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CHAPTER FOUR
JOB ANALYSIS
Overview
This chapter describes a key component of the pay model—job analysis. Job analysis is a
systematic method that focuses on describing the differences and similarities among jobs within
an organization. An equitable internal pay structure has two hallmarks: to encourage employee
behaviors to help achieve an organization’s objectives and to foster a sense of fairness among
employees. One of the first strategic pay decisions is how much to align a pay structure
internally compared to aligning it with external market forces. This is not an either/or issue—not
achieving internal alignment versus alignment with external market forces. Rather, the strategic
decision focuses on sustaining the optimal balance of internally aligned and externally
responsive pay structure that helps the organization achieve its mission. Both are required. Pay
system design involves determining how much to emphasize a pay structure that is internally
aligned with the work performed, the organization’s structure, and its strategies.
The next decision focuses on whether job and/or individual employee characteristics will
be the basic unit of analysis supporting the pay structure. This is followed by deciding what job
information will be collected, what method(s) will be used to collect the information, and who
should be involved in the data collection process. A discussion of the approach to summarize job
data via a job description and job specifications is provided. The issues of the susceptibility of
various jobs to offshoring and comparability across nations in relation to job analysis are
discussed.
The chapter concludes by discussing the controversy surrounding the relevance of the
traditional approach to job analysis in the current environment. Several criteria—reliability,
validity, acceptability, and usefulness—are provided to assess the viability of job analysis.
Learning Objectives
Define job analysis and discuss the common forms and importance of job analysis.
Explain the job analysis procedure, including what information to collection, how to
collect that information and summarize the information into a job description.
Discuss the theory, reality, and possible future of job analysis, including issues arising
due to increased globalization.
Identify several ways of judging a job analysis, including reliability, validity,
acceptability, currency, and usefulness.
Lecture Outline: Overview of Major Topics
I Structures Based on Jobs, People, or Both
II Job-based Approach: Most Common
III Job Analysis Procedures
IV What Information Should Be Collected?
V How Can the Information Be Collected?
VI Job Descriptions Summarize the Data
VII Job Analysis: Bedrock or Bureaucracy?
VIII Job Analysis and Globalization
IX Judging Job Analysis
X Your Turn: The Consumer-Service Agent
Lecture Outline: Summary of Key Chapter Points
If pay is to be based on work performed, some way is needed to discover and describe the
differences and similarities among jobs—observation alone is not enough. Job analysis is that
systematic method. Two products result from a job analysis:
A job description is the list of tasks, duties, and responsibilities that make up a job. These are
observable actions.
A job specification is the list of knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics that are
necessary for an individual to have to perform the job.
I. Structures Based on Jobs, People, or Both
Exhibit 4.1 outlines the process for constructing a work-related internal structure.
No matter the approach, the process begins by looking at people at work.
Job-based structures look at what people are doing and the expected outcomes;
skill- and competency-based structures look at the person.
The underlying purpose of each phase of the process remains the same for both
job- and person-based structures:
1. Collect and summarize work content information that identifies similarities and
differences
2. Determine what to value
3. Assess the relative value
4. Translate the relative value into an internal structure
II. Job Based Approach: Most Common
Exhibit 4.3 shows how job analysis and the resulting job description fit into the process
of creating an internal structure.
Job analysis provides the underlying information. It identifies the content of the job. This
content serves as input for describing and valuing work.
Definition: Job analysis is the systematic process of collecting information that identifies
similarities and differences in the work.
Exhibit 4.3 also lists the major decisions in designing a job analysis:
1. Why are we performing job analysis?
2. What information do we need?
3. How should we collect it?
4. Who should be involved?
5. How useful are the results?
A. Why perform job analysis?
Potential uses for job analysis have been suggested for every major human
resource function. Often the type of job analysis data needed varies by function.
An internal structure based on job-related information provides both
managers and employees a work-related rationale for pay differences.
Employees who understand this rationale can see where their work fits
into the bigger picture and can direct their behavior toward organization
objectives.
Job analysis data also help managers defend their decisions when
challenged.
In compensation, job analysis has two critical uses:
1. It establishes similarities and differences in the work contents of the jobs.
2. It helps establish an internally fair and aligned job structure.
The key issue for compensation decision makers is to ensure that the data
collected are useful and acceptable to the employees and managers involved.
III. Job Analysis Procedures
Exhibit 4.4 summarizes some job analysis terms and their relationship to each
other.
