produce a product or service. With this information, they assign these tasks to specific jobs and positions. (A job  is a set of related duties. A position is the set of duties performed by one person. A school has many teaching positions; the person filling each of those positions is performing the job of teacher.) Basing these decisions on work flow design can lead to better results than the more traditional practice of looking at jobs individually.

Work Flow Analysis

 Before designing its work flow, the organization’s planners need to analyze what work needs to be done. Figure 4.1 shows the elements of a work flow analysis. For each type of work, such as producing a product line or providing a support service (accounting, legal support, and so on), the analysis identifies the output of the process, the activities involved, and three categories of inputs: raw inputs (materials and information), equipment, and human resources.

Outputs are the products of any work unit, whether a department, team, or individual. An output can be as readily identifiable as a completed purchase order, an employment test, or a hot, juicy hamburger. An output can also be a service, such as transportation, cleaning, or answering questions about employee benefits. Even at an organization that produces tangible goods, such as computers, many employees produce other outputs, such as components of the computers, marketing plans, and building security. Work flow analysis identifies the outputs of particular work units.

The analysis considers not only the amount of output but also quality standards. This attention to outputs has only recently gained attention among HRM professionals. However, it gives a clearer view of how to increase the effectiveness of each work unit.

For the outputs identified, work flow analysis then examines the work processes used to generate those outputs. Work processes are the activities that members of a work unit engage in to produce a given output. Every process consists of operating procedures that specify how things should be done at each stage of developing the output. These procedures include all the tasks that must be performed in producing the output. Usually, the analysis breaks down the tasks into those performed by each person in the work unit. This analysis helps with design of efficient work systems by clarifying which tasks are necessary. Typically, when a unit’s work load increases, the unit adds people, and when the work load decreases, some members of the unit may busy themselves with unrelated tasks in an effort to appear busy. Without knowledge of work processes, it is more difficult to identify whether the work

unit is properly staffed. Knowledge of work processes also can guide staffing changes when work is automated, outsourced, or restructured. At some companies, so much effort has gone into analyzing and refining work processes to improve efficiency that when demand plummeted in the recent recession, layoffs—as great as they were—were less than what the decline in sales would have predicted. For example, the South Carolina manufacturing plant of Parker Hannifin Corporation needs so few people to run the facility and each person is so knowledgeable that the company cannot operate the plant if it lays off any workers. In addition, at companies like surgical-device maker Conmed, work processes have become so flexible that the companies adjust to changes in demand gradually as they occur, rather than piling up inventory and then halting and later resuming production.

The final stage in work flow analysis is to identify the inputs used in the development of the work unit’s product. As shown in Figure 4.1 , these inputs can be broken down into the raw inputs (materials and knowledge), equipment, and human skills needed to perform the tasks. In the mortgage banking industry, the inputs required for servicing loans increased dramatically after the financial crisis and economic recession made repayment impossible for a wave of borrowers. The federal government launched the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), in which loan servicers—who traditionally handled just the routine transactions of paying off a home loan—were expected to work with borrowers to arrange new deals they could afford. Loan servicers suddenly needed many more people, and these people needed skills in working with the public as well as technical knowledge for determining what borrowers can afford to pay, what their home is worth, and what documents are required to modify a loan under HAMP. The servicers also needed computer software and hardware for processing all the data and documents. The challenge of quickly providing these new inputs is so great that some servicers are simply outsourcing the whole process to specialists.

Work Flow Design and an Organization’s Structure

Besides looking at the work flow of each process, it is important to see how the work fits within the context of the organization’s structure. Within an organization, units and individuals must cooperate to create outputs. Ideally, the organization’s structure brings together the people who must collaborate to efficiently produce the desired outputs. The structure may do this in a way that is highly centralized (that is, with authority concentrated in a few people at the top of the organization) or decentralized (with authority spread among many people). The organization may group jobs according to functions (for example, welding, painting, packaging), or it may set up divisions to focus on products or customer groups.

