Human resources management has to plan their activity to reach maximum level of organizational objective. Human resources personnel must have knowledge regarding skills required to perform various organizational jobs. Job analysis is done to get information regarding the requirement of skill, knowledge, experience, ability and other work related requirement.
A job analysis is a systematic exploration of the activities within a job. Basically it is a technical process, which is used to define the duties, responsibilities, and accountabilities of a particular job. This analysis involves describing detail description about the task one has to perform during work, exploring the relationship with job to technology and determining knowledge, qualifications or the standards of employment, accountability of the person. There is an accuracy in recording activity is involved.
The record consist information regarding following matter:
Element: A job element is considered as the smallest element in which job is being divided. Job element shows every part of the process during a job is done.
Task: A task is particular work activity which is carried out for different purpose.
Duty: Duty involves number of tasks. For example counseling of a candidate is a duty, where several tasks take place for counseling process. A supervisor of a manufacturing unit duty is to keep track of employees work and to make sure that they will do their job perfectly, but for that duty manager has to do many tasks like checking daily record, comparing them, inform employees if they are not performing and give them better solution if there is any problem.
Position: The term position is referred to one or more duties performed by one person of the organization. In any organization there are as many positions as there are employees in the organization. And vacancies may design more positions than employees in the organization.
Job: A job is a kind of position within the organization. There many position in the organization, while for every position there is one job.
Job family: Job family is a group of two or more jobs that either required similar worker characteristic or contain parallel work tasks as determined by job analysis. For example in an insurance company, service clerks and policy correspondents represent two jobs that are placed in a common job family because they have so many similar work characteristics.
Occupation: Occupation is a kind of group of similar jobs found within the organization. Clerk, accountant, engineer are some examples of different occupation.
Career: Career includes sequences of positions, jobs or occupations, which a person has over his/her working life.
Terms that are defined above are mainly considered while doing job analysis.
Job analysis methods
There are some methods which a manager use to determine job elements, knowledge, skills and abilities are required to perform certain job. These various methods are as follows:
Observation method: In this method, job analyst use to watch employees directly or review their films on the job. This method gives primary information of the job. It provides firsthand information. In several cases, workers would not be able to perform or function most efficiently while they are being directly watched at their work. Therefore job analyst may find some distortion in this method. In some jobs it is possible to watch an employee on their job but in certain jobs it is not possible to watch e.g. in most of managerial jobs it is hard to watch entire activity.
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Individual interview methods: In this method, the person who is responsible for the jobs are selected and extensively interviewed by the job analyst. In results, these interviews are combined for a single job. This method gives high an effective way for assessing what a job entails or what a job requires. But this method is very time consuming. It takes so much to interview individuals and gather information which is needed for the job.
Group interview method: This method is also similar as individual interview method the only difference is the number of incumbent are two or more than two. It is also an effective method to collect information regarding a particular job. In this method accuracy is increased in assessing jobs, but group dynamics may hinder its effectiveness.
Structured questionnaire method: In this kind of method, job analyst send a structured questionnaire to the worker, in which they check or rate items they perform on their job from a long list of possible task items. Questions which are send seems to be a kind of checklist information that is presented in front of the workers and have to response from the questions that are mentions in the questionnaire. This method gives job analyst a technique which is found as an excellent source of gathering information about jobs. It has been also discover that exception to a job may be overlooked and feedback is often lacking.
Technical conference method: In this method, supervisors with extensive knowledge are gathered. This method utilizes supervisors with high knowledge. This method is used to get specific characteristics of a job are obtain from the experts. Person who are consider as experts are being invite in this method. It is a good way of gathering data. It is found that this technique often overlooks the incumbent workers’ perception and their thinking regarding what they are doing in their job.
Dairy or log method: In this method, job incumbents are being asked to record their daily activities. It provides a lot of information but it is rarely applicable to job activities. This method is one of the forcing ways to get information. It requires lots of work to be done from the incumbent and that’s why it needs more time. If the job analyst want to capture information in the entire range of work activities, this method have to continue from a long period of time.
