Job analysis A job analysis is the process used to collect information about the duties, responsibilities, necessary skills,

outcomes, and work environment of a particular job. You need as much data as possible to put together a job description, which is the frequent outcome of the job analysis. Additional outcomes include recruiting plans, position postings and advertisements, and performance development planning within your performance management system. Methods of collectig data in job ana... __Observation Method: A job analyst observes an employee and records all his performed and non-performed task, fulfilled and un-fulfilled responsibilities and duties, methods, ways and skills used by him or her to perform various duties and his or her mental or emotional ability to handle challenges and risks. However, it seems one of the easiest methods to analyze a specific job but truth is that it is the most difficult one. Why? Lets Discover. It is due to the fact that every person has his own way of observing things. Different people think different and interpret the findings in different ways. Therefore, the process may involve personal biasness or likes and dislikes and may not produce genuine results. This error can be avoided by proper training of job analyst or whoever will be conducting the job analysis process.

This particular method includes three techniques: direct observation, Work Methods Analysis and Critical Incident Technique. The first method includes direct observation and recording of behaviour of an employee in different situations. The second involves the study of time and motion and is specially used for assembly-line or factory workers. The third one is about identifying the work behaviours that result in performance.

Interview Method: In this method, an employee is interviewed so that he or she comes up with their own working styles, problems faced by them, use of particular skills and techniques while performing their job and insecurities and fears about their careers. This method helps interviewer know what exactly an employee thinks about his or her own job and responsibilities involved in it. It involves analysis of job by employee himself. In order to generate honest and true feedback or

collect genuine data, questions asked during the interview should be carefully decided. And to avoid errors, it is always good to interview more than one individual to get a pool of responses. Then it can be generalized and used for the whole group.

Questionnaire Method: Another commonly used job analysis method is getting the questionnaires filled from employees, their superiors and managers. However, this method also suffers from personal biasness. A great care should be takes while framing questions for different grades of employees. In order to get the true job-related info, management should effectively communicate it to the staff that data collected will be used for their own good. It is very important to ensure them that it wont be used against them in anyway. If it is not done properly, it will be a sheer wastage of time, money and human resources. Adv of JA --Provides First Hand Job-Related Information: The job analysis process provides with valuable job-related data that helps managers and job analyst the duties and responsibilities of a particular job, risks and hazards involved in it, skills and abilities required to perform the job and other related info.

Helps in Creating Right Job-Employee Fit: This is one of the most crucial management activities. Filling the right person in a right job vacancy is a test of skills, understanding and competencies of HR managers. Job Analysis helps them understand what type of employee will be suitable to deliver a specific job successfully.

Helps in Establishing Effective Hiring Practices: Who is to be filled where and when? Who to target and how for a specific job opening? Job analysis process gives answers to all these questions and helps managers in creating, establishing and maintaining effective hiring practices.

Guides through Performance Evaluation and Appraisal Processes: Job Analysis helps managers evaluating the performance of employees by comparing the standard or desired output with delivered or actual output. On these bases,

they appraise their performances. The process helps in deciding whom to promote and when. It also guides managers in understanding the skill gaps so that right person can be fit at that particular place in order to get desired output.

Helps in Analyzing Training & Development Needs: The process of job analysis gives answer to following questions: Who to impart training When to impart training What should be the content of training What should be the type of training: behavioral or technical Who will conduct training

Helps in Deciding Compensation Package for a Specific Job: A genuine and unbiased process of job analysis helps managers in determining the appropriate compensation package and benefits and allowances for a particular job. This is done on the basis of responsibilities and hazards involved in a job. Disadv of JA --Time Consuming: The biggest disadvantage of Job Analysis process is that it is very time consuming. It is a major limitation especially when jobs change frequently.

Involves Personal Biasness: If the observer or job analyst is an employee of the same organization, the process may involve his or her personal likes and dislikes. This is a major hindrance in collecting genuine and accurate data.

Source of Data is Extremely Small: Because of small sample size, the source of collecting data is extremely small. Therefore, information collected from few individuals needs to be standardized.

Involves Lots of Human Efforts: The process involves lots of human efforts. As

every job carries different information and there is no set pattern, customized information is to be collected for different jobs. The process needs to be conducted separately for collecting and recording job-related data.

Job Analyst May Not Possess Appropriate Skills: If job analyst is not aware of the objective of job analysis process or does not possess appropriate skills to conduct the process, it is a sheer wastage of companys resources. He or she needs to be trained in order to get authentic data.

Mental Abilities Can not be Directly Observed: Last but not the least, mental abilities such as intellect, emotional characteristics, knowledge, aptitude, psychic and endurance are intangible things that can not be observed or measured directly. People act differently in different situations. Therefore, general standards can not be set for mental abilities. Definition of Job Design --Work arrangement (or rearrangement) aimed at reducing or overcoming job dissatisfaction and employee alienation arising from repetitive and mechanistic tasks. Through job design, organizations try to raise productivity levels by offering non-monetary rewards such as greater satisfaction from a sense of personal achievement in meeting the increased challenge and responsibility of one's work. Job enlargement, job enrichment, job rotation, and job simplification are the various techniques used in a job design exercise.

