Chapter04 human resources management 12t

Editor's Notes

• #3: The human resource management process begins with deciding what the job entails. The main purpose of this chapter is to show you how to analyze a job and write job descriptions. 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 explain how to draft job descriptions and job specifications. Then, in Chapter 5 (Personnel Planning and Recruiting), we’ll turn to the methods managers use to actually find the employees they need.
• #4: Organizations consist of jobs 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 produces information for writing job descriptions (a list of what the job entails) and job specifications (what kind of people to hire for the job). We’ll see in a moment that every manager should understand the mechanics of analyzing jobs. 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 (see next slide):
• #5: Actual work activities of the job—how, why, and when the worker performs each activity. Human behaviors the job requires: communicating, deciding, and writing, lifting weights or walking long distances. Machines, tools, equipment, and work aids used on the job: tools used, materials processed, knowledge dealt with or applied, and services rendered. Standards of expected employee job performance: quantity and\or quality output levels that can be used to appraise employees. The organizational and social context in which the job exists: physical working conditions, work schedules, and incentives The job’s human requirements: job-related knowledge or skills (education, training, work experience) and required personal attributes (aptitudes, physical characteristics, personality, interests).
• #6: Job analysis provides the information required for other organizational activities that depend on and also support the job. Job analysis provides required duties and desired human characteristics information needed to effectively Recruit and Select individuals for jobs. Compensation factors such as skill and education level, safety hazards, degree of responsibility, and so on are assessed by job analysis. Knowledge of specific duties and requisite skills of a job is required for proper Training of employees. Correctly conducting a Performance Appraisal requires knowledge of the job’s duties and standard. Job analysis is a method for Discovering Unassigned Duties that should become a formal part of a job. Job analysis is required to validate essential job functions and other HRM for EEO Compliance under the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection.
• #7: As Figure 4-1 summarizes, job analysis is important because managers use it to support just about all their human resource management activities.
• #9: A process chart provides a detailed picture of a job’s work flow. In its simplest form, a process chart shows the flow of inputs to and outputs from the job you’re analyzing. In this figure, a quality control clerk is expected to review components from suppliers, check components going to the plant managers, and give information regarding components’ quality to these managers. An existing job description, if there is one, usually provides a starting point for building the revised job description.
• #10: There are various ways to collect information on a job’s duties, responsibilities, and activities. In practice, you could use any one of them, or combine several. The basic rule is to use those that best fit your purpose. Interviews, questionnaires, observations, and diaries/logs are the most popular methods for gathering realistic information about what job incumbents actually do. Managers use these methods for developing job descriptions and job specifications.
• #12: Job analysis interviews range from completely unstructured interviews 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. Distortion of information is interviewing’s main problem—whether due to outright falsification, honest misunderstanding, or statements inflating the importance of their jobs by interviewees.
• #13: Questionnaires can be structured or opened-ended. A questionnaire is a quick, efficient, and cost-effective way to obtain information from a large number of employees. However, developing the questionnaire and testing it to make sure the workers understand the questions can be time consuming. And as with interviews, employees may distort their answers, consciously or unconsciously.
• #18: Direct observation is especially useful when jobs consist mainly of observable physical activities. Observation is usually not appropriate when the job entails a lot of mental activity or if the employee only occasionally engages in important activities. Reactivity—the worker’s changing what he or she normally does because you are watching—can also be a problem.
• #19: Workers are asked to keep a record of what they do during the day by writing a diary/log. Employees record each of their activities (along with the time) in a log. This can produce a very complete picture of the job, especially when supplemented with subsequent interviews 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. Diaries/logs have gone high-tech. 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 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.
• #20: 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.
• #21: The position analysis questionnaire (PAQ) is probably the most popular quantitative job analysis tool, and consists of a detailed questionnaire containing 194 items. The 194 items (such as “written materials”) each represent a basic element that may or may not play a role in the job.
• #22: The Department of Labor method uses a set of standard basic activities called worker functions to describe what a worker must do with respect to data, people, and things. Another technique, functional job analysis, is similar to the DOL method. However, it rates the job not just on data, people, and things, but also on the extent to which performing the task also requires four other things—specific instructions, reasoning and judgment, mathematical ability, and verbal and language facilities.
• #24: Methods such as questionnaires and interviews present some drawbacks. For example, face-to-face interviews and observations can be time consuming. And collecting the information from geographically dispersed employees can be challenging.
• #26: 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
• #27: 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.
• #30: The U.S. Labor Department’s printed Dictionary of Occupational Titles is now evolved in an Internet-based resource for managers both within and outside the government to turn to for standard job descriptions. The Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) classifies all workers into one of 23 major groups of jobs.
• #31: The Standard Occupational Classification User Guide provides detailed descriptions of thousands of jobs and their human requirements.
• #32: The Department of Labor’s Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) guide classifies all workers into one of 23 major groups of jobs.
• #33: We’ll focus here on the steps in writing a job description using job information gathered from the Bureau of Labor’s O*NET site.
• #35: The U.S. Department of Labor’s occupational information network, called O*NET, allows users to see the most important characteristics of various occupations, as well as the experience, education, and knowledge required to do each job well.
• #36: O*NET descriptions include the specific tasks associated with many occupations. O*NET also lists skills, including basic skills such as reading and writing, process skills such as critical thinking, and transferable skills such as persuasion and negotiation.
• #37: O*NET job listings include information on worker requirements such as the required knowledge, occupation requirements, and experience requirements (including education and job training). You can also use O*NET to check the job’s labor market characteristics, such as employment projections and earnings data.
• #38: The job specification focuses on the person in answering the question, “What human traits and experience are required to do this job effectively?” It shows what kind of person to recruit and for what qualities you should test that person. The job specification may be a section of the job description, or a separate document. Job specifications for trained employees focus on traits like length of previous service, quality of relevant training, and previous job performance. Job specifications can be based on the best judgments of the common-sense experiences of supervisors and human resource managers. The basic procedure here is to ask, “What does it take in terms of education, intelligence, training, and the like to do this job well?” Basing job specifications on statistical analysis is more defensible than the judgmental approach because equal rights legislation forbids using traits that can’t be proved to distinguish between high and low job performers.
• #39: The aim of the statistical approach is to determine the statistical relationship between (1) some predictor (human trait, such as height, intelligence, or finger dexterity), and (2) some indicator or criterion of job effectiveness, such as performance as rated by the supervisor.
• #40: Job enlargement attempts to make work more motivating by assigning workers additional same-level activities. Job rotation involves systematically moving workers from one job to another. Job enrichment involves redesigning jobs in a way that increases the opportunities for the worker to experience feelings of responsibility, achievement, growth, and recognition.
• #41: Changes in how work is organized is evidenced by flattening of the organization, the rise of self-managed teams, and the constant focus on improving productivity through reengineering.
• #42: Competency-based job analysis means describing the job in terms of measurable, observable, behavioral competencies (knowledge, skills, and/or behaviors) that an employee doing that job must exhibit to do the job well.
• #43: Defining the job’s competencies and writing them up involves a process that is similar to traditional job analysis. In other words, you might interview job incumbents and their supervisors, ask open-ended questions regarding job responsibilities and activities, and perhaps identify critical incidents that pinpoint success on the job. But there the similarity ends. Instead of compiling lists of job duties, you will ask, “In order to perform this job competently, the employee should be able to . . . ?” You can use your knowledge of the job to answer this, or use a list like that mentioned at O*NET. There are also off-the-shelf competencies databanks.
• #44: The skills matrix lists the basic skills needed for that job (such as technical expertise) and 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 and empowered responsibilities.