All these six methods are not meant to be viewed as mutually exclusive. Many organizations have different kind of positions; it may vary from skilled to non skilled employees’ positions. The analysis may use different methods of data collection for different positions. Here job analyst may make a combination of all method or some of the selective method. Some times worker find it difficult to complete an open ended written questionnaire and this may not gives the information which analyst requires. As an alternative interviews and observation might be more appropriate data collection technique.
Job analysis in Human Resources Management activities
Recruitment and selection: Job analysis is one of the good source to identify, the knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics required for the positions in the organization. It helps to identifies minimum education, certification, and licensing requirements for a particular position. Being a essential part of job, to identify tasks and responsibility is also done by job analyst. These skills are helpful for the human resources management while they have to recruit or hire a person for a position in the organization. For selection, some pre employment tests are also taken by human resources management department and to identify these tests job analysis is one of the important way.
Developing compensation systems: Compensation is typically related to the requirement of the job, such as education, skills and experience needed to perform the job, employees’ working conditions. Here job analysis provides a standard way to distinguish process to determine pay and other benefits to the workers across the organization. It provides compensation to the employees on the basis of common understanding of the values of job and requirement of the job to perform it.
Human resources planning, career development and training: With the help of job analysis, employer can identify the need to training and development for every individual position in the organization. Organization has their standards and different technical and non technical ways for the routine jobs. Some time they need to provides additional skill and knowledge to their workers to perform task in better way and that can be done by training the employees.
Performance evaluation: Performance standards come from actual work which worker does in their jobs. Job analysis gives information about tasks and responsibility which an employee has to perform during their jobs. Areas of accountability can be identified and evaluation standards can be developed with the help of job analysis.
Risk management: Job analysis can identify risk at workplace. There are many hazardous jobs in organization and employees have to draw their attention while performing those jobs. Job analysis provides information about those hazardous jobs from the information gathered by the incumbent workers or by the expert workers. Organization can use this information to give training to their workers during orientation period or training period. Job analysis can reduce the risk or danger at work if the information is properly used by the human resources management department and given to the department head where ever is needed.
Job design: Job analysis provides an entire range of information to perform a job. It gives a view for designing a job. Jobs are designed with the set of work activities to carry out the mission of the organization. There are some internal and external changes which forces organization to restructure and rearrange activities in work. Job analysis provides certain information of the changes in workplace, which an organization has to, identifies and has to accommodate that change.
Factors affecting Job Analysis program
To design a job analysis program, job analyst has to consider the factor influencing it. The analyst has to work with the representatives of the organization to determine the most effective methods and procedures for collecting information. It is important for the job analyst to understand who organization operates. Job analyst has to find out best time to obtain information from the incumbent and supervisors. Jobs are not done with the same intensity of the work. Following are some of the factors influencing job analysis program.
Location and number of incumbent: One of the factors which job analyst has to consider while doing job analysis is location of incumbent and number of incumbents. Many organizations have several different units and that units are located in different areas. If a job analyst wants to meet incumbents to get information about their work and that unit where incumbents’ works is for away from main branch of organization, than it is difficult for job analyst to do it on time job analyst have to plan if earlier. It is also time consuming. Some time it takes too many times to reach incumbent just to get few information on the job. Many times there are many incumbents have to be interviewed. They all are not easily available on the same time so to meet them job analysis have to spend lots of time to collect data for the relevant sources. Location and number of incumbents are one of the most influencing factors which a job analyst has to consider for job analysis process. Location of the organization is closer from the place where analyst is, then it is most convenient to reach incumbents and finish analysis in planned time, but it is far away, than it will became time consuming and cost effective. Some thing with the number of incumbents, if there is large number of incumbents to be interviewed than analyst has to figure out how to reach them at a time and when they all are not available on time than it will became difficult but if all of them are available in same time then it became easier for the job analyst to interview them and collection data and information.
Work condition/ environment: This is another factor which job analyst has to consider while doing job analysis. In many situation job analyst have to approach those incumbents who are working in very hazardous condition, Incumbents are operating some heavy machinery, that take long time to shutdown and take long time to start, work condition is on influencing factor which job analyst has to consider while doing job analysts. There are many organization where employees have to wear mask to protect themselves against hazardous chemical coming out from the production. In such situation analyst has to wait till the process is order and incumbent is free to talk has to wait till the process is over and incumbent is free to talk with analyst. Here analyst may has to spent time more than what it was planned. If incumbent is working in very noisy condition and can’t answer the questions of analyst, then again it is wastage of time for analyst. Analyst has to consider that in what kind of working condition incumbent is working, so that analyst can plan his/ her meeting with incumbent and save the time of job analysis process.
