Chapter 3 Job Analysis

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

BY:GARY DESSLER

NINTH EDITION

PEARSON EDUCATION INTERNASIONAL

COPY RIGHT 2003

USA

After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

1. Discuss the nature of job analysis, including what it is and how it’s used.
2.  Use at least three methods of collecting job analysis information, including: interviews, questionnaires, and observation.
3. Write job descriptions, including summaries and job functions, using the internet and traditional methods.
4. Write job specifications using the internet as well as your judgement.
5. Explain job analysis in a “jobless” world, including what it means and how it’s done in practice.

STRATEGIC OVERVIEW

Todd Berkley, U.S Bank’s new manager for sales support and customer retention, plays a strategic role at the bank. Concerned about the number of big customers who were closing their accounts and moving competitors, U.S. Bank recently focused its competitive strategy. Its now emphasizing identifying and quickly eliminating the customer service problem that are causing its customers are to leave. But Todd has discovered that doing so has affected every aspect of the bank’s HR policies and procedures. To make sure they emphasize customer service and deal with angry customers at once, HR had to write new job descriptions for employees ranging from teller to guard to vice president, to include their new service related duties. And then, of course, the bank had to train these employees and institute new hiring standards to recruit and hire service oriented people to fill the new positions. All the firm’s HR efforts had to support U.S. Bank’s new customer service strategy if that strategy was to succeed. And at U.S. Bank that had to start with job analysis.

The EEOC issues we addressed ussually first come into play when the firm turns to analyzing its jobs and writing its job descriptions. The main purpose of this chapter is to show you how to analyze a job and write job descriptions. We’ll see that analyzing jobs involves determining in detail what the job entails and what kind of people the firm should hire for the job. We discuss several techniques for analyzing jobs, and how to use the internet and more traditional methods to draft job descriptions and job specifications. Then, in the following chapter, HR Planning and Recruiting, we’ll turn to the methods managers use to actually find the employees they need.

THE NATURE OF JOB ANALYSIS

Organizations consist of positions that have to be staffed. Job analysis is the procedure through which you determine the duties of these positions and the characteristics of the people to hire for them. Job analysis procedures information used for writing job descriptions and job specifications.

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

       1. 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. 

       2. Human behaviors. The specialist may also collect information about human behaviors like sensing, communicating, deciding and writing. Included here would be information regarding job demands such as lifting weights or walking long distances. 

        3. Machines, tools, equipment, and work aids. This category includes information regarding tools used, materials processed, knowledge dealt with or applied and servioces rendered. 

        4. Performance standards. The employer may also want information about the job’s performance standards. Management will use these standards to appraise empolyees. 

       5.  Job context. Included here is information about such matters as physical working conditions, work schedule, and the organizational and social context for instance, the number of people with whom the employee would normally interact. Information regarding incentives might also be included here.  

       6. Human requirements. This includes information regarding the job’s human requirements, such as job related knowledge or skills and required personal attributes. 

       Uses of Job Analysis Information

       Recruitment and Selection Job analysis provides information about what the job entails and what human characteristics are required to perform these activities. This information, in the form of job descriptions and specifications, helps management decide what sort of people to recruit and hire.

       Compensation Job analysis information is crucial for estimating the value of each job and its appropriate compensation. Compensation ussually depends on the job’s required skill and education level, safety hazards, degree of responsibility and so on all factors you can assess through job analysis. Furthermore, many employers group jobs into classes. Job analysis provides the information to determine the relative worth of each job and thus its appropriate class.

      Performance Appraisal A performance appraisal compares each employees actual performance with his or her performance standards. Managers use job analysis to determine the job’s specific activities and performance standards.

      Training The job description should show the activities and skills and therefore the training that the job requires.

     Discovering Unassigned Duties Job analysis can also help reveal unassigned duties. For example, your company’s production manager says she’s responsible for a dozen or so duties, such as production scheduling and raw material inventories. On further study, you learn that none of the other manufacturing people are responsible for inventory management, either. You know from your review of other jobs like these that someone should be managing inventories. You’ve uncovered an essential unassigned duty, thanks to job analysis.

      EEO Compliance Job analysis also plays a big role in EEO compliance. U.S. Federal Agencies Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection stipulate that job analysis is a crucial step in validiting all major personnel activities. For example, employers must be able to show that their selection criteria and job performance are actually related. Doing this, of course, requires knowing what the job entails which in turn requires a job analysis.

       Steps in Job Analysis

       There are six steps in doing a job analysis. Lets look at each of them.

       Step 1 Decide how you’ll use the information, since this will determine the data you collect and how you collect them. Some data collection techniques like interviewing the employee and asking what the job entails are good for writing job descriptions and selecting employees for the job. Other techniques, like the position analysis questionnaire described later, do not provide qualitative information for job descriptions. Instead, they 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 organizationwide division of work, how the job in question relates to other jobs, 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.

      Step 3 Select representative positions. Why ? Because there may be too many similar jobs to analyze. For example, it is ussually unncessary 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, required employee behaviors, working conditions and human traits and abilities needed to perform the job. For this step, use one or more of the job analysis methods explained later.

      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. This will help confirm that the information is factually correct and complete. This review can also help gain the employee’s acceptance of the job analysis data and conclusions, by giving that person a chance to review and modify your description of the job activities.

       Step 6 Develop a job description and job specification. These are two tangible products of the job analysis. The job description is a written statement that describes the activities and responsibilities of the job, as well as its important features, such as working conditions and safety hazards. The job specification summarizes the personal qualities, traits, skills and background required for getting the job done. It may be in a separate document or in the same document as the job description.

        METHODS OF COLLECTING JOB ANALYSIS INFORMATION   

       There are various ways to collect information on the duties, responsibilities and activities of a job and we’ll discuss the most important ones in this section. In practice, you could use any one them, you could use any of them, or you could combine the techniques that best fit your purpose. Thus, an interview might be appropriate for creating a job description, whereas the position analysis questionnaire may be more appropriate for quantifying the worth of a job for compensation purposes.

      Conducting the job analysis ussually involves a joint effort by an HR specialist, the worker and the worker’s supervisor. The HR specialist might observe and analyze the job and then develop a job description and specification. The supervisor and worker may fill out questionnaires listing the subordinates activities. The supervisor and worker may then review and verify the job analyst conclusions regarding the job’s activities and duties.

