Job design and job analysis

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CHAPTER 5 Job design and job analysis
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Chapter outcomes

• Discuss issues impacting on the design of jobs.
• Understand how the design of a job affects
  employee motivation and performance.
• Show various methods of designing motivating
  jobs.
• Understand how motivating jobs can be created by
  building work teams.
• Become aware of radically new organisational
  programmes such as TQM.

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Chapter outcomes (continued)

• Understand the basic elements of a job analysis
  programme.
• Describe the end products of job analysis.
• Identify the major methods of job analysis.
• Discuss the future use and updating of job
  analysis information.
• Cite techniques useful in writing job
  descriptions.
• Recognise the major elements of job descriptions
  and job specifications.

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Dividing work into jobs

• Work effort directed towards producing and
  accomplishing results
• Job grouping of tasks, duties
  responsibilities that constitute the total work
  assignment
• As organisations change, these tasks, duties
  responsibilities may also change over time
• When all jobs are added together they should
  the amount of work that is to be completed

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Dividing work into jobs (continued)

• Workflow analysis studies the way work moves
  through the organisation
• Starts with examination of desired actual
  outputs (goods services) into quantity
  quality
• Activities (tasks jobs) that lead to the
  outputs are evaluated to see if they can achieve
  the desired outputs
• Inputs (people, material, information, data,
  equipment etc) must be assessed to determine if
  these inputs make the outputs activities more
  efficient

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Dividing work into jobs (continued)

• Re-engineering generates the needed changes in
  the business processes
• Purpose of business process re-engineering ?
  improve such activities as product development,
  customer service service delivery
• Require the use of work teams, training employees
  to do more than one job and reorganising
  operations, workflow and offices to simplify and
  speed up the work

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Designing jobs

• Major HR concerns
• Employee productivity
• Job satisfaction
• Job design (JD) determines how work is
  performed greatly affects how an employee feels
  about a job, how much authority an employee has
  over the work, how much decision-making the
  employee performs on the job and how many tasks
  the employee should complete
• JD determines working relationship with employees
  relationship among employees

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Designing jobs (continued)

• JD determines
• The nature of social relationships that exist on
  a job
• Relationships between the employee and the work

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A framework for job design
Job content Task variety, autonomy, complexity,
difficulty, identity Job functions Responsibility,
authority, information flow, work methods,
co-ordination requirements Relationships Dealing
with others, friendship opportunities, teamwork
requirements
Feedback
Task Accomplishment Productivity Effectiveness
Efficiency Worker reaction Satisfaction
Absenteeism Turnover
Feedback
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Major approaches to job design

• Specialisation-intensive jobs
• Job simplification (job specialisation)
• Motivation intensive jobs
• Job rotation
• Job enlargement
• Job enrichment
• Work teams
• Sociotechnical approach
• Self-managed work teams

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New organisational approaches

• Total quality management (TQM)
• Focuses on the quality of all the processes that
  lead to the final product or service
• To be successful it requires support of top
  management the belief that quality is a key
  part of every employees job
• Customer focus in the process of designing and
  improving quality
• Proper implementation requires a clear vision
  support of top management and a focus on results
  NOT the process

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The office environment

• Work environment (space, workstations, light etc)
  affects employee morale, productivity and
  quality, absenteeism turnover
• Creativity can happen anywhere
• Retain the services of an architect or design
  consultant

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Robotics

• The use of robots to perform routine tasks
• Industrial robots
• Anthropomorphic (approximate the appearance and
  functions of humans)
• Nonanthropomorphic (machine-like and have limited
  functions)
• First-generation robots performed simple jobs
  and had limited capabilities
• Second-generation robots built with senses,
  vision or touch, making them more adaptable
• New robots perform most of the drilling,
  shaping bending tasks previously performed by
  robots

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Ergonomics

• Taking into account the human factor in designing
  the employees workstation
• Relationship between the employees and their
  workstations machines used, lighting, noise,
  chairs etc, these can affect productivity
• IBM Employee handbook identifies the following
• Posture
• Back
• Hand
• Environment

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Productivity measures

• Quantity or volume produced
• Accurate measure of productivity is vital to
  organisational improvement effort
• Gain competitive advantage
• Strategies to improve productivity quality
• Depends on employee seeing a link between what
  they produce what the company is attempting to
  achieve
• What will work for one company may not for another

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Productivity measures (continued)

• Organisations must be careful not to measure the
  wrong things or overlook those that are critical
  to success
• Merely implementing quality techniques, including
  employee empowerment and benchmarking will not
  produce benefits
• Productivity is the relationship between what is
  put into a piece of work (input) and what is
  yielded (output)

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Three major components of productivity
Effectiveness Doing the right things
The production process
Labour, materials and capital
Goods and services
Resource market
Market needs
Conversion
Inputs
Outputs
Utilisation efficiency Doing things right
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Three major components of productivity

• Utilisation the extent to which we use
  resources
• Efficiency rate of conversion while resources
  are being used
• Effectiveness measured in terms of doing the
  right things