Job analysis usually collects information about specific tasks or behaviors.
A group of tasks performed by one person makes up a position. Identical positions
make up a job, and broadly similar jobs combine into a job family.
The U.S. federal government has developed a step-by-step approach to
conducting conventional job analysis. The government’s procedures, shown in Exhibit
4.5, include:
oDeveloping preliminary information
oInterviewing jobholders and supervisors
oUsing the information to create and verify job descriptions
The federal Department of Labor’s description of conventional job analysis
provides a useful “how-to” guide.
IV. What Information Should Be Collected?
A typical job analysis starts with a review of information already collected in
order to develop a framework for further analysis. Job titles, major duties, task
dimensions, and work flow information may already exist. However, it may no longer
be accurate. So the analyst must clarify existing information, too.
Generally, a good job analysis collects sufficient information to adequately
identify, define, and describe a job. Exhibit 4.6 lists some of the information that is
usually collected. The information is categorized as:
oRelated to the job.
oRelated to the employee
A. Job Data: Identification
Job titles, departments, the number of people who hold the job, and
whether it is exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act are all examples of
information that identifies a job.
While a job title may seem pretty straightforward, it may not be.
B. Job Data: Content
This is the heart of job analysis. Job content data involve the elemental
tasks or units of work, with emphasis on the purpose of each task.
In addition to emphasis on the task, the other distinguishing characteristic
is the emphasis on the objective of the task.
Task data reveal the actual work performed and its purpose or outcome.
C. Employee Data
We can look at the kinds of behaviors that will result in the outcomes.
Exhibit 4.6 categorizes employee data as employee characteristics, internal
relationships, and external relationships.
The excerpt in Exhibit 4.8 is from the Position Analysis Questionnaire
(PAQ), which groups work information into seven basic factors:
oInformation input
oMental processes
oWork output
oRelationships with other persons
oJob context
oOther job characteristics
oGeneral dimensions
The entire PAQ consists of 194 items.
A more nuanced view of “communication” focuses on the nature of the
interactions required plus knowledge underlying them.
Interactions are defined as the knowledge and behaviors involved in
searching, monitoring, and coordinating required to do the work. Some
interactions are transactional—routine and some are tacit—complex and
ambiguous.
Work content that involves more tacit interactions is believed to add
greater value than more transactional tasks.
However appealing it may be to rationalize job analysis as the foundation
of all HR decisions, collecting all of the information for many different
purposes is very expensive. In addition, the resulting information may be too
generalized for any single purpose, including compensation.
D. “Essential Elements” and the Americans with Disabilities Act
In addition to the job description having sections that identify, describe,
and define the job, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that
essential elements of a job—those that cannot be reassigned to other workers—
must be specified for jobs covered by the legislation.
If a job applicant can perform the essential elements, it is assumed the
applicant can perform the job. After that, reasonable accommodations must be
made to enable an otherwise qualified handicapped person to perform those
elements.
ADA regulations state that “essential functions refer to the fundamental
job duties of the employment position the individual with a disability holds or
desires.”
The difficulty of specifying essential elements varies with the discretion in
the job and with stability of the job.
The law does not make any allowances for special pay rates or special
benefits for people with disabilities.
While the law does not require any particular kind of analysis, many
employers have modified the format of their job descriptions to specifically call
out the essential elements.
A lack of compliance places an organization at risk and ignores one of the
objectives of the pay model.
E. Level of Analysis
The level at which analysis of a job begins influences whether the work is
similar or different. For example, at the job-family level several jobs may
appear to be similar, yet at the job level they are very different.
If job data suggest that jobs are similar, the jobs must be paid equally; if
jobs are different, they can be paid differently.
Using broad, generic descriptions that cover a large number of related
tasks closer to the job-family level is one way to increase flexibility. Employees
can switch tasks without making job transfer requests and wage adjustments.
Thus, employees can more easily be matched to changes in the work flow.
A countering view deserves consideration. A promotion to a new job title
is part of the organization’s network of returns. Reducing the number of titles
may reduce the opportunities to reinforce positive employee behavior.
V. How Can the Information Be Collected?
A. Conventional Methods
The most common way to collect job information is to ask the people who are doing
a job to fill out a questionnaire. Sometimes an analyst will interview the jobholders
and their supervisors to be sure they understand the questions and that the
information is correct. Or the analyst may observe the person at work and take notes
on what is being done.