Knowledge, technology, and personal factors: There is one more factor which is influencing job analysis program and if is knowledge of incumbent, technology which is being used at working area and technology which organization wants to implement, and personal attitude, behavior belief regarding the job which incumbent is doing, sometimes incumbent has a sound knowledge about what analyst is looking for, but when incumbent does not have much knowledge about the job and analyst has to interview him/his at this time analyst will not get relevant answers or data which can be useful for job analysis. If affect job analysis process. technology is one and when analyst has to approach incumbent who is working with old technology.
Purposes of Job analysis
Job descriptions: Job description is a form of written statement which describes jobholder’s activities and the manner in which it should be done. It is accurately portrait with the job content, environment and conditions for the employment. In general there is a common format of job description which includes the job title, duties which one has to perform during the period of employment, some distinguishing characteristic of the job, and the powers and responsibilities of the job holder. Job description proves to be an important resource for recruitment, selection and appraisal. During recruitment, job description describes job to the potential candidate. When an organization hires a person, job description helps to make employee understand what organization expect him/her to do. It can helps to compare performance of the employee with the expected standards during appraisal.
Job specifications: Job specification indicates minimum acceptable qualification that a potential candidate must have to perform a job. Information which is acquired from job analysis, job specification identifies the skills, knowledge and abilities required to do a job. It plays an important role during selection process. It help selector to determine skills, knowledge and abilities of the potential candidate and can be able to take decision that whether candidate is qualified to perform job or not. Candidate who is having personal characteristic in job specification will perform better than the candidate who is lacking these characteristics.
Job evaluations: Job analysis is also providing data for the comparison between current performance in job and expected job. Job evaluation is an important part of compensation administration. It distinguishes and gives information to make comparison between two or more same kind of jobs. Job analysis provides basic information about the job. Then job evaluation compares the performance of the employees in the same kind of job. If someone would not be able to reach the level of expectation which had been design to do a job, will be paid less than who would be able to reach the expectation of the organization.
Recruitment
Recruitment is one of the important tasks which human resources management department has to perform very carefully. They have to understand the need of the vacant position. They have to know what should be the qualification of the candidate for the required position. They have to also look after that what is the age range of the3 candidate because in several cases some position needs to be more that twenty five years, thirty five years and so on. There are certain reasons of age barrier, for example many company have some different kind of sales positions required. For those positions, company want to have young and enthusiastic candidate, so they prefer that if the position is for sales associate, where the person have to travel a lot, they should be not more than an age of thirty years. Another reason of the human resources management to distinguish age is hierarchy. Many organizations prefers old person for the top level management position.
Factors influencing recruiting efforts
There are some factors which are influencing recruiting efforts done by human resources management. Every organization has to engage in recruiting activity. Some do it at a time some doesn’t.
Size of the organization: One or all size of the organization is one of the factors which influence the recruiting efforts made by human resources management. An organization with one hundred thousand employees will find itself recruiting potential applicants much more often than will an organization with one hundred employees. Here is a distinct between an organization with large number of employees and an organization with some number of employees. Big organization with large number of employee will find a huge pool of applicant while they need to fulfill a vacant position. Where on other side a organization with small number of employees will need to outsource or to advertise for the vacant position. Small organization finds it difficult to attract applicant rather than big organization. Overall size of the organization is one of the factor which is affecting the recruitment efforts made by human resources management department for any organization.
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Employment condition: One of the other major factor which influence the extent of recruitment is the employment conditions on the community where the organization is located. For example if the organization is located in a remote area where people are not highly educated and they are good with their business will not get suitable applicant from the location rather than the organization which is located in the area where people are educated and are suitably qualified for the positions of the organization. If the unemployment rate is low and people are getting highly paid for their job, it is hard for a new organization to find the applicant with their requirement. The effectiveness of past recruiting efforts will show itself in the organization’s historical ability to locate and keep people who perform well.