Factors affetcing JD --Organizational factors

Organizational factors include characteristics of task, work flow, ergonomics and work practices.

Characteristics of Task: Job design requires the assembly of a number of tasks into a job or a group of jobs. An individual may carry out one main task which consists of a number of inter-related elements or functions. On the other hand , task functions may be spilt between a team, working closely together or strung along an assembly line. In more complex jobs, individuals

may carry out a variety of connected tasks, each with a number of functions, or these tasks may be allocated to a group of workers or divided between them. Complexity in a job may be a reflection of the number and variety of tasks to be carried out, or the range and scope of the decisions that have to be made, or the difficulty of predicting the outcome of decisions.

The internal structure of each task, consists of three elements Planning ,Executing and Controlling. A completely integrated job will include all these elements for each of the tasks involved .The workers or group of workers having been given objectives in terms of output, quality and cost targets, decide on how the work is to be done, assemble the resources, perform the work and monitor output, quality and cost standards. Responsibility in a job is measured by the amount of authority , some one to put to do all these things. The ideal design is to integrate all the three elements.

Work Flow: The flow of work in an organization is strongly influenced by the nature of the product or service. The product or service usually suggests the sequence and balance between jobs, if the work is to be done efficiently .After the sequence of jobs is determined, the balance between the jobs is established.

Ergonomics: Ergonomics is concerned with designing and shaping jobs to fit the physical abilities and characteristics of individuals so that ,they perform the jobs effectively .Ergonomics helps employees to design jobs in such a way that workers physical abilities and job demands are balanced .It does not alter the nature of job tasks, but alters the location of tools ,switches and other facilities, keeping in view that handling the job is the primary consideration.

Work Practices: Work practices are set ways of performing work .These methods may arise from tradition or the collective wishes of employees.

Work practices were till now, determined by time and motion study which established the standard time needed to complete the given job. The study required repeated observations .The accuracy of the readings depended on competence of the work study engineer .Deviations from the normal workcycle caused distortions in measurements, was biased towards existing work

practices with little effort at methods improvement and could be carried out only when, production was under way.

A new technique has now emerged which ,if introduced , could drastically alter the work practices. Called the MOST (Maynard Operating Sequence Technique) ,the technique uses a standard formula to list the motion sequence ascribed in index values.

Environmental factors

Environmental factors affect the job design. These factors that have a bearing on job design are employees abilities and availability and social and culture expectations.

Employee Abilities and Availability: Efficiency consideration must be balanced against the abilities and availability of the people to do the work.

When Henry Ford made use of the assembly line, for example , he was aware that most potential workers lacked any automobile making experience .So, jobs were designed to be simple and required little training .Therefore, considerable thought must be given, as to who will actually do the work.

Social and Cultural Expectations: During the earlier days, securing a job was the primary consideration. The worker was prepared to work on any job and under any working conditions. Now, it is not the same. Literacy, knowledge and awareness of workers have improved considerably .So also, their expectations from the job ,Hence, jobs be designed to meet the expectations of workers.

When designing jobs for international operations, uniform designs are almost certain to neglect national and cultural differences .Hours of work holidays, vacations, rest breaks ,religious beliefs, management styles and worker sophistication and attitudes are just some of the predictable differences that can affect the design of jobs across international borders. Failure to consider

these social expectations can create social dissatisfaction, low motivation ,hard to fill job openings and a low quality of work life ,especially, when foreign nationals are involved in the home country or overseas.

Behavioral Factors: Behavioral factors include feedback, autonomy, use of abilities and variety. Job evaluation Defintion. --Job Evaluation: Job Evaluation involves determination of relative worth of each job for the purpose of establishing wage and salary differentials. Relative worth is determined mainly on the basis of job description and job specification. mETHODS OF JE --Human resource is the most powerful resource of any organization today especially with increasing pressure and the need to get the work done faster. Different organizations might have different means to get work and also having different processes of job assessment, given below are some of the most common methods of jobs evaluation: The Grading system The grading system ensures that each job is graded properly from the simple rank order starting from the highest to the lowest one. The committee that comprises of management and also the employee representatives decides this. The committee first compares the 2 jobs to grade the important one and then compare other job with the first two jobs. This continues till the time all the jobs have been done assessing and ranking. The factor comparison method In these methods the evaluators select the key position jobs as the standard jobs for evaluation. These jobs are well known and established in the community. These jobs represents the cross section of all the evaluated jobs that starts from lowest to highest level in the company, the selection would consist of 25 odd jobs. The key factors required in these key jobs are the skill and physical requirements, mental requirements, responsiveness and a good amount of working conditions. After deciding on the key jobs and the policies, the committee starts ranking the key jobs. They decide on the base rate of the job and then rate it among the five criteria we discussed. The classification method The evaluators identify the common elements like the skills in processes, the

knowledge, the responsibility, etc. that goes well with the desired goal and the type of jobs for example clerical jobs, sales job and more. These are then ranked according to the organizations important priorities. The point method The important areas are identified and the job break down is done and the points are given according to the criteria. Based on the importance of each of the criteria, the points are summed and the jobs identified with same points totaled and put in pay grades.