Although there are an infinite number of ways to combine the elements of an organization’s structure, we can make some general observations about structure and work design. If the structure is strongly based on function, workers tend to have low authority and to work alone at highly specialized jobs. Jobs that involve teamwork or broad responsibility tend to require a structure based on divisions other than functions. When the goal is to empower employees, companies therefore need to set up structures and jobs that enable broad responsibility, such as jobs that involve employees in serving a particular group of customers or producing a particular product, rather than performing a narrowly defined function. The organization’s structure also affects managers’ jobs. Managing a division responsible for a product or customer group tends to require more experience and cognitive (thinking) ability than managing a department that handles a particular function.

Work design often emphasizes the analysis and design of jobs, as described in the remainder of this chapter. Although all of these approaches can succeed, each focuses on one isolated job at a time. These approaches do not necessarily consider how that single job fits into the overall work flow or structure of the organization. To use these techniques effectively, human resource personnel should also understand their organization as a whole. As the “HR Oops!” emphasizes, without this big-picture appreciation, they might redesign a job in a way that makes sense for the particular job but is out of line with the organization’s work flow, structure, or strategy.

Job Analysis

To achieve high-quality performance, organizations have to understand and match job requirements and people. This understanding requires  job analysis,   the process of getting detailed information about jobs. Analyzing jobs and understanding what is required to carry out a job provide essential knowledge for staffing, training, performance appraisal, and many other HR activities. For instance, a supervisor’s evaluation of an employee’s work should be based on performance relative to job requirements.

In very small organizations, line managers may perform a job analysis, but usually the work is done by a human resource professional. A large company may have a compensation management department that includes job analysts (also called personnel analysts). Organizations may also contract with firms that provide this service.

Job Analysis

INTRODUCTION

When Daimler opened its Mercedes-Benz assembly plant in Alabama, its managers had a dilemma. They could not hire, train, or pay the plant  employees  unless  the  managers knew what each employee was expected to do they needed, for each person, a  job description. But in this plant, self managing teams of employees would assemble the vehicles, and their jobs and duties might change every day. How do you list job duties when the duties are a moving target?

PURPOSE

One of the main purposes of conducting job analysis is to prepare job descriptions and job specifications which in turn help hire the right quality of workforce into an organization. The general purpose of job analysis is to document the requirements of a job and the work performed. Job and task analysis is performed as a basis for later improvements, including: definition of a job domain; description of a job; development of performance appraisals, personnel selection, selection systems, promotion criteria, training needs assessment, legal defense of selection processes, and compensation plans.^[7] The human performance improvement industry uses job analysis to make sure training and development activities are focused and effective.^[2] In the fields of human resources (HR) and industrial psychology, job analysis is often used to gather information for use in personnel selection, training, classification, and/or compensation.^[

Industrial Psychologists use job analysis to determine the physical requirements of a job to determine whether an individual who has suffered some diminished capacity is capable of performing the job with, or without, some accommodation. Edwin Flieshman, Ph.D. is credited with determining the underlying factors of human physical fitness.^[9] Professionals developing certification exams use job analysis (often called something slightly different, such as "task analysis" or "work analysis") to determine the elements of the domain which must be sampled in order to create a content valid exam. When a job analysis is conducted for the purpose of valuing the job (i.e., determining the appropriate compensation for incumbents) this is called "job evaluation."

Job analysis aims to answer questions such as:

• Why does the job exist?
• What physical and mental activities does the worker undertake?
• When is the job to be performed?
• Where is the job to be performed?
• How does the worker do the job?
• What qualifications are needed to perform the job?