Salary: Salary is also one the factor which is influencing recruitment. There are some companies which are offering a handsome amount of salary to their employees. While there are some of the other companies which are not offering a good amount of salary to their company. So the company who are offering good salary to their employees will be able to attract more applicant than the company which is not offering good salary. People will prefer to apply for the position in those company where they are highly paid rather than the positions in the company where they are least paid. Human resources management department of the company who are offering less amount of salary have to make more effort to attract the applicant instead of human resources management department of the company who are paying a high amount of salary to their employees.
Benefits packages: Benefits packages is one of the attractive factor which influence recruitment effort made by any human resources management department for any organization. Benefits packages include insurance, paid leave, meals while working in an organization, clothing, tuition reimbursement, fuel reimbursement and other more. Applicants will definitely wish to get job in an organization where they are getting benefits packages other than their salary. So human resources department of those organization which are offer benefits packages will find for applicant other than the human resources department of the organization who are not offering any benefits packages.
Supply and demand: Anywhere in the organization if there is a demand of the applicant is high and supply of the applicant is very low than the organization will not meet the requirement of the position. Supply and demand is one of the factors which is influencing the recruitment of any organization. If there is huge supply of the application for a position vacant in any organization than the organization will have an opportunity to fulfill the vacant position with their desire standard. And if the supply of the application for any vacant position is low than the human resources management department of the organization has to get ready to negotiate the demand of the applicant and have to look forward toward good salary and other benefits packages.
Labor Market: Labor market is one of the constant factor which is influencing the recruitment efforts of any organization made by human resources management department. If the labor market, where an organization is establish, is not as much as they need than organization has to look forward to bring labor from other place and has to give some extra benefits and has to provide house and other thing which are required. If there is a good flow of labor in the market where the organization is situated, the human resources management will not to put any extra effort for the recruitment of the position in the organization.
Image or goodwill: There are many organizations whose image is very good in the market and there are some whose image is worst in the market. Image of the organization is one of the prominent factors which is influencing recruitment process. an organization with good image means organization is taking good care of their employees and has good growth in the market. An applicant will prefer to apply to those organizations that has good image in the market rather than the organizations that has bad image in the market. Because people want a secure carrier and expect a good response in the form of their salary and benefits and working environment. Here human resources management department has to put more effort if the organization’s image is bad in the market. But if the image of the organization is good than human resources management department has to put less effort will recruitment.
Political, social and legal environment: The environment of the organization is also an influencing factor for the recruiting. An organization has sound political, social and legal environment. If an organization has good political environment than they will be able to attract huge number of candidate. Organization should have good social image. They have to pursue social ethical policy. An organization should have least legal cases against them. Human resources management department of an organization which have nice political, social and legal environment will be able to attract good and desire candidate.
Unemployment rate: Unemployment rate plays a big role in influencing recruiting efforts. Human resources management of any organization has to consider unemployment rate as a factor of which influence recruitment in the organization. Human resources management has to look after the unemployment rate of the area where the organization is located, if the unemployment rate is high in the location, human resource management will easily find the suitable candidate with the lower salary. There human resources management has much option for the recruitment. They will get many applications with high qualification and they don’t have to negotiate the salary with candidate which they are offering. They don’t have to give extra benefits to the employees. But the unemployment rate is low where organization is located, than it will occur as a big trouble for the human resources management of the organization. In such situation human resources management will not find option in the form of applicant and has to pay more than what deserve. Human resources management has to compromise with qualification and knowledge and experiences of the candidate. They have to offer them benefits package. Unemployment rate is one of the crucial factors which are influencing recruiting efforts.
Competitors: competitors are always looking forward to grow up and to have quality employees from whom they can maximize their profit margin and growth rate of the company. Competitor is one the factor influencing recruiting efforts made by human resources management department of any organization how to see the offers which are given by the competitors for the positions which they are looking for. Human resources management has to constantly update their knowledge regarding the offer and benefit to the applicant. So that they can offer more or can be able to negotiate with the candidate regarding the salary and benefits packages for the opening position. In many organization candidate with the knowledge and experience of their competitors are prefer many organization use to hire or fulfill the positions from their competitor, by that they can be able to go through the strategy and plans of their competitor organization and they can try to overcome their drawback.