       In practice, firms usually collect job analysis data from multiple “subject matter experts” using questionnaires and interviews. They then average data from several employees from different departments to determine how much time a typical employee spends on each of several specific tasks. The problem is that employees who have the same job title but work in different departments may experience very different pressures. Therefore, simply adding up and averaging the amount of time that say HR assistants need to devote to “interviewing candidates” could end in misleading results. The point is that you must understand the job’s departmental context: The way someone with a particular job title spends his or here time is not necessarily the same from department.

       Interviews, questionnaires, observations and diary/logs are the most popular methods for gathering job analysis data. They all provide realistic information about what job incumbents actually do. Managers use them for developing job descriptions and job specifications.

       The Interview

      Managers use three types of interviews to collect job analysis data individual interviews with each employee, group interviews with groups of employees who have the same job and 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 it 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 to get that person’s perspective on the job’s duties and responsibilities.

      Whichever kind of interview you use, you need to be sure the interviewee fully understands the reason for the interview, since there’s a tendency for such interviews to be viewed, rightly or wrongly, as “efficiency evaluations.” If so, interviewees may hestitate to describe their jobs accurately.

     Pros and Cons The interview is probably the most widely used method for identifying a job’s duties and responsibilities and its wide use reflects its advantages. It’s a relatively simple and quick way to collect information, including information that might never appear on a written form. A skilled interviewer can unearth important activities that occur only occasionally, or informal contacts that wouldn’t be obvious from the organization chart. The interview also provides an opportunity to explain the need for and functions of the job analysis. And the employee can vent frustrations that might otherwise go unnoticed by management.

      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. Employees therefore may legitimately view the interview as an efficiency evaluation that may affect their pay. They may then tend to exaggerate certain responsibilities while minimizing others. Obtaining valid information can thus be a slow process, and prudent analysts get multiple inputs.

  Typical Questions Despite their drawbacks, interviews are widely used. Some typical interview questions include:

  What is the job being performed?

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

   What physical locations do work in?

   What are the education, experience, skill and certification and licensing requirements? 

   In what activities do you participate?

   What are the job’s responsibilities and duties?

    What are the basic account abilities 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?

   It includes a series of detailed questions regarding matters like the general purpose of the job; supervisory responsibilities; job duties; and education, experience and skills required. Of course, structured lists are not just for interviewers: Job analysts who collect information by personally observing the work or by using questionnaires two methods explained below can also use lists like these.

      Interview Guidelines Keep several things in mind when conducting a job analysis interview. First, the job analyst and supervisor should work together to identify the workers who know the job best and preferably those who’ll be most objective in describing their duties and responsibilities.

       Second, quickly establish rapport with the interviewee. Know the persons name, speak in easily understood language, briefly review the interview’s purpose, and explain how the person was chosen for the interview.

      Third, follow a structured guide or checklist, one that lists questions and provides spaces for answers. This ensures you’ll identify crucial questions ahead of time and all interviewers cover all the required questions.

      Fourth, when duties are not performed in a regular manner for instance, when the worker doesn’t perform the same job over and over again 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.

    Finally after completing the interview, review and verify the data. Specifically review the information with the worker’s immediate supervisor and with the interviewee.

Job Analysis Information Sheet

   Job Title                                                                                                 Date

   Job Code                                                                           Department

   Superior’s Title

   Hours worked       AM to    PM

   Job Analyst’s Name

   1.      What is the job’s overall purpose?

   2.      If the incumbent supervisors others, list them by job title; if there more than one employee with the same title, put the number in parentheses following.

   3.      Check those activities that are part of the incumbent’s supervisory duties.

ü  Training

ü  Performance Appraisal

ü  Inspecting work

ü  Budgeting

ü  Couching and or Counseling

ü  Others (please specify)

   4.      Descibe the type and extent of supervision received by the incumbent.

   5.      JOB DUTIES: Describe briefly WHAT the incumbent does and, if possible, How he/she does it. Include duties in the following categories:

a.       daily duties (those performed on a regular basis every day)

b.      periodic duties (those performed weekly, monthly, quaterly, or at other regular intervals)

c.       duties performed at irregular intervals

   6.      Is the incumbent performing duties he/she considers unnecessary? If so describe.

   7.      Is the incumbent performing duties not presently included in the job description? If so, describe.

  8.      EDUCATION: Check that indicates the educational requirements for the job (not the educational background of the incumbent).

ü  No formal education required

ü  High school diploma (or equivalent)

ü  4 year college degree (or equivalent)

ü  Professional

ü  Eighth grade education

ü  2 year college degree (or equivalent)

ü  Graduate work or advanced degrree.

   9.      EXPERIENCE: Check the amount of experience needed to perform the job.

ü  None

ü  One to six months

ü  One to three years

ü  Five to ten years

ü  Less than one month

ü  Six months to one year

ü  Three to five years

ü  More than ten years

   10.  LOCATION: Check location of job and if necessary or appropriate, describe briefly.

ü  Outdoor

ü  Underground

ü  Scaffold

ü  Indoor

ü  Pit

ü  Other

   11.  ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITION: Check any objectionable conditions found on the job and more afterward how frequently each is encountered (rarely, occasionally, constantly, etc.)

ü  Dirt

ü  Heat

ü  Noise

ü  Odors

ü  Vibration

ü  Darkness or poor lighting

ü  Dust

ü  Cold

ü  Fumes

ü  Wetness/humidity

ü  Sudden temperature changes

ü  Other (specify)

   12.  HEALTH AND SAFETY: Check any undesirable health and safety conditions under which the incumbent must perform and note how often they are encountered.

ü  Elevated workplace

ü  Explosives

ü  Fire hazards

ü  Mechanical hazards

ü  Electrical hazards

ü  Radiation

ü  Other (specify)

  13.  MACHINES, TOOLS, EQUIPMENT AND WORK AIDS: Describe briefly what machines, tools, equipment or work aids the incumbent works with on a regular basis:

  14.  Have concrete work standards been established (errors allowed, time taken for a particular task, etc)? If so, what are they?

  15.  Are there any personal attributes (special aptitudes, physical characteristics, personality traits, etc.) required by the job?

  16.  Are there any exceptional problems the incumbent might be expected to encounter in performing the job under normal conditions? If so, describe.

  17.  Describe the successful completion and or end results of the job.

  18.  What is the seriousness of error on this job? Who or what is affected by errors the incumbent makes?

   19.  To what job would a successful incumbent expect to be promoted?

   Questionnaires

  Having employees fillout questionnaires to describe their job related duties and responsibilities is another good way to obtain job analysis information.

   You have to decide how structured the questionnaire should be and what questions to include. Some questionnaires are very structured checklists. Each employee gets an inventory of perhaps hundreds of specific duties or tasks. He or shr is asked to indicate whether or not he or she performs each task and, if so how much time is normally spent on each. At the other extreme the questionnaire can be open ended and simply ask the employee to “describe the major duties of your job.”

