Job Analysis Methods

Job analysis may be defined as a methodical process of collecting information on the functionally relevant aspects of a job. It involves job description (determining the duties and skill requirements of a job) and job specification (determining the kind of person who should be hired for the job). The methods of Job Analysis are as follows:

INTERVIEW METHOD

This tool is considered to be very useful to the analysis of jobs. It is a method to collect a variety of information from an incumbent and supervisors by asking them (individually or as a group) to describe the tasks and duties performed. The benefits are that it allows the incumbent to describe tasks and duties that are not observable. However, they may exaggerate or omit tasks and duties. Three types of interviews are used to collect job analysis data: * Individual interviews with each employee. * Group interviews with groups of employees having the same job, and * Interview supervisor who are knowledgeable about the job being analyzed. Interviews consist of structured Interviews and unstructured interviews.

QUESTIONNAIRE METHODS

There are many techniques, one of them which is:

POSITION ANALYSIS QUESTIONNAIRE (PAQ MODEL)

This model developed by McCormick, Jeanerette, and Mecham (1972) is a structured instrument of job analysis to measure job characteristics and then associate them with human characteristics. It consists of 195 job elements that describe generic human behaviors during work activities.

It includes:

1. Information input (where and how the worker gets information),
2. Mental processes (reasoning and other processes that workers use),
3. Work output (physical activities and tools used on the job),
4. Relationships with other persons, and
5. Job context (the physical and social contexts of work).

Over the years it has been observed that there exists a wealth of research on the PAQ since it has yielded reasonably good reliability estimates and has been linked to several assessment tools.

OBSERVATION

In this method incumbents are observed performing their jobs which enables the trained job analyst to obtain first-hand knowledge and information about the job being analyzed.

This method is suited for jobs in which the work behaviors are

1. observable or
2. job tasks are short in duration or
3.  jobs in which the job analyst can learn information about the job through observation.

With observation, the trained job analyst can obtain first-hand knowledge and information about the job being analyzed. It allows the job analyst to see the work environment, tools and equipment used, interrelationships with other workers, and complexity of the job.

CRITICAL INCIDENT TECHNIQUE (CIT model)

This method applied to discover behaviors towards working which can help classify performance into a good and bad level. These observations are used to solve practical problems and develop psychological principles. The main purposes are building job descriptions, job specification and job standards, creating a list of good and bad behaviors which can then be used for performance appraisal and testing the effectiveness of the job description and job specification.

WORK SAMPLING

This method is a measurement technique for the quantitative analysis of non-repetitive or irregularly occurring activity. Work sampling operates by an observer taking a series of random observations on a particular thing of interest (machine, operating room, dock etc. ) to observe its state (working, idle, sleeping etc. ). When enough samples are taken, an analysis of the observations yields a statistically valid indication of the states for each thing analyzed.

It is relatively inexpensive to use and extremely helpful in providing a deeper understanding of all types of operations.

REPERTORY GRID

The repertory grid technique is a method for eliciting personal constructs, i. e. what people think about a given topic. It is based on George Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory. It is called a ‘grid’ because one way of doing it is to use a matrix with the people along one side and the similarity and contrast poles along another side. The method is as follows: Identify a range of 10-20 people who do the job (these are called elements). Select three at random. Select two that seem more similar in some way. Identify what it is about them that is similar (this is the similarity pole). Identify what is different about the other person (this is the contrast pole). Repeat this until you have about 20 contrasts.  Thin this down to about 10 by combining similar contrasts. The remaining contrasts should give a good idea of the factors that make up the job.