Uses of Job Analysis Information
As summarized in Figure 4-1, job analysis information is the basis for several interrelated HR management activities.
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 (such as salary and bonus) usually depends on the job’s required skill and education level, safety hazards, degree of responsibility, and so on – all factors you can assess through job analysis. Furthermore, many employers group jobs into classes (say, secretary III and IV). 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 employee’s 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 rzw material purchasing. Missing, however, is any reference to managing raw material inventories.
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 validating all major personnel activities.
Why Managers Are Dejobbing Their Companies
Dejobbing – broadening the responsibilities of the company’s jobs, and encouraging employees not to limit themselves to what’s on their job descriptions – 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 sift 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 delineated set of responsibilities. Here is a sampling of organizational factors that have contributed to this weakening, and to encouraging workers not to limit themselves to narrowly defined jobs.
Flatter Organizations Instead of traditional, pyramid-shaped organizations with seven or more management layers, flat organizations with just three or four levels are more prevalent. Most large firms have already cur their management 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 jobs of subordinates end up bigger in terms of both breadth and depth of responsibilities.
Word 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 the plant’s continuous quality improvement program. 27 In an organization like this, employees’ jobs change daily; there is thus an intentional effort to avoid having employees view their jobs as a specific, narrow set of responsibilities.
The Boundaryless Organization In a boundaryless organization the widespread use of teams and cross-functional task forces reduces and makes more permeable the boundaries that typically separate departments (like sales and production) and hierarchical levels.28 Boundaryless organizations foster company responsiveness by encouraging employees to rid themselves of the “it’s-not-my-job” attitudes that typically create walls between one employee’s area and another’s. Instead the focus is on defining 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 clearall best interests of the organization, thereby further reducing the idea of a job as a clearly defined set of duties.
Reengineering is “the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, and speed.”
As summarized in Figure 4-1, job analysis information is the basis for several interrelated HR management activities.
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 (such as salary and bonus) usually depends on the job’s required skill and education level, safety hazards, degree of responsibility, and so on – all factors you can assess through job analysis. Furthermore, many employers group jobs into classes (say, secretary III and IV). 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 employee’s 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 rzw material purchasing. Missing, however, is any reference to managing raw material inventories.
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 validating all major personnel activities.
Why Managers Are Dejobbing Their Companies
Dejobbing – broadening the responsibilities of the company’s jobs, and encouraging employees not to limit themselves to what’s on their job descriptions – 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 sift 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 delineated set of responsibilities. Here is a sampling of organizational factors that have contributed to this weakening, and to encouraging workers not to limit themselves to narrowly defined jobs.
Flatter Organizations Instead of traditional, pyramid-shaped organizations with seven or more management layers, flat organizations with just three or four levels are more prevalent. Most large firms have already cur their management 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 jobs of subordinates end up bigger in terms of both breadth and depth of responsibilities.
Word 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 the plant’s continuous quality improvement program. 27 In an organization like this, employees’ jobs change daily; there is thus an intentional effort to avoid having employees view their jobs as a specific, narrow set of responsibilities.
The Boundaryless Organization In a boundaryless organization the widespread use of teams and cross-functional task forces reduces and makes more permeable the boundaries that typically separate departments (like sales and production) and hierarchical levels.28 Boundaryless organizations foster company responsiveness by encouraging employees to rid themselves of the “it’s-not-my-job” attitudes that typically create walls between one employee’s area and another’s. Instead the focus is on defining 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 clearall best interests of the organization, thereby further reducing the idea of a job as a clearly defined set of duties.
Reengineering is “the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, and speed.”
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