   Whether stuctured or unstructured, questionnaires have both 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 can be expensive and time consuming.

   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 ussually not appropriate when the job entails a lot of mental activity. Nor is it useful if the employee only occasionally engages in important activities, such as a nurse who handles emergencies. And reactivity the workers changing what he or she normally does because you are watching can also 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 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, after accumulating as much information as possible, you interview the worker. Ask the person to clarify points not understood and to explain what other activities he or she performs that you didn’t observe. You can also observe and interview simultaneously, asking questions while the worker performs his or her job.

   Participant Diary/Logs

   Another approach is to ask workers to keep a diary/log of what they do during the day. For every activity he or she engages in, in the employee records the activity (along with the time) in a log. This can produce a very complete picture of the job, especially when supplemented with subsequent interwiews with the worker and the supervisor. The employee, of course, might try to exaggerate some activities and underplay others. However, the detailed, chronological nature of the log tends to mediate against this.

   Some firms take a high tech approach to diary/logs. They 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 one pitfall of the traditional diary/log method: 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 approaches like interviews and questionnaires are not always suitable. For example, if your aim is to compare jobs for pay purposes, you may want to be able to assign quantitative values to each job. The position analysis questionnaire, the Department of Labor approach, and functional job analysis are three popular quantitative methods.

   Position Analysis Questionnaire

   The postion analysis questionnaire (PAQ) is a very structured job analysis questionnaire. The PAQ contains 194 items, each of which (such as “written materials”) represents a basic elements that may or may not play an important role in the job. The job analyst decides if each item play a role and if so to what extent.The analyst can do this online see www.paq.com.

   The advantage of the PAQ is that it provides a qiuantitative score or profile of any job terms of how that job rates on five basic activities: (1) having decsion making/ communication/ social responsibilities, (2) performing skilled activities, (3) being physically active, (4) operating vehicles / equipment and (5) processing information. The PAQ’s real strength is thus in calssifying jobs. In other words,  it lets you assign a quantitative score to each job based on its decsion kaking, skilled vactivity, physical activity, vehicle/equipment operation and information processing characteristics. You can therefore use the PAQ results to quantitatively compare jobs to one another, and then assign pay levels for each job.

   Department of Labor (DOL) Procedure The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) job analysis procedure also provides a standardized method by which different jobs can be quantitatively rated, classified, and compared. The heart of this analysis is a data, people and things rating for each job.

Portion of a Completed Page from the Position Analysis Questionnaire

Extent of Use (U)

NA Does not apply

1 Nominal/very infrequent

2 Occasional

3 Moderate

4 Considerable

5 Very substantial

   INFORMATION INPUT

   Source of Job Information

    Rate each of the following items in terms of the extent to which it is used by the worker as a source of information in performing his job.

    Visual Sources of Job Information

1 ,     4 Written materials  (books, reports, office notice, articles, job instructions, signs, etc.)

2 , 2 Quantitative materials (materials which deal with quantotaties or amounts, such as              graph, accounts, specifications, tables of numbers, etc.)

3 ,  1 Pictorial materials (pictures or picturelike materials used as sources of information, for example, drawings,  blueprints, diagrams, maps, tracings, photographic films, x-ray films, TV pictures, etc.)

4 , 1 Patterns/ related devices (templates, stencils, patterns, etc., used as sources of information when observed during use; do not include here materials described in item 3 above)

5  ,  2 Visual displays (dials, gauges, signal lights, radarscopes, speedometers, clocks etc.)

6 ,   5 Measuring devices (rulers, calipers, tire pressure gauges, scales, thickness gauges, pipettes, thermometers, protactors, etc., used to obtain visual information about physical measurements; do not include here devices described in item 5 above)

7,    4 Mechanical devices (tools, equipment, machinery and other mechanical devices which are sources information when observed during use or operation)

8,   3 Materials in process (parts, materials, objects, etc., which are sources of information when being modified, worked on, or otherwise processed, such as bread dough being mixed, workplace being turned in a lathe, fabric being cut, shoe being resoled, etc.)

9,  4 Materials not in process (parts, materials, objects, etc., not in the process of being changed or modified which are sources of information when being inspected, handled, packaged, distributed, or selected, etc., such as items or materials in inventory, storage, or distribution channels, items being inspected, etc.)

10, 3 Features of nature (landscapes, fields, geological samples, vegetation, cloud formations and other features of nature which are observed or inspected to provide information)

11,  2 Man-made features of environment (structures, buildings, dams, highways, bridges, docks, railrtoads and other “man-made” or altered aspects of the indoor or outdoor environment which are observed or inspected to provide job information; do not consider equipment, machines, etc., that an individual uses in his work, as covered by item 7).

Human of the job, for instance, in terms of training time rquired, aptitudes, tempraments. As you can see, each job ends up with a numerical score (such as 5,6,2). You can thus group together (and assign the same pay to) all jobs with similar scores, even for very different jobs like job dough mixer and mechanic’s helper.

JOB ANALYSIS SCHEULE

1.      Established Job Title DOUGH MIXER

2.      Ind. Assign (bake prod.)

3.      SIC Code (s) and Title(s) 2051 Bread and other bakery products

4.      JOB SUMMARY:

Operates mixing machine to mix ingredients for straight and sponge (yeast) doughs according to established formulas, directs other workers in ferementation of dough and curls dough into pieces with hand cutter.

5.      WORK PERFORMED RATINGS:

Worker Functions

D = Data = 5

P = People = 6

(T) = Things = 2

Work Field Cooking, Food preparing

6.      WORKER TRAITS RATING: (To be filled in by analyst)

Training time required

Aptitudes

Tempraments

Interests

Physical Demands

Environment Conditions

Functional Job Analysis Functional job analysis is similoar to the DOL method, but differs in two ways. First, functional job analysis rates the job not just on data, people, and things but also on four more dimensions: the extent to which specific instructions are necessary to perform the task: the extent to which reasoning and judgment are required to perform the task; the mathematical ability required to perform the task; and the verbal and language facilities required to perform the task. Second, functional job analysis also identifies performance standards and training requirements. It therefore lets you answer the question, “To do this task and meet these standards, what training does the worker require?”

You may find both the DOL and functional job analyses methods in use. However, analysts increasingly use other methods instead, including the U.S. government’s online initiatives, which well discuss below.