Recruitment Policy: Recruitment policy of any organization is on influencing factor of any recruiting efforts. Organization have different recruitment policy, there are some organization which are preferring applicant from the location where they are and there are some organization who are preferring applicant from the outside area if they don’t find suitable applicant from the are where they are located. Some recruitment policies are affected by government norms. Affirmative action is one of such government norms. Some organization has certain reserved category some organization believes that they should have experienced person in their organization so that they don’t have to invest on training on the new candidate. That’s why they prefer experienced candidate some organization believes in making their own employees competent. They are concerned for the basic qualification of the candidate.
Human resources planning: Human resources planning is also one of the factor which is influencing recruiting efforts. In several organizations they have planned for the future and current human resource. Requirement while keeping in mind that thing organization’s human resources management take action for recruitment . they have a planning tha within certain period of time, they are going to recruit certain number of employees in their organization and will be able to recruit some candidate. But if any uncertainty occurs and they have to recruit more person immediately, them it will rise as a problem for human resources management department.
Cost of recruitment: cost of recruitment is always concern by human resources management department; cost of recruitment is one of major factor which influence recruiting effort. Many times in some organization, a small amount of budget is given to the human resources department for the recruitment of any position. Some times that budget is not sufficient of any position. Some times that budget is not sufficient for the human resources management department if they have to provide a qualified candidate for the position vacant. In such condition human resources management department have to put extra effort to search a qualified candidate and some times they won’t be able to meet the requirement of the position. Where as in other situation if the budget is more enough to attract a suitable candidate, than human resources management department would be able to give a well qualified and experienced candidate to the organization.
Growth and expansion: Growth and expansion is one of the factors which is influencing recruiting efforts. Human resources management department has to take care of the growth and expansion need of an organization. They have to consider and plan their recruitment efforts according to the growth and expansion of the organization.
Recruiting sources
There are certain recruiting sources which are identified as a potential part of recruitment. Any recruitment made is with an objective. So choosing the right sources of recruitment is must for the human resources management. There are following types of recruiting sources which human resources management use to do when they have to take place any recruitment.
Internal search: Mostly some large organization use to develop their own employees for the positions beyond the lower level. There are certain advantages for promoting someone within the organization from lower position to higher position. These advantages are :
It seems to be good public relation within the organization between human resources management and employees or workers of the organization.
It raises morale among the employees of the organization.
It encourages good individuals who are performing well in their work and who are ambitious.
It proves good selection because the information regarding individual’s performance is easily available.
It is cost effective than searching someone from outside of the organization.
Person who are chosen have been well aware of the organization policy and they know organization more than a new employee.
While it is carefully planned, if somebody is promoted within the organization work as a training device for developing middle and top-level managers.
There is some disadvantage for promoting internal people. It seems to be dysfunctional to the organization to utilize inferior internal sources only because they are there, when excellent candidates are available on the outside. Sometimes it is necessary to bring new blood to broaden the present ideas, knowledge, and enthusiasm and to question conservative views.
Advertisements: When an organization has to communicate with the public, advertisement is one the most popular ways to reach them. Some organization use to put a sign outside the plant and some use to go through the newspaper and online (their website and other job postal). Advertisement is depend on the level of the position of organization vacant. There is some legislation to ensure equal opportunity enforcement has resulted in a significant increase in the advertisement of all vacancies. There are some factors influences the response rate to advertisements. There are three important variable and that are as following:
Identification of the organization,
Labor market conditions, and
The degree to which specific requirements are included in the advertisement.
Employee referrals or recommendations: One of the best sources for individuals who will perform effectively on the job is a recommendation from a current employee. Employee referrals reflect on the recommender, and when someone’s reputation is at stake, one can expect the recommendation to be based on considered judgment. Employee referrals may also have acquired more accurate information about their potential jobs. Sometime it happens that the person who recommend gives the applicant more realistic information about the job. Such types of information reduce unrealistic expectations and increases job survival. And as a result employee referrals lead to pre-selection process and prepare candidate more likely to accept the offer if one is made and have more chance of survival.
Employment agencies: There are three types of employment agencies and that are as follows:
Public agencies: Public agencies are supported by the government to help the job s
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