Methods For Collecting Job Analysis Information Part 1 (Gary Dessler)

We’ll see that there are various ways (interviews or questionnaires, for instance) to collect information on a job’s duties, responsibilities, and activities. The basic rule is to use those that best fit your purpose. Thus, an interview might be best for creating a list of job duties. The more quantitative position analysis questionnaire may be best for quantifying each job’s relative worth for pay purposes.

The Interview

Job analysis interviews range from unstructured interviews (“Tell me about your job”) to highly structured interviews containing hundreds of specific job 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. They use group interviews when a large number of employees are performing similar or identical work, since this can be a quick and inexpensive way to gather information. As a rule, the workers’ immediate supervisor attends the group session; if not, you can interview the supervisor separately.

Whichever type of interview you use be sure the interviewee fully understands the reason

for the interview. There’s a tendency for workers to view such interviews, rightly or  wrongly, as “efficiency evaluations.” If so, interviewees may hesitate to describe their jobs accurately.

TYPICAL QUESTIONS 

Some typical interview questions include the following:

• What is the job being performed?
• What are the major duties of your position? What exactly do you do?
• What physical locations do you work in?
• What are the education, experience, skill, and [where applicable] certification and licensing
• requirements?
• In what activities do you participate?
• What are the job’s responsibilities and duties?
• What are the basic accountabilities or performance standards that typify your work?
• What are your responsibilities? What are the environmental and working conditions
• involved?
• What are the job’s physical demands? The emotional and mental demands?
• What are the health and safety conditions?
• Are you exposed to any hazards or unusual working conditions?

STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS 

Many managers use a structured format to guide the interview, such as job analysis information sheet. It includes questions regarding matters like the overall purpose of the job; supervisory responsibilities; job duties; and education, experience, and skills required.

Structured lists are not just for interviews. Job analysts who collect information by personally observing the work or by using questionnaires—two methods explained later—can also use structured lists.

INTERVIEWING GUIDELINES

To get the best information possible, keep several things in mind when conducting job analysis interviews.

● Quickly establish rapport with the interviewee. Know the person’s name, speak understandably, briefly review the interview’s purpose, and explain how the person was chosen for the interview.

● Use a structured guide that lists questions and provides space for answers. This ensures you’ll identify crucial questions ahead of time and that all interviewers (if more than one) cover all the required questions. (But also ask, “Was there anything we didn’t cover with our questions?”)

● You do not want to overlook crucial but infrequently performed activities—like a nurse’s occasional emergency room duties. Therefore do not just focus on duties the worker performs repeatedly, several times a day. Instead, ask the worker about all his or her duties and have the person rank the duties in order of importance and frequency of occurrence.

● After completing the interview, review the information with the worker’s immediate supervisor and with the interviewee.

Questionnaires

Having employees fill out questionnaires to describe their job-related duties and responsibilities is another popular way to obtain job analysis information. Some questionnaires are very structured checklists. Here each employee gets an inventory of perhaps hundreds of specific duties or tasks (such as “change and splice wire”). He or she is asked to indicate whether he or she performs each task and, if so, how much time is normally spent on each. At the other extreme, the questionnaire may simply ask, “describe the major duties of your job.”

In practice, the best questionnaires often do both. A typical job analysis questionnaire might include several open-ended questions (such as “What is the job’s  overall purpose?”) as well as structured questions (concerning, for instance, education required).

All questionnaires have pros and cons. A questionnaire is a quick and efficient way to obtain information from a large number of employees; it’s less costly than interviewing hundreds of workers, for instance. However, developing the questionnaire and testing it (perhaps by making sure the workers understand the questions) can be time-consuming. And as with interviews, employees may distort their answers.

Continued to Part 2.

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

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