Using Multiple Sources of Information

There are obviously many ways to obtain job analysis information. You can get it from individual workers, group, or supervisors; or from the observations of job analysts, for instance. You can use interviews, observations, or questionnaires. Some firms use just one basic approach, like having the job analyst do interviews with current job incumbent. Yet a recent study suggests that using just one source may not be wise.

The problem is the potential inaccuracies in people’s judgments. For example, in a group interview, some group members may feel forced to go along with the consensus of the group; or an employee may be careless about how he or she completes a questionnaire. What this means is that collecting job analysis data from just interviews, or just observation, may lead to inaccurate conclusions. Its better to try to avoid such inaccuracies by using several sources. For example, where possible, collect job analysis data from several types of respondents groups, individuals, observers, supervisors and analysts; make sure the questions and surveys are clear and understandable to the respondents. And if possible, observe and question respondents early enough in the job analysis process to catch any problems while there’s still time to correct them.

WRITING JOB DESCRIPTIONS

A job description is a written statement of what the worker actually does, how he or she does it, and what the job’s working conditions are. You use this information to write a job specification; this lists the knowledge, abilities and skills required to perform the job satisfactorily.

There is no standard format for writing a job description. However, most descriptions contain sections that cover:

1.      Job identification

2.      Job summary

3.      Responsibilities and duties

4.      Authority of incumbent

5.      Standards of performance

6.      Working conditions

7.      Job specifications

Sample Job Description

OLEC CORP.

Job Description

Job Title:                    Marketing Manager

Department:              Marketing

Reports To:                President

FLSA Status:             Non Exempt

Prepared By:             Michael George

Prepared Dates:        April 1, 2002

Approved By:            Ian Alexander

Approved Date:         April 15, 2002

SUMMARY

Plans, directs and coordinates the marketing og the organization’s products and or services by performing the following duties personally or through subordinate supervisors.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES include the following. Other duties may be assigned. Establishes marketing goals to ensure share of market and profitability of products and or services. Develops and executes marketing plans and programs, both short and long range, to ensure the profit growth and expansion of company products and or services. Researches, analyzes, and monitors financial, technological and demographic factors so that market opportunities may be capitalized on and the effects of competitive activity may be minimized. Plans and oversees the organization’s advertising and promotion activities including print, electronic and direct mail outlets. Communicates with outside advertising agencies on ongoing campaigns. Works with writers and artists and oversees copywriting, design, layout, pasteup and production of promotional materials. Develops and recommends pricing strategy for the organization which will result in the greatest share of the market over the long run. Achieves satisfactory profit/loss ratio and share market of market performance in relation to pre set standards and to general and specific trends within the industry and the economy. Ensures effective control of marketing results and that corrective action takes place to be certain that the achievement of marketing objectives are within designated budgets. Evaluates market reactions to advertising programs, merchandising policy and product packaging and formulation to ensure the timely adjustment of marketing strategy and plans to meet changing market and competitive conditions. Recommend changes in basic structure and organization of marketing group to ensure the effective fulfillment of objectives or signed to it and provide the flexibility to move swiftly in relation to marketing problems and opportunities. Conducts marketing surveys on current and new product concepts. Prepares marketing activity reports.

SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES

Managers three subordinate supervisors who supervise a total of five employee in the Marketing Department. Is responsible for the overall direction, coordination and evaluation of this unit. Also directly supervises two non-supervisory employees. Carries out supervisory responsibilities and accordance with the organization’s policies and applicable laws. Responsibilities include interviewing, hiring, and training employees; planning, assigning, and directing work; appraising performance; rewarding and disciplining employees; addressing complainst and resolving problems.

QUALIFICATIONS

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactory. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill and or ability required. Reasonable accomodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

EDUCATION  and EXPERIENCE

Master’s degree (M.A.) or equivalent; or four to ten years related experience and/or training; or equivalent combination of education and experience.

LANGUAGE SKILLS

Ability to read, analyze, and interpret common scientific and technical journals, financial reports and legal documents.  Ability to respond to common inquiries or complaints from customers, regularly agencies, or members of the business community. Ability to write speeches and articles for publication that conform to prescribed style and format. Ability to effectively present information to top management, public groups, and or boards directors.

MATHEMATICAL SKILLS

Ability to apply advanced mathematical concepts such as exponents, logarithms, quadratic equations, and permutations. Ability to apply mathematical opearations to such tasks as frequency distribution, determination of test reliability and validity, analysis of variance, correlation techniques, sampling theory and factor analysis.

REASONING ABILITY

Ability to define problems, collect data, establish facts, and draw valid conclusions. Ability to interpret an extensive variety of technical instructions in mathematical or diagram form.

“Personnel Manager” Description from Dictionary of Occupational Titles

MANAGER, PERSONNEL (profess & kin.) alternate titles: manager, human resources

Plans and carries out policies relating to all phases of personnel activity: Recruits, interviews and selects employees to fill vacant positions. Plans and conducts new employee orientation to foster positive attitude toward company goals. Keeps record of insurance coverage, pension plan, and personnel transactions such as hires, promotions, transfers and terminations. Investigates accidents and prepares reports for insurance carrier. Conducts wage survey within labor market to determine competitive wage rate. Prepares budget of personnel operations. Meets with shop stewards and supervisors to resolve grievances. Writes separation notices for employees separating with cause and conducts exit interviews to determine reasons behind separations. Prepares reports and recommends procedures to reduce abseenteism and turnover. Represents company at personnel related hearings and investigations. Contracts with outside suppliers to provide employee services, such as canteen, transportation or relocation service. May prepare budget of personnel operations, using computer terminal. May administer manual and dexterity tests to applicants. May supervise clerical workers. May keep records of hired employee characteristics for governmental reporting purposes. May negotiate collective bargaining agreement with BUSINESS REPRESENTATIVE, LABOR UNION (profess & kin.)

Job Identification

The job identification section contains several types of information. The job title specifies the name of the job, such as supervisor of data processing operations, marketing manager, or inventory control clerk. The FLSA status permits quick identification of the job as exempt or nonexempt. (Under that Fair Labor Standards Act, certain positions, primarily administrtative and professional, are exempt from the act’s overtime and minimum wage provisions.) Date is the date the job description was actually written and prepatred by indicates who wrote it.

There is also space to indicate who approved the description and perhaps a space that shows the location of the job in terms of its plant/division and department/section. This section might also include the immediate supervisor’s title and information regarding salary and or pay scale. There might also be space for the grade/level of the job, if there is such a category. For example, a firm may classify programmers as programmer II, programmer III, and so on.

