Analyzing Work and Job Design in Human Resources

Posted on Feb 15, 2025 in Business Administration and Management (BAM)

Topic 2: Analyzing Work and Designing Jobs

2.1 Work Flow in Organizations

LO 2-1: Summarize the elements of work flow analysis.

Work Flow Design

  • The process of analyzing tasks necessary for the production of a product or service.
  • With this information, tasks are assigned to specific jobs and positions.
  • A job is a set of related duties.
  • A position is the set of duties performed by one person.

Elements of Work Flow Analysis:

  1. Outputs: The products of any work unit. May be tangible or intangible.
  2. Work processes: Activities work unit’s members engage in to produce a given output.
  3. Inputs: Raw inputs (materials and information), equipment, and human resources (knowledge, skills, and abilities) needed to carry out the work processes.

LO 2-2: Describe how work flow is related to an organization’s structure.

Work Flow Design and an Organization’s Structure

  • It is important to see how the work fits within the context of the organization’s structure.
  • The structure may be:
    • Highly centralized (authority concentrated in a few people at the top).
    • Decentralized (authority spread among many people).
  • Jobs can be grouped by:
    • Functions (e.g., welding, painting, packaging).
    • Divisions (focus on products, customer groups, or geographical segments).
  • The organization’s structure brings together people who must collaborate to efficiently produce desired outputs.

Work Flow Design and Organizational Structure Considerations

  • Jobs that involve teamwork or broad responsibility tend to require a structure based on divisions.
  • When the goal is to empower employees, companies need to set up structures and jobs that enable broad responsibility. Employees require more experience and cognitive ability.
  • Managing a functional department requires skill in managing conflicts and aligning employees’ efforts with higher-level goals.

2.2. Job Analysis

LO 2-3: Define the elements of a job analysis and discuss their significance for HRM.

Job Analysis

  • The process of getting detailed information about jobs.
  • Provides essential knowledge for staffing, training, performance appraisal, and many other HR activities.

Example: Firefighters use specific equipment to extinguish fires, require physical strength, and must possess the ability to make decisions under pressure.

Job Descriptions

A job description is a list of tasks, duties, and responsibilities (TDRs) that a particular job entails.

Key components:

  1. Job title.
  2. Brief description of the TDRs.
  3. List of essential duties with detailed specifications of tasks involved in carrying out each duty.

Job Descriptions Best Practices

  • Whenever the organization creates a new job, it needs to prepare a job description.
  • Job descriptions should be reviewed periodically (performance appraisals are a good opportunity).
  • Preparation begins with gathering information from people already performing the task, the position’s supervisor, or the managers creating the position.
  • The writer of the job description identifies the essential duties, including mental and physical tasks and any methods and resources required.

Job Specifications

A job specification includes KSAOs:

  1. Knowledge: Factual or procedural information necessary for successfully performing a task.
  2. Skill: An individual’s level of proficiency at performing a particular task.
  3. Ability: A general enduring capability an individual possesses.
  4. Other characteristics: Job-related licensing, certifications, or personality traits.
  • A manager needs information about the characteristics required and about the characteristics of each applicant.
  • Interviews and selection decisions should focus on KSAOs.

LO 2-4: Tell how to obtain information for a job analysis.

Sources of Job Information

  • Incumbents: People who currently hold the position.
  • Supervisors.
  • Observations.
  • Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT): Published by the U.S. Department of Labor.
  • Occupational Information Network (O*NET): An online job description database developed by the Labor Department (more than 1000 broadly defined occupations).

Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ)

  • A standardized job analysis questionnaire containing 194 questions about work behaviors, work conditions, and job characteristics that apply to a wide variety of jobs.
  • Considers the entire work process.
  • Completed by job analysts.

Key sections:

  1. Information input.
  2. Mental processes.
  3. Work output.
  4. Relationships with other persons.
  5. Job context.
  6. Other characteristics.

Fleishman Job Analysis System

  • Job analysis technique that asks subject-matter experts to evaluate a job in terms of the abilities required to perform the job (ranging from written comprehension to deductive reasoning, manual dexterity, stamina, and originality).
  • Especially useful for employee selection, training, and career development.

Analyzing Teamwork

HR managers must identify the best ways to handle jobs that are highly interdependent.

Standard ways to measure the nature of a team:

  • Skill differentiation: Degree of specialized knowledge or functional capacities.
  • Authority differentiation: Allocation of decision-making authority.
  • Temporal (time) stability: Length of time team members must work together.