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Other JD issues

• Work schedules
• Flexitime
• Compressed workweeks
• Alternative physical work locations
• Telecommuting

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The nature of job analysis (JA)

• Job analysis systematically way to gather and
  analyse information about the content, context
  and the human requirements of jobs
• Investigates
• Levels of decision-making
• Skills employees need to do a job adequately
• Autonomy of the job
• Mental effort required to perform the job
• Machines operated, reports completed special
  financial/other responsibilities
• Working conditions (levels of temperature, light
  etc)

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The importance of JA

• New realities
• Organisational restructuring due to downsizing
• The need to motivate and reward people
• The impact of technology on jobs throughout the
  organisation
• Labour legislation pertaining to employment
  equity and general discriminatory practices
• The implementation of teams

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Components of a job

• To understand a specific job and to be able to
  make comparisons among or between jobs, it is
  important that anyone analysing a job should know
  that it can be broken down into several
  components and arranged into a hierarchy of work
  activities

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Hierarchy of work activities
Job family
Occupation
Job
Position
Duty
Task
Element
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Programme implementation

• Committee review
• Information collection
• General methods
• Site observations
• Work sampling
• Interviews
• Diaries
• Questionnaires
• Specific methods
• PAQ
• FJA
• CMQ
• WPS

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Programme implementation

• Information review
• Product completion
• Job description (JD)
• Uses of a JD
• Recruitment
• Interviewing
• Orientation
• Training
• Job evaluation
• Wage/salary surveys
• Performance appraisal
• Outplacement

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Programme implementation

• Product completion (continued)
• Job description (JD) (continued)
• Elements of a JD
• Job identification
• Job summary
• Job duties responsibilities
• Job specification (JS)
• Skills
• Knowledge
• Abilities
• Future use updating

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JA problems

• Employee fear
• Need to update information regularly
• Job is held by only one or two employees

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Summary

• Understanding how people are motivated, that is,
  their needs and goals, is critical to modern job
  design.
• The task employees perform on the job and the
  variety, difficulty level and autonomy of the job
  greatly affect job satisfaction and productivity.
• Employees, individually or in work teams, are
  being asked to take on greater responsibility for
  the design and control of their jobs. Simple,
  repetitious tasks are eliminated whenever
  possible, generally resulting in jobs that are
  more motivating and challenging. At the same
  time, some degree of job specialisation is
  necessary so that new employees can learn their
  jobs quickly and make fewer errors.
• Programmes such as job enrichment, self-managed
  work groups, TQM and re-engineering have resulted
  in redesigned jobs that were previously highly
  specialised and boring. There is also a trend
  toward multiskilling, whereby team members learn
  multiple tasks. Organisations are adopting work
  teams and giving them more freedom and
  responsibilities.

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Summary

• Total Quality Management (TQM) is one of the
  fastest-growing productivity improvement
  programmes in the world. It is based on the
  principle of commitment to continuous improvement
  and meeting customers' needs. It is largely a
  bottom-up change effort.
• Re-engineering is more radical. It involves more
  than tweaking old procedures it is the redesign
  of business processes to achieve major gains in
  cost, service or time. The process begins with
  the simple but powerful question If we could
  start from scratch, how would we do this? It is
  different from TQM because it comes from the top
  down.
• Technology plays an important role in modern job
  design. Robotics, ergonomics and the office
  environment can improve employee creativity,
  productivity and quality.

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Summary

• In addition to job design, organisations may
  choose to implement programmes that increase
  workplace flexibility. These programmes tend to
  adopt a scheduling mix between employees' needs
  and the organisation's staffing requirements in
  ways that are consistent with the company's
  culture. Compressed work weeks, flexitime
  programmes and telecommuting are the most common
  approaches. Employees who desire greater control
  over work hours, who would like easier commuting
  or want a different lifestyle will be attracted
  to organisations that offer these types of
  programmes.
• A sound JA programme produces many benefits for
  an organisation. Information critical to
  employment and compensation is collected on a
  systematic basis. JDs, JSs and JEs can easily be
  produced from the JA data. Thus, critical HR
  practices such as hiring, wage determination and
  administrative record-keeping are assisted by job
  analysis.
• Information collection should always begin by
  conducting a background search. Internal sources
  can include previous job analyses, interviews
  with job incumbents and job supervisors, site
  observations by the analyst, questionnaires and
  diaries.

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Summary

• There is a variety of job analysis methods, with
  each having certain advantages, depending on the
  purpose, cost and time. The most popular method
  is the PAQ. A more complex method that demands
  computer analysis and that can handle thousands
  of jobs and people is the FJA.
• Job analysis is necessary to comply with the
  primary employment provisions. The process helps
  to determine essential functions and whether an
  individual can carry out the essential functions
  with or without reasonable accommodation.
• Job descriptions generally should contain a
  complete identification of the job and its
  location within the organisation. The section on
  duties and responsibilities should group all
  tasks into major functional categories, and each
  entry should begin with verbs. Job specifications
  should include all SKAs needed to perform the
  job, as well as other minimum qualifications.