Job Summary

The job summary should describe the general nature of the job, and includes only its major functions or activities. Thus the marketing manager “Plans, directs, and coordinates the marketing of done organizations products and/or services.” For the job materials manager, the summary might state that the ”materials manager purchases economically, regulates deliveries of stores and distributions all material necessary on the production line.”For the job mail room supervisor receives, sorts and deliveries all incoming mail properly and he or she handles all outgoing mail including the accurate  and timely posting of such mail.

Include general statements like “performs other assignment as required” with care. Such statements can give supervisors more flexibility in assigning duties. Some experts, however, state unequivocally that “one item frequently found that should never be included in a job description is a cop out clause like other duties, as assigned, since this leaves open the nature of the job and the people needed  to staff it.

Relationships

There is occasionally a relationships statement (not in the example), which shows the jobholder’s relationships with others inside and outside the organization. For a human resource manager, such a statement might look like this:

Reports to: Vice president of employee relations.

Supervises: Human resource clerk, test administrator, labor relations director and one secretary.

Works with: All department managers and executive management.

Outside the company: Employment agencies, executive recruiting firms, union representatives, state and federal employment offices and various vendors.

Responsibilities and Duties

This section presents a list of the job’s major responsibilities and duties. Typical duties for other jobs might include maintaining balanced  and controlled inventories, making accurate postings to accounts payable, maintaining favorable purchase price variances and repairing  production line tools and equipment.

You can use the Department of Labor’s Dictionary of Occupational Titles here for itemizing the job’s duties and responsibilities. Take the HR managers duties. These duties include “plans and carries out policies relating to all phases of personnel activity; “recruits, interviews and selects employees to fill vacant positions”; and “conducts wage surveys within labor markets to determine competitive wage rate.”

This section should also define the limits of the jobholders authority, including his or her decision making authority, direct supervision of other personnel and budgetary limitations. For example, the jobholder might have authority to approve purchase requests up to $5,000 grant time off or leaves of absence, discipline department personnel, recommend salary increases, and interview and hire new employees. You also need to comply with ADA regulations: See the New Workplace feature following.

Writing Job Descriptions That Comply with the ADA

Congress enacted the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to reduce or eliminate serious problems of discrimination against disabled individuals. Under ADA the individual must have the requisite skills, educational  background and experience to perform’s the job’s essential functions. A job function is essential when it is the reason the position exists or when the function is so specialized that the firm hired the person doing the job for his or her expertise or ability to perform that particular function. If the disabled individual can’t perform the job as currently structured, the employer is required to make a “reasonable accomodation,” Unless doing so would present an “Undue hardship.”

As we said earlier, the ADA does not require job descriptions, but it’s probably advisable to have them. Virtually all ADA legal actions will revolve around the question, “What are the essential functions of the job? “Without a job description that lists such functions, it will be hard to convince our that the functions were essential to the job. The corollary is that you should clearly identify the essential functions: don’t just list them along with other duties on the description.

Essential job functions are the job duties that employees must be able to perform, with or without reasonable accommodation. Is a function essential? Question to ask include:

1.      Does the position exist to perform that function?

2.      Are employees in the position actually required to perform the function?

3.      Is there a limited number of other employees available to perform the function?

4.      What is the degree of expertise or skill required to perform the function?

5.      What is the actual work experience of present or past employees in the job?

6.      What is the amount of time an individual actually spends performing the function?

7.      What are the consequences of not requiring the performance of the function?

Standard of Performance and Working Conditions

Some job descriptions contain a standards of performance section. This lists the standards the employee is expected to achieve under each of the job description’s main duties and responsibilities.

Setting standards is never an easy matter. However, most managers soon learn that just telling subordinates to”do their best” doesn’t provide enough guidance. One straightforward way of setting standards is to finish the statement: “I will be completely satisfied with your work whem,,,”This sentence, if completed for each duty listed in the job description, should result in a usable set of performance standards, Here are some examples:

Duty: Accurately Posting Accounts Payable

1.      Post all invoices received within the same working day

2.      Route all invoices to proper department managers for approval no later than the day following receipt.

3.      An average of no more than three posting errors per month.

Duty: Meeting Daily Production Schedule

1.      Work group procedures no less than 426 units per working day.

2.      Next work station rejects no more than average of 2% of units.

3.      Weekly overtime does not exceed an average of 5%.

The job description may also list the working conditions involved on the job. These might include things like noise level, hazardous conditions or heat.

Using the Internet for Writing Job Descriptions

Most employers probably still write their own job descriptions, but more turning to the Internet. One site www.jobdescription.com illustrates why. The process is simple. Search by alphabetical title, keyword, category or industry to find the desired job title. This leads you to a generic job description for that title say, “Computers & EDP systems sales representative.”You can the use the wizard to customize the generic description for this position.  For example, you can add specific information about your organization, such as job title, job codes, department and preparation date. And you can indicate whether the job has supervisory abilities and choose from a number of possible desireable competencies and experience levels.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s occupational information network, called O*Net, is another useful Web tool (you’ll find it at www.doleta.gov/programs/onet). It’s replacing the Dictionary of Occupational Titles as a source of occupational information. O*NET contains data adapted from preexisting sources, including the Dictionary of Occuptional Titles. However it is growing fast and adding new data about jobs in today’s increasingly information-based economy. Built in software allows users to see the most important characteristics of occupations, as well as the experience, education, and knowledge required to do each job well. Both the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and O*NET include the specific tasks associated with many occupations. O*NET also provides associated with many occupations. O*NET also provides skills, including basic skills such as reading and writing skills, including basic skills such as reading and writing skills, including basic skills such as reading and writing, process skills such as critical thinking, and transferable skills such as reading and writing process skills such as critical thinking and transferable skills such as persuasion and negotiation.

O*NET improves on the Dictionary of Occupational Titles in other ways. For example, an O*NET listing also includes information on worker requirements (required knowledge, for instance), occupation requirements (based on work activities such as compiling, coding, and categorizing data) and experience requirements (including education and job training). You can also check the job’s labor market characteristics (such as employment projections and earnings data). The Enterpreneurs + HR feature on page 79 shows you how to use O*NET.

WRITING JOB SPECIFICATIONS

The job specification takes the job description and answers the question, “what human traits and experience are required to do this job well?”It shows what kind of person to recruit and for what qualities that person should be tested. The job specification may be a section of the job description or a separate document entirely.

Specifications for Trained Versus Untrained Personnel

Writing job specifications for trained employees is relatively straightforward. For example, suppose you want to fill a position for a bokkeeper (or coinselor or programmer). In cases like these, your job specifications might focus mostly on traits like length of previoius service, quality of relevant training and previous job performance. Thus, it’s ussualy not too difficult to determine the human requirements for placing already trained people on a job.

