Writing Job Specifiactions (Gary Dessler)

The job specification takes the job description and answers the question, “What human traits and experience are required to do this job effectively?” It shows the hiring criteria for the job, in terms of what kind of person to recruit and for what qualities you should test that person. It may be one section of the job description, or a separate document. Often the

employer makes it part of the job description.

Specifications for Trained versus Untrained Personnel

Writing job specifications for trained employees is straightforward. Here your job specifications might focus mostly on traits like length of previous service, quality of relevant training, and previous job performance. The problems are more complex when you’re filling jobs with untrained people (with the intention of training them on the job). Here you must specify qualities such as physical traits, personality, interests, or sensory skills that imply some potential for performing or for being trained to do the job.

For example, suppose the job requires detailed manipulation in a circuit board assembly line. Here you might want to ensure that the person scores high on a test of finger dexterity. Employers identify such human requirements either through a subjective, judgmental approach or through statistical analysis (or both). Let’s examine both approaches.

Specifications Based on Judgment

Most job specifications come from the educated guesses of people like supervisors and human resource managers. The basic procedure here is to ask, “What does it take in terms of education, intelligence, training, and the like to do this job well?”

There are several ways to get these “educated guesses.” You could review the job’s duties, and deduce from those what human traits and skills the job requires. You can also choose them from the competencies listed in Web-based job descriptions like those at www .jobdescription.com. (For example, a typical job description there lists competencies like “Generates creative solutions” and “Manages difficult or emotional customer situations.”) O*NET online is another source. Job listings there include lists of required education and other experience and skills.

Writing Job Descriptions (Gary Dessler)

The most important product of job analysis is the job description. A job description is a written statement of what the worker actually does, how he or she does it, and what the job’s working conditions are. You use this information to write a job specification; this lists the knowledge, abilities, and skills required to perform the job satisfactorily.

There is no standard format for writing a job description. However, most descriptions  contain sections that cover the following:

1. Job identification
2. Job summary
3. Responsibilities and duties
4. Authority of incumbent
5. Standards of performance
6. Working conditions
7. Job specification

Job Identification

The job identification section contains several types of information. 

The job title specifies the name of the job, such as telesales representative, or inventory control clerk. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) status section identifies the job as exempt or non exempt. (Under the FLSA, certain positions, primarily administrative and professional, are exempt from the act’s overtime and minimum wage provisions.) Date is the date the job description was approved.

There may also be a space to indicate who approved the description and perhaps a space showing the location of the job in terms of its facility/division and department. This section might also include the immediate supervisor’s title and information regarding salary and/or pay scale. There might also be space for the grade/level of the job, if there is such a category. For example, a firm may classify programmers as programmer II, programmer III, and so on.

Methods For Collecting Job Analysis Information Part 2 (Gary Dessler)

Observation

Direct observation is especially useful when the job consists mainly of observable physical activities—assembly-line worker and accounting clerk are examples. On the other hand, observation is not as useful when the job entails a lot of mental activity (lawyer, design engineer).

Nor is it useful if the employee only occasionally engages in important activities, such as a nurse who handles emergencies. And reactivity—the worker’s changing what he or she normally does because you are watching—also can be a problem.

Managers often use direct observation and interviewing together. One approach is to observe 

the worker on the job during a complete work cycle. (The cycle is the time it takes to complete the job; it could be a minute for an assembly-line worker or an hour, a day, or longer for complex jobs.) Here you take notes of all the job activities. Then, ask the person to clarify points not understood and to explain what other activities he or she performs that you didn’t observe.

Participant Diary/Logs

Another method is to ask workers to keep a diary/log of what they do during the day. For every activity engaged in, the employee records the activity (along with the time) in a log. Some firms give employees pocket dictating machines and pagers. Then at random times during the day, they page the workers, who dictate what they are doing at that time. This can avoid requiring workers to remember what they did hours earlier when they complete their logs at the end of the day.

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.

Conducting a Job Analysis (Gary Dessler)

There are six steps in doing a job analysis, as follows.

Step 1: Decide how you’ll use the information Some data collection techniques—like interviewing the employee—are good for writing job descriptions. Other techniques, like the position analysis questionnaire we describe later, provide numerical ratings for each job; these can be used to compare jobs for compensation purposes.

Step 2: Review relevant background information such as organization charts, process charts, and job descriptions.Organization charts show the organization-wide division of  work, and where the job fits in the overall organization. The chart should show the title of each position and, by means of interconnecting lines, who reports to whom and with whom the job incumbent communicates. A process chart provides a more detailed picture of the workflow, particularly the flow of inputs to and outputs from the job you’re analyzing. (In Figure 2, the quality control clerk reviews components from suppliers, checks components going to the plant managers, and gives information regarding component’s quality to these managers.) Finally, the existing job description, if there is one, usually provides a starting point for building the revised job description.

WORKFLOW ANALYSIS AND JOB REDESIGN Job analysis tasks such as reviewing current job descriptions enable the manager to list what a job’s duties and demands are now. Job analysis does not answer questions such as “Should this job even exist?” To answer such questions, one must conduct a workflow analysis. You may then deem it necessary to redesign the job. Workflow analysis is a detailed study of the flow of work from job to job in a work process. Usually, the analyst focuses on one identifiable work process (such as processing an insurance claim), rather than on how the company gets all its work done. The accompanying HR as a Profit Center feature illustrates workflow analysis.

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.