The advantage of conventional questionnaires and interviews is that the
involvement of employees increases their understanding of the process.
However, the results are only as good as the people involved. If important aspects
of a job are omitted, or if the jobholders themselves either do not realize or are
unable to express the importance of certain aspects, the resulting job descriptions
will be faulty.
Different people have different perceptions, which may result in differences in
interpretation or emphasis. The whole process is open to bias and favoritism.
As a result of this potential subjectivity, as well as the huge amount of time the
process takes, conventional methods have given way to more quantitative (and
systematic) data collection
B. Quantitative Methods
Increasingly, employees are directed to a website where they complete a
questionnaire online. Such an approach is characterized as quantitative job
analysis (QJA), since statistical analysis of the results is possible. In addition to
facilitating statistical analysis of the results, quantitative data collection allows more
data to be collected faster.
A questionnaire typically asks jobholders to assess each item in terms of whether or
not that particular item is part of their job. If it is, they are asked to rate how
important it is and the amount of job time spent on it.
The responses can be machine-scored, similar to the process for a multiple-choice
test (only there are no wrong answers), and the results can be used to develop a
profile of the job. Questions are grouped around five compensable factors:
oKnowledge
oAccountability
oReasoning
oCommunication
oWorking conditions.
Knowledge is further subcategorized as:
oRange of depth
oQualifications
oExperience
oOccupational skills
oManagement skills
oLearning time
Assistance is given in the form of prompting questions and a list of jobs whose
holders have answered each question in a similar way. Results can be used to
prepare a job profile based on the compensable factors.
If more than one person is doing a particular job, results of several people in the job
can be compared or averaged to develop the profile. Profiles can be compared
across jobholders in both the same and different jobs.
Some consulting firms have developed quantitative inventories that can be tailored
to the needs of a specific organization or to a specific family of jobs. Many
organizations find it practical and cost-effective to modify these existing inventories
rather than to develop their own analysis from scratch.
If important aspects of a job are omitted or if the jobholders themselves do not
realize the importance of certain aspects, the resulting job descriptions will be
faulty. The implication is that any analysis needs to include good performers to
ensure that the work is usefully analyzed.
C. Who Collects the Information?
In the past, organizations often assigned the task to a new employee, saying it
would help the new employee become familiar with the jobs of the company. Today,
if job analysis is performed at all, human resource generalists and supervisors do it.
The analysis is best done by someone thoroughly familiar with the organization and
its jobs and trained in how to do the analysis properly.
D. Who Provides the Information?
The decision on the source of the data (jobholders, supervisors, and/or analysts)
hinges on how to ensure consistent, accurate, useful, and acceptable data.
oExpertise about the work resides with the jobholders and supervisors;
hence, they are the principal sources.
oFor key managerial/professional jobs, supervisors “two levels above” have
been suggested as valuable sources since they have a more strategic view of
how jobs fit in the overall organization.
oIn some instances, subordinates and employees in other jobs that interface
with the job under study are also involved.
The number of incumbents per job from which to collect data probably varies with
the stability of the job, as well as the ease of collecting the information.
Whether through a conventional analysis or a quantitative approach, completing a
questionnaire requires considerable involvement by employees and supervisors.
Involvement can increase their understanding of the process, thereby increasing the
likelihood that the results of the analysis will be acceptable. But it also is expensive.
E. What about Discrepancies?
Differences in job data may arise among the jobholders. Some may see the job one
way, some another.
If the employees and their supervisors do not agree on what is part of the job, the
manager should collect more data. Enough data are required to ensure consistent,
accurate, useful, and acceptable results.
Holding a meeting of multiple jobholders and supervisors in a focus group to
discuss discrepancies and then asking both employees and supervisors to sign off on
the revised results helps ensure agreement on, or at least understanding of, the
results.
Disagreements can be an opportunity to clarify expectations, learn about better
ways to do the job, and document how the job is actually performed.
Discrepancies among employees may even reveal that more than one job has been
lumped under the same job title.
Top Management (and Union) Support Is Critical
In addition to involvement by analysts, jobholders, and their supervisors, support of
top management is absolutely essential. Support of union officials in a unionized
workforce is as well.
oThey know (hopefully) what is strategically relevant.
oThey must be alerted to the cost of a thorough job analysis, its
time-consuming nature, and the fact that changes will be involved.
oIf top managers (and unions) are not willing to seriously consider any
changes suggested by job analysis, the process is probably not worth the bother
and expense.