The problems are more complex when you’re filling jobs with untrained people (with the intention of training them on the job). Here you must specify qualities such as physical traits, personality, interests, or sensory skills that imply some potential for performing or for being trained to do the job.

For example, suppose the job requires detailed manipulation in a circuit board assembly line. Here you might want to ensure that the person scores high on a test of finger dexterity. Your goal, in other words, is to identify those personal traits those human requirements that validly predict which candidates would do well on the job and which would not. Employers identify these human requirements that validly predict which candidates would do well on the job and which not. Employers identify these human requirements through a subjective, judgmental approach or through statistical analysis. Lets examine both approaches in detail.

Specifications Based on Judgment

Most job specifications come from educated guesses of people like supervisors and human resource managers. The basic procedure here is to ask,”What does it take in terms of education, intellegence, training and the like to do this job well?”

There are several ways to get educated guesses or judgments. You could simply create them yourself, or you could choose them from the competencies listed in Web based job descriptions like those at www.jobdescription.com. The typical job description there lists competencies like “Generates creative solutions” and “Manages difficult or emotional customer situations.”O*NET online is another good option. Job listings there include complete descriptions of educational and other experience and skills required.

The Dictionary of Occupational Titles can also still be useful. For each job in the dictionary, job analysts and vocational counselors have made judgments regarding its human requirements. The dictionary assigns ratings and letters to human requirements or traits as follows: G (intelligence), V (verbal), N (numerical), S (spatial), P (perception), Q (clerical perception), K (motor coordination), F (finger dexterity), M (manual dexterity), E (eye-hand foot coordination) and C (color discrimination). The ratings reflect the amount of each trait or ability possessed by people with different performance levels currently working on the job, based on the experts judgments.

Use common sense when compiling a list of the job’s human requirements. Certainly job specific human traits like those unearthed through job analysis manual dexterity, say or educational level are important. However, don’t ignore the fact that some work behaviors may apply to almost any job (although they might not normally surface through a job analysis).

RESEARCH INSIGHT One researcher, for example, obtained supervisor ratings and other iformation from 18,000 employees in 42 different hourly entry level jobs in predominantly retail settings. Regardless of the job, here are the work behaviors (with examples) that he found to be “generic” in other words, that seem to be important to all job.

Job Related Behavior                       Some Examples

Industriousness                                   Keeps working even when other employees are standing around talking; takes the initiative to find another task when finished with regular work.

Thoroughness                                     Cleans equipment thoroughly, creating a more attractive display; notices merchandise out of place and returns it to the proper area.

Schedule flexibility                            Accepts schedule changes when necessary; offers to stay late when the store is extremely busy.

Attandance                                        Arrives at work on time; maintains good attendance.

Off-task behavior (reverse)            Uses store phones to makr personal unauthorized calls; conducts personal business during work time; Lets joking friends be a distriction snd interruption to work.

Unruliness (reverse)                           Threatens to bully another employee; refuses to take routine orders from supervisors; does not cooperate with other employees.

Theft (reverse)                                    (As a cashier) Underrings the price of merchandise for a friend; cheats on reporting time worked; allows nonemployees in unauthorized areas.

Drug misuse (reverse)                        Drinks alcohol or takes drugs on company property comes to work under the influence of alcohol or drugs. 

 

Perhaps the bigger challenge is to make sure that in doing the job analysis, you don’t miss the forest for the trees. Consider a recent study of 50 testing engineers at a volvo plant in Sweden. When asked what determined job competence for a testing engineer, most of the engineers focused on traditional criteria such as “to make the engine perform according to specifications.”But the most effective testing engineers defined the job’s main task differently: “to make sure the engine provides a customer with a good driving experience. “As a result, these engineers went about their jobs testing and tuning the engines “not as engineers trying to hit a number, but as ordinary drivers imagining themselves as seniors, students, commuters, or vacationers.” This subgroup of the testing engineers worked hard to develop their knowledge of customers driving needs, even when it meant reaching out to people outside their own group, such as designers or marketers.

The point, says the researcher, is that “if people don’t recognize or value the attributes that really determine success, how easy will it be for them to acquire those attributes?” Employers should therefore “shift the focus of their recruitment and training programs from flawed attribute checklist toward identifying and if necessary, changing peoples understanding of jobs entail.”In other words, in developing the job description and job specification, make sure you really understand the reason for the job and therefore the skills a person actually needs to be competent at it.

Specification Based on Statistical Analysis

Basing job specifications on statistical analysis is the more defensible approach, but it’s also more difficult. The aim here is to determine statistically the relationship between (1) some predictor or human traits, such as height, intellegence, or finger dexterity, and (2) some indikator or criterion of job effectiveness, such as performance as rated by the supervisor. The procedure has steps: (1) analyze the job and decide how to measure job performance; (2) select personal traits like finger dexterity that you believe should predict successful performance; (3) test candidates for these traits; (4) measure these candidates subsequent job performance; and (5) statistically analyze the relationship between the human trait (finger dexterity) and job performance. Your objective is to determine whether the former predicts the latter.

This method is more defensible than the judgmental approach because equal rights legislation forbids using traits that you can’t prove distinguish between high and low job performers. Hiring standards that discriminate based on sex, race, religion, national origin, or age may have to be shown to predict job performance. Ideally this is done with a statistical validation study.

A Practical Job Analysis Approach

Without their own job analysts or (in many cases) HR managers, many small business owners face two hurdles when doing job analyses and job descriptions. First they often need a more streamlined approach than those provided by questionnaires like the one shown. Second, there is always the reasonable fear that in writing their job descriptions, they will overlook duties that subordinates should be assigned, or assign duties not ussually associated with such positions. What they need is an encyclopedia listing all the possible positions they might encounter, including a detailed listing of the duties normally assigned to these positions.

Help is at hand: The small business owner has at least three options. The Dictionary of Occupational Titles, mentioned earlier, provides detailed descriptions of thousands of jobs and their human requirements. Web sites like www.jobdescription.com provide customizable descriptions by title and industry. And the Department of Labor’s O*NET is a third alternative. We’ll focus on using O*NET in this feature.

Step 1 Decide a Plan

Start by developing at least the board outline of a corporate plan. What do you expect your sales revenue to be next year and in the next few years? What products do you intends to emphasize? What areas or departments in your company do you think will have to be expanded, reduced, or consolidated, given where you plan to go with your firm over the next few years? What kinds of new positions do you think you’ll need in order to accomplish your strategic plans?

