Enhancing Efficiency In Organizations
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By
OLUWAYEMISI BOLAJI IBRAHIM
CENTRAL to effective staffing is job analysis, as the steps involve
in staffing process is sequential vital to note is the fact that any
error made during job analysis runs through the whole process
thereby creating greater problems. Job analysis is therefore the
total process by which we derive first a job description leading to
the second, a job or person specification. This implies that it
involves careful and systematic delineation of task and activities
to be performed by the incumbent. It also discovers what job
behaviors are necessary to carry out this task and what employee
characteristics are likely to be associated with being able to
perform successfully in the task.
Job analysis produces the following information about a job.
Overall Purposes - This entails why job exists and what the job
holder is expected to contribute.
Content: This is concerned with the nature and scope of the job in
terms of the tasks and operations to be performed and carried out.
Key Result Area: The results for which the job holder is
accountable.
Performance Criteria: This is concerned with the indicator that
enables an assessment to be carried out to ascertain the degree to
which the job is being satisfactorily carried out.
Responsibilities: This is associated with the level of task the job
holder is expected to execute with reference to the scope and job
input i.e. the intricacies of the job.
Organizational Factors: This has to do with the reporting
relationships of the job holder that is the line of authority;
knowing whom he or she is expected to report to whether directly, or
functionally.
Motivating Factors: These are the particular features of the job
that are likely to motivate or demodulate job holders in the long
run. They could be otherwise known as “satisfiers” and
“dissatisfies”.
Development Factors: This has to do with career prospects and the
opportunity to acquire new skills and expertise.
Environmental Factors: These includes walking conditions, mental and
emotional demands, health and safety considerations, unsocial hours,
mobility and ergonomic factors relating to the design and use of
equipment or work stations.
Approach To Job Analysis
The essence of job analysis is the application of systematic methods
of the collection of information about jobs. Job analysis is about
job description and job specification.
The basic step required to collect information about jobs are as
follows:
Obtain document such as existing organization charts, procedure or
training manuals, which give information about the job;
Ask managers fundamental information concerning the job, the overall
purpose, the responsibilities involve and the relationships with
others;
Ask job holders similar questions about their jobs. It is sometimes
helpful to get them to keep a diary or a detailed record of work
activities for certain period;
For jobs especially those involving office/administrative skills,
observe job holders at work.
There is a number of job analysis techniques used for data
collection, these are described below:
Interview:
To obtain the full flavor of a job, it is necessary to interview job
holders and check the findings with their managers or team leaders.
The aim of the interview should be to obtain all relevant facts
about the job, which comprises:
Job title of job holders;
Job title of the job holder’s manager or team leader;
Job title and number of people reporting to the job holder;
A brief description of the overall role or purpose of the job;
A list of the main tasks or duties that the job holders have to
carry out appropriately.
Questions can be framed to elicit information such as:
The amount of supervision received and the degree of discretion
allowed in making decisions;
The typical problems to be solved and the amount of guidance
available when solving the problems;
The relative difficulty of the task to be performed;
The qualifications and skills required to carry out the work.
Questionnaires
Questionnaires covering the points included in the check list given
above can be completed by job holders and approved by the job
holder’s manager or team leader. They are quite helpful when a large
number of jobs are to be covered. This can also save interviewing
time to a large extent, by recording purely factual information and
by enabling the need to explore greater depth. The noticeable
advantage to the questionnaires is that it produces information
quickly and cheaply for a large number of jobs.
Checklist and Inventories
A checklist for completion by job holders is similar to a
questionnaire, but response requires fewer subjective judgments and
tends to be of the YES or NO variety. Like questionnaires,
checklists need to be thoroughly prepared and a field trial is
essential to ensure that the instructions for completion are
adequate and that the responses make sense. Checklist can be used
only where a large number of job holders exist. Rating scale or
inventories, also has to do with the use of rating scale, instead of
simply asking the to mark YES or NO.
Observation
Observation means studying job holders at work, noting what they do,
how they do it and how much time it takes. It is appropriate for
situations where a relatively small number of key jobs need to be
analyzed; it is time consuming and difficult to apply in jobs that
involve a high proportion of unobservable mental activities, or in
highly skilled jobs.
Self-Description
Job holders can be asked to analyze their own jobs and prepare job
descriptions. This save the considerable time a job analyst can
spend in interviewing or observing a job holder. But people do not
always find this easy, perhaps because what they do is so much part
of them that they find it difficult to be detached and dissect the
information into its various elements.
Diaries and Logs
This approach requires job holders to analyze their own jobs by
keeping diaries or logs of activities. This can be used by job
analyst as the basic material for job description.
It should be noted that job holders need guidance on how prepare
their dairies or logs.
Hierarchical tasks analysis
This technique as developed by Annet and Duncan (1971), breaks down
jobs or areas of work into hierarchical set of tasks, subtasks and
plans. Tasks are defined in terms of objectives or end products and
the need to achieve the objectives is also analysed.
Role analysis
Role analysis collects information relating the work people do but,
essentially, it looks at the part people play in carrying out their
jobs rather than the task they carry out. In other words, it is
concerned with the broader aspects of behaviours expected of role
holders in achieving the overall purpose of the work content.
Competence analysis
Competence analysis is concerned with establishing what is required
of someone carrying out a role, in terms of first, behavioural
competencies how people are expected to behave in other to perform
their work well. Second are technical or functional competencies
i.e. what people are expected to know and be able to do to perform
their work well. Behavioural analysis defines the behavioural
dimensions that effect job performance. Functional analysis or some
other form of job analysis is used to determine the technical or
functional competencies required.
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