Procedures

As stated before, the purpose of job analysis is to combine the task demands of a job with our knowledge of human attributes and produce a theory of behavior for the job in question. There are two ways to approach building that theory, meaning there are two different approaches to job analysis.^[10]

Task-oriented

Task-oriented procedures focus on the actual activities involved in performing work.^[7] This procedure takes into consideration work duties, responsibilities, and functions. The job analyst then develops task statements which clearly state the tasks that are performed with great detail. After creating task statements, job analysts rate the tasks on scales indicating importance, difficulty, frequency, and consequences of error. Based on these ratings, a greater sense of understanding of a job can be attained.^[11] Task analysis, such as cognitively oriented task analysis (COTA), are techniques used to describe job expertise. For example, the job analysts may tour the job site and observe workers performing their jobs. During the tour the analyst may collect materials that directly or indirectly indicate required skills (duty statements, instructions, safety manuals, quality charts, etc.).^[8]

Functional job analysis (FJA)^[12] is a classic example of a task-oriented technique. Developed by Fine and Cronshaw in 1944, work elements are scored in terms of relatedness to data (0–6), people (0–8), and things (0–6), with lower scores representing greater complexity. Incumbents, considered subject matter experts (SMEs), are relied upon, usually in a panel, to report elements of their work to the job analyst. Using incumbent reports, the analyst uses Fine's terminology to compile statements reflecting the work being performed in terms of data, people, and things. The Dictionary of Occupational Titles uses elements of the FJA in defining jobs.^[11]

Worker-oriented

Worker-oriented procedures aim to examine the human attributes needed to perform the job successfully.^[7] These human attributes have been commonly classified into four categories: knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAO). Knowledge is the information people need in order to perform the job. Skills are the proficiencies needed to perform each task. Abilities are the attributes that are relatively stable over time. Other characteristics are all other attributes, usually personality factors.^[11] The KSAOs required for a job are inferred from the most frequently-occurring, important tasks. In a worker-oriented job analysis, the skills are inferred from tasks and the skills are rated directly in terms of importance of frequency. This often results in data that immediately imply the important KSAOs. However, it can be hard for SMEs to rate skills directly.

The Fleishman Job Analysis System (F-JAS) developed by Edwin A. Fleishman represents a worker-oriented approach. Fleishman factor-analyzed large data sets to discover a common, minimum set of KSAOs across different jobs. His system of 73 specific scales measure three broad areas: Cognitive (Verbal Abilities; Idea Generation & Reasoning Abilities; Quantitative Abilities; Memory; Perceptual Abilities; Spatial Abilities; and Attentiveness), Psychomotor (Fine Manipulative Abilities; Control Movement Abilities; and Reaction Time and Speed Abilities), and Physical (Physical Strength Abilities; Endurance; Flexibility, Balance, and Coordination; Visual Abilities; and Auditory and Speech Abilities).

Job scan is a measurement instrument which defines the personality dynamics within a specific type of job.^[13] By collecting PDP ProScan Survey results of actual performers and results of job dynamics analysis surveys completed by knowledgeable people related to a specific job, JobScan provides a suggested ideal job model for that position. Although it does not evaluate the intellect or experience necessary to accomplish a task, it does deal with the personality of the type of work itself.

THE BASICS OF JOB ANALYSIS

Talent management begins with understanding what jobs need to be filled, and the human traits and competencies employees need to do those jobs effectively. Job analysis is the procedure through which you determine the duties of the positions and the characteristics of the people to hire for them.

Job analysis produces information for writing job descriptions (a list of what the job entails) and job (or person) specifications (what kind of people to hire for the job). Virtually every personnel related action you take interviewing applicants, and training and appraising employees, for instance depends on knowing what the job entails and what human traits one needs to do the job well.

The supervisor or human resources specialist normally collects one or more of the following types of information via the job analysis:

* Work activities. First, he or she collects information about the job s actual work activities, such as cleaning, selling, teaching, or painting. This list may also include how, why, and when the worker performs each activity.

* Human behaviors. Information about human behaviors the job requires, like sensing, communicating, lifting weights, or walking long distances.

*Machines, tools, equipment, and work aids. Information regarding tools used, materials processed, knowledge dealt with or applied (such as finance or law), and services rendered (such as counseling or repairing).

