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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
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 then 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.
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Lecture Outline: Overview of Major Topics
I. Structures Based on Jobs, People, or Both
II. Job-based Approach: Most Common
A. Why Perform Job Analysis?
III. Job Analysis Procedures
IV. What Information Should Be Collected?
A. Job Data: Identification
B. Job Data: Content
C. Employee Data
D. “Essential Elements” and the Americans With Disabilities Act
E. Level of Analysis
V. How Can the Information Be Collected?
A. Conventional Methods
B. Quantitative Methods
C. Who Collects the Information?
D. Who Provides the Information?
E. What about Discrepancies?
VI. Job Descriptions Summarize the Data
A. Using Generic Job Descriptions
B. Describing Managerial/Professional Jobs
C. Verify the Description
VII. Job Analysis: Bedrock or Bureaucracy?
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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:
I. Structures Based on Jobs, People, or Both
• Exhibit 4.1 outlines the process for constructing a work-related internal structure.
o 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.
• Exhibit 4.2 is part of a job description for a registered nurse.
o This provides an overview of the job and nature of internal and external
relationships for the jobholder.
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.
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.
o 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
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 developed a step-by-step approach to conducting
conventional job analysis. The government’s procedures, shown in Exhibit 4.5,
include:
o Developing preliminary information
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.
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job. Exhibit 4.6 lists some of the usual information collected.
A. Job Data: Identification
• Job titles, departments, the number of people who hold the job, and whether it is
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.
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.
• Exhibit 4.8 shows how communication can be described with verbs. For
example negotiating, or persuading.
o The verbs chosen are related to the employee characteristics being
• The excerpt in Exhibit 4.8 is from the Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ),
which groups work information into seven basic factors:
o Information input
o Mental processes
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• 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.
o Some interactions are transactional—routine and some are tacit—complex
• 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.
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.
o After that, reasonable accommodations must be made to enable an otherwise
qualified handicapped person to perform those elements.
E. Level of Analysis
• The level at which analysis of a job begins influences whether the work is
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similar or different.
o 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, pay the jobs equally, if jobs are
different, the pay can differ.
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.
• Exhibit 4.10 shows part of a job analysis questionnaire used by 3M.
• 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.
o 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
B. Quantitative Methods
• Increasingly, employees are directed to a website where they complete a
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questionnaire online.
o Such an approach is characterized as quantitative job analysis (QJA), since
statistical analysis of the results is possible.
• A questionnaire typically asks jobholders to assess each item in terms of whether or
not that particular item is part of their job.
o If it is, they then rate how important it is and the amount of job time spent on it.
• Questions are grouped around five compensable factors:
o Knowledge
o Accountability
• Knowledge is further subcategorized as:
o Range of depth
o Qualifications
• 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.
o If more than one person is doing a particular job, results of several people in the
• 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.
• 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.
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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.
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.
o Expertise about the work resides with the jobholders and supervisors; hence,
they are the principal sources.
o For key managerial/professional jobs, supervisors “two levels above” have been
• 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.
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.
o 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
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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.
o They know (hopefully) what is strategically relevant.
VI. Job Descriptions Summarize the Data
• The job information collected should be organized, summarized, and documented in a
format useful for HR decisions, including job evaluation. The summary of the job is the
job description.
o The job description provides a ‘word picture’ of the job. It contains information on
the tasks, people, and things included with the job.
o The job is identified by its title and its relationships to other jobs in the structure. A
• The summary needs to be relevant for pay decisions and thus must focus on similarities
and differences in content.
A. Using Generic Job Descriptions
• To avoid starting from scratch (if writing a job description for the first time) or
as a way to cross-check externally, it can be useful to refer to generic job
descriptions that have not yet been tailored to a specific organization.
B. Describing Managerial/Professional Jobs
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• Descriptions of managerial/professional jobs often include more-detailed
information on the nature of the job, its scope, and accountability.
• One challenge is that an individual manager will influence the job content.
C. Verify the Description
• The final step in the job analysis process is to verify the accuracy of the
resulting job descriptions (step 6 in Exhibit 4.5).
VII. Job Analysis: Bedrock or Bureaucracy?
• HRNet, an Internet discussion group related to HR issues, provoked one of its largest
responses ever with the query, “What good is job analysis?”
o Some felt that managers have no basis for making defensible, work-related
decisions without it.
o Others called the process a bureaucratic boondoggle.
• If job analysis is the cornerstone of human resource decisions, what are such decisions
based on if work information is no longer rigorously collected?