Importance of Job Analysis

  1. Helps determine essential job requirements and job-related duties as required by regulations.
  2. Building block of all HRM functions:
    • Work redesign (gain productivity and improve quality).
    • Human resource planning (level of skill required).
    • Selection (necessary skills, knowledge, and abilities).
    • Training and career development.
    • Performance appraisal.
    • Job evaluation.

Job analysis also helps supervisors and other managers:

  • Identify types of work in their units.
  • Information about work flow process.
  • Information that supports hiring decisions, performance reviews, and compensation.

Competency Models

  • A competency model identifies and describes all the competencies required for success in a particular occupation or set of jobs.
  • Organizations may create competency models for groups, levels of the organization, or the entire organization.
  • Competency models help HR professionals ensure that all aspects of talent management are aligned with the organization’s strategy.
  • Hiring based on competencies associated with job success promotes diversity and lowers the risk of selecting people who will be unhappy.
  • Information about employees’ competencies can guide training and development.

LO 2-5: Summarize recent trends in job analysis.

Trends in Job Analysis

The pace of change in jobs is accelerating.

  • Robotics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and information technology are becoming more widely available.

Job analyses must:

  • Define jobs and detect changes over time.
  • Balance the need for flexibility with the need for legal requirements.
  • Put greater emphasis on job design.
  • Successful downsizing efforts almost always entail changes in the nature of jobs, not just their number.
  • Jobs that have survived downsizing tend to have a broader scope of responsibilities coupled with less supervision.
  • Because work can change rapidly, job descriptions and specifications need to balance flexibility with legal documentation.

2.3. Job Design

LO 2-6: Describe methods for designing a job so that it can be done efficiently.

  • Job analysis is important for understanding existing jobs.
  • Organizations must also plan for new jobs and periodically consider revising existing jobs.
  • Job design is the process of defining how work will be performed and what tasks will be required.
  • Job redesign involves changing an existing job design.
  • Effective design requires an understanding of the job through job analysis and work flow analysis.

Approaches to Job Design:

LO 2-7: Identify approaches to designing a job to make it motivating.

1. Designing Efficient Jobs

Industrial engineering is used to reduce complexity in work.

  • Allows almost anyone to be trained quickly to easily perform the job.
  • Used for highly specialized and repetitive jobs.

However, a focus on efficiency alone can create jobs that are so simple and repetitive that workers get bored. Most organizations combine industrial engineering with other approaches.

2. Designing Jobs That Motivate

It’s important to ensure workers have a positive attitude.

  • Workers with positive attitudes are motivated.

The Job Characteristics Model includes characteristics that boost motivation:

  • Skill variety.
  • Task identity.
  • Task significance.
  • Autonomy.
  • Feedback.

Techniques for Motivating Jobs

  • Job Enlargement: Broadening tasks performed.
  • Job Extension: Combining several simple jobs to form a job with a wider range of tasks.
  • Job Rotation: Moving employees among several different jobs.
  • Job Enrichment: Empowering workers by adding more decision-making authority. Based on Herzberg’s theory of motivation (intrinsic aspects of work are more motivating).
  • Self-Managing Work Teams: Have authority for an entire work process or segment. Team members are motivated by autonomy, skill variety, and task identity.
  • Flexible work schedules:
    • Flextime allows full-time employees to choose starting and ending times.
    • Job sharing allows two part-time employees to carry out tasks associated with a single full-time job.
    • Compressed workweeks allow employees to work 40 hours in less than 5 days.
    • Telework allows employees to do work away from a centrally located office.

LO 2-8: Explain how organizations apply ergonomics to design safe jobs.

3. Designing Ergonomic Jobs

  • Ergonomics: Study of the interface between individuals’ physiology and characteristics of the work environment.
  • Main goal: Minimize physical strain on the worker by structuring the physical work environment around individuals’ physiology.
  • Leads to increased efficiency in the workplace.

Ergonomic design may involve modifying equipment, redesigning jobs, or targeting work practices associated with injuries.

OSHA’s Four-Pronged Strategy for Ergonomic Job Design

  1. Issue guidelines for specific industries.
  2. Enforce violations of its requirement that employers protect workers from hazards, including ergonomic hazards.
  3. Work with industry groups to advise employers.
  4. National Advisory Committee on Ergonomics (needs for future research).

LO 2-9: Discuss how organizations can plan for the mental demands of a job.

4. Designing Jobs That Meet Mental Capabilities and Limitations

Technology can cause information overload.

Goal: Simplify mental demands to limit mistakes.

  • Limit the amount of information and memorization required.
  • Provide adequate lighting.
  • Give simple instructions and easy-to-read gauges and displays.
  • Use software for tracking progress.