Monday, November 30, 2015

The Basics Of Job Analysis (Gary Dessler)

Talent management begins with understanding what jobs need to be filled, and the human traits and competencies employees need to do those jobs effectively. Job analysis is the procedure through which you determine the duties of the jobs you are analyzing and the characteristics of the  people to hire for them. 

Job analysis produces information for writing job descriptions (a list of what duties the job entails) and job (or “person”) specifications (what kind of people to hire for the job). 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 and skills 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:

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.

Human behaviors. Information about human behaviors the job requires, like sensing, communicating, lifting weights, or walking long distances.

Machines, tools, equipment, and work aids. Information regarding tools used, materials processed, knowledge dealt with or applied (such as finance or law), and services rendered (such as counseling or repairing).

Performance standards. Information about the job’s performance standards (in terms of quantity or quality levels for each job duty, for instance).

Job context. Information about things like working conditions, work schedule, incentives, and, for instance, the number of people with whom the employee would normally interact.

Human requirements. Information such as knowledge or skills (education, training, work experience) and required personal attributes (aptitudes, personality, interests).

As Figure 1 summarizes, job analysis is important because managers use it to support just about all their human resource management activities. For example, they use it to decide what sorts of people to recruit for a job, and for what traits and competencies to test and train them.

Source : Gary Dessler. Fundamental of Human Resource Management. Third Edition. Pearson. 2014

Related Articles

1 comment:

Seema said...

Nice post on job analysis