* Performance standards. Information about the job s performance standards (in terms of quantity or quality levels for each job duty, for instance).

* Job context. Information about  such matters as physical working conditions, work schedule, incentives, and, for instance, the number of people with whom the employee would normally interact.

* Human requirements. Information such as knowledge or skills (education, training, work experience) and required personal attributes (aptitudes, personality, interests).

Uses of Job Analysis Information

 Job analysis is important because managers use it to support just about all their human resource management activities.

*RECRUITMENT  AND  SELECTION. Information  about  what  duties  the  job entails and what human characteristics are required to perform these activities helps managers decide what sort of people to recruit and hire.

*EEO  COMPLIANCE.  Job  analysis  is  crucial  for  validating  all  major  human resources practices. For example, to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, employers should know each job s essential job functions which in turn requires a job analysis.

*PERFORMANCE  APPRAISAL . A  performance  appraisal  compares  each employee s actual performance with his or her duties and performance standards. Managers use job analysis to learn what these duties and standards are.

*COMPENSATION. Compensation (such as salary and bonus) usually depends on the job s required skill and education level, safety hazards, degree of responsibility, and so on all factors you assess through job analysis.

*TRAINING. The job description lists the job s specific duties and requisite skills and therefore the training that the job requires. Job analysis is important in helping employers execute their overall strategic plans. The accompanying Strategic Context feature illustrates this

Conducting a Job Analysis

There are six steps in doing a job analysis, as follows.

STEP 1: DECIDE HOW YOU LL USE THE INFORMATION This will determine the data you collect. Some data collection techniques like interviewing the employee are good for writing job descriptions. Other techniques, like the position analysis questionnaire we describe later, provide numerical ratings for each job; these can be used to compare jobs for compensation purposes.

STEP 2: REVIEW RELEVANT BACKGROUND INFORMATION SUCH AS ORGANIZATION CHARTS, PROCESS CHARTS, AND JOB DESCRIPTIONS Organization charts show the organization-wide division of work, and where the job fits in the overall organization. The chart should show the title of each position and, by means of interconnecting lines, who reports to whom and with whom the job incumbent communicates. A process chart provides a more detailed picture of the work flow. In its simplest form a process chart (like that in Figure 4-2) shows the flow of inputs to and outputs from the job you re analyzing. ( the quality control clerk is expected to review components from suppliers, check components going to the plant managers, and give information regarding component s quality to these managers.) Finally, the existing job description, if there is one, usually provides a starting point for building the revised job description.

WORKFLOW ANALYSIS AND JOB REDESIGN

Job analysis enables the manager to list what a job s duties and demands are now. Job analysis does not answer questions such as Does how this job relates to other jobs make sense?  or Should this job even exist?  To answer such questions,  it s necessary to conduct a work flow analysis. It may then be deemed necessary to redesign jobs. Workflow analysis is a detailed study of the flow of work from job to job in a work process. Usually, the analyst focuses on one identifiable work process, rather than on how the company gets all its work done. The accompanying HR as a Profit Center feature illustrates workflow analysis.

In conducting a workflow analysis, the manager may use a flow process chart; this lists in order each step of the process. The manager may convert this step-by-step flow process chart into a diagrammatic process chart. This lays out, with arrows and circles, each step in the process from beginning to end.

BUSINESS PROCESS REENGINEERING

 American Atlantic is an example of business process reengineering.

Business process reengineering means redesigning business processes, usually by combining steps, so that small multifunction teams using information technology do the jobs formerly done by a sequence of departments.

The basic approach is to:

1. Identify a business process to be redesigned (such as approving a mortgage application)

2. Measure the performance of the existing processes

3. Identify opportunities to improve these processes

4. Redesign and implement a new way of doing the work

5. Assign ownership of sets of formerly separate tasks to an individual or a team that use new computerized systems to support the new arrangement

As another example, one bank reengineered its mortgage approval process by replacing the sequential operation with a multifunction mortgage approval team. Loan originators in the field now enter the mortgage application directly into wireless laptop computers, where software checks it for completeness. The information then goes electronically to regional production centers. Here, specialists (like credit analysts and loan underwriters) convene electronically, working as a team to review the mortgage together at once. After they formally close the loan, another team of specialists takes on the task of servicing the loan.