Step 2. Develop an Organization Chart

Next, develop an organization chart for the firm. Show who reports to the president and to each of his or her subordinates. Complete the chart by showing who reports to each of the other managers and supervisors in the firm. Start by drawing up the organization chart as it is now. Then depending upon how far in advance you’re planning, produce a chart showing how you’d like your chart to look in the immediate future (say, in two months) and perhaps two or three other charts showing how you’d like your organization to evolve over the next two or three years. You can use several tools here. For example, Ms Words includes an organization charting function: On the inset menu, click object, then create new. In the object type box, click MS Organization Chart, and then OK. Software packages such as OrgPublisher for Intranet 3.0 from Time Vision of Irving, Texas are another option.

Step  3 Use a Job Analysis/Description Questionnaire

Next, use a job analysis questionnaire to determine what the job entails. You can use one of the more comprehensive questionnaires; however, the job description questionnaire, is a simpler and often satisfactory alternative. Fill in the required information, then ask the supervisors and/or employees to list the job’s duties (on the bottom of the page), breaking them into daily duties to supervisor and/or employees to facilitate the process.

Step 4 Obtain Lists of Job Duties from O*NET

The list of job duties you uncovered in the previous step may or may not be complete. We’ll therefore use O*NET to compile a more comprehensive list. (Refer to the Webnote for a visual example as you read along.) Start by going to http://online.onet.center.org (top). Here click on Find Occupations. Assume you want to create job descriptions for retail salespeople. Type in Retail Sales for the occupational titles, and sales and related from the job families drop down box. Click Find Occupations to continue, which brings you to the Find Occupations Search Result (middle). Clicking on Retail Salespersons snapshots produces the job summary and specific occupational duties for retail salespersons (bottom). For a small operation, you might want to combine the dutis of the retail salesperson with those of first line supervisors/ managers of retail sales workers.

Step 5 Compile the Job Human Requirements from O*NET

Next, return to the Snapshot for Retail Salesperson (bottom). Here, instead of choosing occupation specific information, choose, for example, Worker Experience, Occupational Requirements and Worker Characteristics. You can use this information to develop a job specification for recruiting, selecting and training the employees.

Step 6 Complete Your Job Description

Finally, write an appropriate job summary for the job. Then use the information obtained in steps 4 and 5 to create a complete listing of the tasks, duties and human requirements of each of the jobs you will need to fill.

Job Description Questionnaire

Background Data for Job Description

Job Title                                                                      Department

Job Number                                                                 Written by

Today’s Date                                                              Applicable DOT Codes

I.                   Applicable DOT Definition(s):

II.                Job Summary:

(List the more important or regularly performed tasks)

III.             Reports To:

IV.             Supervises:

V.                Job Duties:

(Briefly describe, for each duty, what employee does and if possible how employee does it. Show in parenthesses of end each duty the approximate percentage of time devoted to duty.)

A.    Daily Duties:

B.     Periodic Duties:

            (Indicate whether weekly, monthly, quartely, etc)

C.     Duties Performed at Irregular Intervals:

Background Data for Examples

Example of Job Title: Customer Service Clerk

Example of Job Summary: Answers inquiries and gives directions to customers, authorizes cashing of customers checks, records and returns lost charge cards, sorts and reviews new credit applications, works at customer service desk in department store.

Example of One Job Duty: Authorizes cashing of checks: authorizes cashing of personal or payroll checks (up to a specified amount) by customers desiring to make payment by check. Requests identification, such as driver’s licence, from customers, and examines check to verify date, amount, signature, and endorsement. Initials check and sends customer to cashier.

JOB ANALYSIS IN A “JOBLESS” WORLD

Job is generally defined as “a set of closely related activities carried out for pay? But over the past few years the concept of a job has been changing quite dramatically. As one observer put it:

The modern world is on the verge of another huge leap in creativity and productivity, but the job is not going to be part of tomorrows economic reality. There still is and will always be enormous amounts of work to do, but it is not going to be contained in the familiar employees we call jobs. In fact, many organanizations are today well along the path toward being “de-jobbed.”

From Specialized to Enlarged Jobs

The term job as we know it today is largely an outgrwoth of the industrial revolutions emphasis on efficiency. During this time experts like Adam Smith and Frederick Taylor wrote glowingly of the positive correlation between specialization and effeciency. Jobs and job descriptions, until quite recently, tended to follow their presciptions and to be fairly detailed and specific.

By the mid 1900s other writers were reacting to what they viewed as “dehumanizing” aspects of pigeonholing workers into highly repetitive and specialized jobs; many proposed solutions like job enlargement, job rotation, and job enrichment. Job enrichment means redesigning jobs in a way that increases the opportunities for the worker to experience feelingsw of responsibility, achievement, growth and recognition for instance, by letting the worker plan and control his or her own work instead of having it controlled by outsiders.

Why Managers Are Dejobing Their Companies

Whether specialized, enlarged, or enriched, however, workers still generally have had specific jobs to do, and these jobs have required job descriptions. In many firms, today, however, jobs are becoming more amorphous and more difficult to define. In other words, the trend is toward dejobbing.

Dejobbing bradening the responsibilities of the company’s jobs and encouraging employees not to limit themselves to whats on their job descriprtions is a result of the changes taking place in business today. Organizations need to grapple with trends like rapid product and technological change, global competition, deregulation, political instability, demographic changes, and a shift to a service economy. This has increased the need for firms to be responsive, flexible and generally more competitive. In turn, the organizational methods managers use to accomplish this have helped weaken the meaning of job as a well defined and clearly declinated set of responsibilitires. Here ia a sampling of methods that have contributed to this weakening.

Flatter Organizations Instead of traditional pyramid shaped organizations with seven or more management layers, flat organizations with just three or four levels are becoming more prevalent. Most firms (including AT&T, ABB and General Electric) have already cut their managemernt layers from a dozen to six or fewer. Because the remaining managers have more people reporting to them, they can supervise them less, so the job of subordinates end up bigger in terms of both breadth and depth of responsibilities.

Work Teams Managers increasingly organize tasks around teams and processes rather than around specialized functions. For example, at Chesebrough Ponds USA, a subsidiary of Unilever, managers replaced a traditional pyramidal organization with multiskilled, cross functional, and self directed teams; the latter now run the plant’s four product areas. Hourly employees make employee assignments, schedule overtime, establish production times and changeovers and even handle cost control, requisitions and work orders. They also are solely responsible for quality control under thje plants continous quality improvement program. In an organization like this, employee jobs change daily; there is thus an intentional effort to avoid having employees view their jobs as a specific set of responsibilities.