As at Atlantic American and at this bank, reengineering usually requires redesigning individual jobs. For example, after creating the loan approval teams, the bank could eliminate the separate credit checking, loan approval, and home-inspecting departments from its organization chart. Reengineering also required delegating more authority to the loan approval teams, who now did their jobs with less supervisory oversight. Since loan team members may share duties, they tend to be more multi-skilled than if they only had to do, say, loan analysis. Changes like these in turn prompt changes in individual jobs and job descriptions.

JOB REDESIGN Early economists wrote enthusiastically of how specialized jobs (doing the same small thing repeatedly) were more efficient (as in, practice makes perfect).

But soon other writers were reacting to what they viewed as the dehumanizing aspects of pigeonholing workers into highly repetitive jobs. Many proposed job redesign solutions such as job enlargement, job rotation, and job enrichment to address such problems. Job enlargement means assigning workers additional same-level activities.

Thus, the worker who previously only bolted the seat to the legs might attach the back as well.        Job rotation means systematically moving workers from one job to another. Psychologist Frederick Herzberg argued that the best way to motivate workers is through job enrichment.  Job enrichment means redesigning jobs in a  way  that increases the opportunities for the worker to experience feelings of responsibility, achievement, growth, and recognition. It does this by empowering the worker for instance, by giving the worker the skills and authority to inspect the work, instead of having supervisors do that. Herzberg said empowered employees would do their jobs well because they wanted to, and quality and productivity would rise. That philosophy, in one form or another, is the theoretical basis for the team-based self-managing jobs in many companies around the world today.

STEP 3: SELECT REPRESENTATIVE POSITIONS Whether or not the manager decides to redesign jobs via workforce analysis, process redesign, or job redesign, he or she must at some point select which positions to focus on for the job analysis. For example, it is usually unnecessary to analyze the jobs of 200 assembly workers when a sample of 10 jobs will do.

STEP 4: ACTUALLY ANALYZE THE JOB BY COLLECTING DATA ON JOB ACTIVITIES,  WORKING  CONDITIONS,  AND  HUMAN  TRAITS  AND ABILITIES NEEDED TO PERFORM THE JOB In brief, analyzing the job involves greeting participants; briefly explaining the job analysis process and the participants roles in this process; spending about 15 minutes interviewing the employees to get agreement on a basic summary of the job; identifying the job s broad areas of responsibility, such as  calling on potential clients ; and identifying duties/tasks within each area interactively with the  employees.

STEP 5: VERIFY THE JOB ANALYSIS INFORMATION WITH THE WORKER PERFORMING THE JOB AND WITH HIS OR HER IMMEDIATE SUPERVISOR This will help confirm that the information is factually correct and complete and help to gain their acceptance.

STEP 6: DEVELOP A JOB DESCRIPTION AND JOB SPECIFICATION The job description describes the activities and responsibilities of the job, as well as its important features, such as working conditions. The job specification summarizes the personal qualities, traits, skills, and background required for getting the job done.

Job Analysis Guidelines

 Before actually analyzing the job, using one or more of the tools we turn to in the following section, keep several things in mind.

* Make the job analysis a joint effort by a human resources manager, the worker, and the  worker s  supervisor. The  human  resource  manager  might  observe the worker doing the job, and have both the supervisor and worker fill out job questionnaires. Based on that, he or she lists the job s duties and required human traits. The supervisor and worker then review and verify the HR manager s list of job duties.

* Make sure the questions and the process are both clear to the employees. (For example, some  might  not  know  what  you  mean  when  you  ask  about  the  job s  mental demands. )

* Use several different job analysis tools. Do not rely just on a questionnaire, for instance, but supplement your survey with a short follow-up interview. (The problem is that each tool has potential drawbacks.) For example, the questionnaire might miss a task the worker performs just occasionally.

METHODS FOR COLLECTING JOB ANALYSIS INFORMATION

There are various ways (interviews, or questionnaires, for instance) to collect information on a job s duties, responsibilities, and activities. We discuss the most important ones in this section. The basic rule is to use those that best fit your purpose. Thus, an interview might be best for creating a list of job duties and a job description. The more quantitative position analysis questionnaire may be best for quantifying each job s relative worth for pay purposes.

The Interview

Job analysis interviews range from completely unstructured interviews ( Tell me about your job ) to highly structured ones containing hundreds of specific items to check off.

Managers may conduct individual interviews with each employee, group interviews with groups of employees who have the same job, and/or supervisor interviews with one or more supervisors who know the job. They use group interviews when a large number of employees are performing similar or identical work, since this can be a quick and inexpensive way to gather information. As a rule, the workers immediate supervisor attends the group session; if not, you can interview the supervisor separately.

Whichever kind of interview you use, be sure the interviewee fully understands the reason for the interview. There s a tendency for workers to view such interviews, rightly or wrongly, as  efficiency evaluations. If so, interviewees may hesitate to describe their jobs accurately.

TYPICAL QUESTIONS

 Some typical interview questions include the following:

What is the job being performed?

What are the major duties of your position? What exactly do you do?

What physical locations do you work in?

What are the education, experience, skill, and [where applicable]

Certification and  licensing requirements?

In what activities do you participate?

What are the job s responsibilities and duties?

What are the basic accountabilities or performance standards that typify your work?

What are your responsibilities? What are the environmental and working conditions involved?

What are the job s physical demands?  The emotional and mental demands ?

What are the health and safety conditions?

Are you exposed to any hazards or unusual working conditions?

STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS

Many managers use a structured format to guide the interview. Figure 4-3 presents one example, a job analysis information sheet. It includes questions regarding matters like the general purpose of the job; supervisory responsibilities; job duties; and education, experience, and skills required. Structured lists are not just for interviews. Job analysts who collect information by personally observing the work or by using questionnaires two methods explained later can also use structured lists.

PROS AND CONS

The interview s wide use reflects its advantages. It s a simple and quick way to collect information, including  information that might not appear on a written form. For instance, a skilled interviewer can unearth important activities that occur only occasionally, or informal contacts that wouldn’t be obvious from the organization chart. The employee can also vent frustrations that might otherwise go unnoticed. Distortion of information is the main problem whether due to outright falsification or honest misunderstanding.

Job analysis is often a prelude to changing a job s pay rate. As noted, employees therefore may legitimately view the interview as a sort of efficiency evaluation that may affect their pay. They may then tend to exaggerate certain responsibilities while minimizing others. In one study, researchers listed possible job duties either as simple task statements ( record phone messages and other routine information ) or as ability statements ( ability to record phone messages and other routine information ). Respondents were more likely to include and report the ability-based versions of the statements. There may be a tendency for people to inflate their job s importance when abilities are involved, to impress the perceptions of others.

Employees will even puff up their job titles to make their jobs seem more important. Obtaining valid information can thus be a slow process, and prudent analysts get multiple inputs.

INTERVIEWING GUIDELINES To get the best information possible, keep several things in mind when conducting job analysis interviews.

* Quickly establish rapport with the interviewee. Know the person s name, speak understandably, briefly review the interview s purpose, and explain how the person was chosen for the interview.

* Use a structured guide that lists questions and provides space for answers. This ensures you ll identify crucial questions ahead of time and that all interviewers (if more than one) cover all the required questions. (However, also make sure to ask, Was there anything we didn’t cover with our questions?)

* When duties are not performed in a regular manner for instance, when the worker doesn’t perform the same duties repeatedly many times a day ask the worker to list his or her duties in order of importance and frequency of occurrence. This will ensure that you don t overlook crucial but infrequently performed activities like a nurse s occasional emergency room duties.