Work Teams Managers increasingly organize tasks around teams and processes rather than around specialized functions. For example, at Chasebrough Ponds USA, a subsidiary of Unilever, managers replaced a traditional pyramidal organization with multiskilled, cross functional and self directed teams; the latter now run the plants four products areas. Hourly employees make employee assignments, schedule over time, establish production times and changeovers and even handle cost control, requisitions and work orders. They also are solely responsible for quality control under the plants continous quality improvement program. In an organization like this, employees jobs change daily; threre is thus an intentional effort to avoid having employees view their jobs as a specific set of responsibilities.

The Boundaryless Organization In a boundaryless organization the wide spread use of tearms and  similar structural mechanisms reduces and makes more permeable the boundaries that typically separate departments (like sales and production) and  hierarchial levels. Boundaryless organization foster responsiveness by encouraging employees to rid themselves of the “it’s not my job” attitudes that typically create walls between one employees area and anothers. Instead the focus is on definining the project or task at hand in terms of the overall best interests of the organization, thereby further reducing the idea of a job as a clearly defined.

Reengineering is “the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical contemorary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service and speed. In their book Reengineering the Corporation, Michael Hammer and James Champy argue that the principles that shaped the structure and management of business for hundreds of years like highly specialized divisions of work should be retired. Instead, the firm should emphasize combining tasks into integrated, unspecialized process (such as customer service) assigned to teams of employees.

You can reenginer jobs in many ways. For example, you can combine several specialized jobs into a few relatively enlarged and enriched ones. Typically in reengineered situations workers tend to become collectively responsible for over all results rather than being individually responsible for just their own tasks: “They share joint responsibility with their team members for performing the whole process, not just a small piece of it. They not only use a broader range of skills from day to day, they have to be thinking of a far greater picture. Most important,”while not every member of the team will be doing exactly the same work…the lines between [the eorkers jobs] blur.

The Future of Job Descriptions Most firms today continue to use job descriptions and to rely on jobs as traditionally defined However. Its clear that more firms are moving toward new organizational configurations built around jobs that are broad and that may change every day. As one writer said,”In such a situation people no longer take their cues from a job description or a supervisor’s instructions. Signals come from the changing demands of the project. Workers learn to focus their individual efforts and collective resources on the work that needs doing, changing as that changes. Managers lose their ‘jobs,’too…Yet some feel that “job descriptions, although they include the ubiquitous phrase,’and all other duties as assigned,’are still relatively rigid and limiting.

Some employers are moving from traditional to more performance based job descriptions. For example, Acxiom Corporation in Little Rock, Arkansas recently moved from more traditional job descriptions to a new system. Instead of listing specific language skills (such as Java) for a software developer’s job description, it now emphasizes behavioral competencies, such as self directed learning. This is because Acxion now includes just a few statements describing overall responsibilities. Supervisors then set specific expectations by defining the skills (such as “learn two new software languages”) the employee needs at that time. The job description thus becomes more of a flexible, living, performance based document.

Dejobbing also triggers broader HR Issues. For example, “you must find peoplewho can work well without the cue system of job descriptions.” This puts a premium on hiring people with the skills and values to handle empowered jobs:

For multi dimensional and changing jobs, companies don’t need people to fill a slot, because the slot will be only roughly defined. Companies need people who can figure out what the job takes and do it, people who can create the slot that fits them, Moreover the slot will keep changing.

There’s also a shift from training to education, from teaching employees the “how” of a job to enhancing their insight and understanding regarding its “why”. This is because in fast changing global environment, jobs change so quickly that impossible to hire people “who already know everything they’re ever going to need to know.

HIGH PERFORMANCE INSIGHT Modern job analysis/job design techniqiues can help companies implement high performance strategies. In one firm British Petroleum’s exploration division  the need for more efficient, fasting acting, flatter organizations and empowered employees inspired management to replace job descriptions with matrices listing skills and skill levels. Senior managers wanted to shift employees attention from a job description/”that’s not my job” mentality to one that would motivate them to obtain the new skills they needed to accomplish their broader responsibilities.

The solution was a skills matrix. They created skills matrices for various jobs within two groups of employees, those on management track and those whose aims lay elsewhere (such as to stay in engineering). HR prepared a matrix for each job or job family (such as drilling manager). The matrix listed (1) the basic skills needed for that job (such as technical expertise) and (2) the minimum level of each skill required for that job or job family. The emphasis is no longer on specific job duties. Instead the focus is on developing the new skills needed for the employees broader, empowered and often relatively undefined responsibilities.

The skills matrix approach triggered other HR changes in this division. For example, the matrices gave employees a contant reminder of what skills they must improve. The firm instituted a new skilled based pay plan that awards raises based on skill improvement. Perfor,mance appraisals now focus more on skills acquisitions. And training emphasizes developing broad skills like leadership and planning skills applicable across a wide range of responsibilities and jobs. The result was a new firm wide emphasis on performance.

H              H              H              H               H              H               H

G              G              G              G               G              G               G

F               F               F              F                F              F                F

E               E              E              E                E              E                E

D              D              D              D               D              D               D

C              C              C               C               C              C               C

B              B              B               B               B              B               B

A              A              A               A               A             A               A

1               2               3                4                5             6                 7

1= Technical Expertise

2= Business Awareness

3 = Communication and Interpersonal

4 = Decision Making and Initiative

5 = Leaderships and Guidance

6 = Planning and Organizational Ability

7 = Problem Solving

Implementing the New Strategy at U.S. Bank

U.S. Bank’s new customer service and retention manager, Todd Berkley, discovered that focusing the bank’s competitive strategy on customer service affected every aspect of the bank. Employees must now perform a multitude of new tasks. When they meet with customers closing their accounts, service reps now have to try to understand the customers reason for leaving, and keep detailed records of frequent complaints.The bank is installing complaint identification initiatives to identify, track and solve complaints in all branches, call centers and web sites. Salespeople must gather more information about customer preferences when they open new accounts. Employees across the bank have had to learn how to use the bank’s new complaint-monitoring software. The bank designed new jobs to place care calls when customers complain. The bank is developing a new customer assurance unit which will swing into action when high value accounts are in danger of leaving.

All of which means Todd and his colleagues had to reanalyze all the banks jobs from teller to guard to vice president; add duties like those above to current lists of job functions; add duties like those above to current lists job functions; and create several new jobs (such as customer assurance manager). Todd and his colleagues found, in other words, that they couldn’t implement the banks new strategy without a keen understanding of job analysis.

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