* After completing the interview, review the information with the worker s immediate supervisor and with the interviewee.

Questionnaires

Having  employees  fill  out  questionnaires  to  describe  their  job-related  duties  and responsibilities is another popular way to obtain job analysis information.

Some questionnaires are very structured checklists. Here each employee gets an inventory of perhaps hundreds of specific duties or tasks (such as  change and splice wire ). He or she is asked to indicate whether he or she performs each task and, if so, how much time is normally spent on each. At the other extreme, the questionnaire may simply ask, describe the major duties of your job.

Questionnaire often falls between these two extremes. As illustrated in Figure 4-3, a typical job analysis questionnaire might include several open-ended  questions  (such  as  What  is  the  job s  overall  purpose? )  as well  as structured questions (concerning, for instance, education required).

All questionnaires have pros and cons. A questionnaire is a quick and efficient way to obtain information from a large number of employees; it s less costly than interviewing hundreds of workers, for instance. However, developing the questionnaire and testing it (perhaps by making sure the workers understand the questions) can be time-consuming. And as with interviews, employees may distort their answers.

Observation

Direct observation is especially useful when jobs consist mainly of observable physical activities assembly-line worker and accounting clerk are examples. On the other hand, observation is usually not appropriate when the job entails a lot of mental activity (lawyer, design engineer). Nor is it useful if the employee only occasionally engages in important activities, such as a nurse who handles emergencies. And reactivity the worker s changing what he or she normally does because you are watching also can be a problem. Managers often use direct observation and interviewing together. One approach is to observe the worker on the job during a complete work cycle. (The cycle is the time it takes to complete the job; it could be a minute for an assembly-line worker or an hour, a day, or longer for complex jobs.) Here you take notes of all the job activities. Then, ask the person to clarify points not understood and to explain what other activities he or she performs that you didn’t observe.

Participant Diary/Logs

Another method is to ask workers to keep a diary/log of what they do during the day. For every activity engaged in, the employee records the activity (along with the time) in a log. Some firms give employees pocket dictating machines and pagers. Then at random times during the day, they page the workers, who dictate what they are doing at that time. This approach can avoid relying on workers to remember what they did hours earlier when they complete their logs at the end of the day.

Quantitative Job Analysis Techniques

Qualitative methods like interviews and questionnaires are not always suitable. For example, if your aim is to compare jobs for pay purposes, a mere listing of duties may not suffice. You may need to say that, in effect, Job A is twice as challenging as Job B, and so is worth twice the pay. To do this, it helps to have quantitative ratings for each job. The position analysis questionnaire and the department of Labor approach are quantitative methods for doing this.

POSITION ANALYSIS QUESTIONNAIRE The position analysis questionnaire (PAQ) is a very popular quantitative job analysis tool, consisting of a questionnaire containing 194 items (see Figure 4-4 for a sample).

The 194 items (such as written materials) each represent a basic element that may play a role in the job. The items each belong to one of five PAQ basic activities: (1) having decision-making/communication/ social responsibilities, (2) performing skilled activities, (3) being physically active, (4) operating vehicles/equipment, and (5) processing information (Figure 4-4 illustrates this last activity). The final PAQ score shows the job s rating on each of these five activities. The job analyst decides if each of the 194 items plays a role and, if so, to what extent. In Figure 4-4, for example, written materials received a rating of 4. Since the scale ranges from 1 to 5, a 4 suggests that written materials (such as books and reports) do play a significant role in this job. The analyst can use an online version of the PAQ (see www.paq.com) for each job he or she is analyzing.

The PAQ s strength is in assigning jobs to job classes for pay purposes. With ratings for each job s decision-making, skilled activity, physical activity, vehicle/equipment operation, and information-processing characteristics, you can quantitatively compare jobs relative to one another, and then classify jobs for pay purposes.

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