Mind Map Gallery In-depth Guide to Job Analysis and Design
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In-depth Guide to Job Analysis and Design
This detailed mind map provides a comprehensive overview of the processes and considerations involved in analyzing and designing jobs. It delves into different job design approaches, highlighting their implications for employee performance and satisfaction. Additionally, the map covers work-flow analysis and the impact of organizational structure on job design, presenting a holistic view of the factors that influence how jobs are structured and performed in the workplace.
Edited at 2022-10-16 15:36:13
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- Outline
Topic 5:Analyzing Work & Designing Jobs
Introduction
Strategy formulation is the process by which a company decides how it will compete in the marketplace. Strategy implementation is the way the strategic plan gets carried out in activities of organizational members.
The organization needs to create a fit between its environment, competitive strategy, and philosophy on the one hand, with its jobs and organizational design on the other.
Job analysis has focused on analyzing existing jobs to gather information for other human resource management practices such as selection, training, performance appraisal, and compensation.Job design has focused on redesigning existing jobs to make them more efficient or more motivating to jobholders. Thus job design has had a more proactive orientation toward changing the job, whereas job analysis has had a passive, information-gathering orientation.
Work-Flow Analysis & Organization Structure
Overall
- Work-flow design = process of analyzing the tasks necessary for the production of a product or service, prior to allocating and assigning these tasks to a particular job category or person. - Organization structure = relatively stable and formal network of vertical and horizontal interconnections among jobs that constitute the organization. - Both work-flow design and organization structure can be leveraged to gain competitive advantage for the firm, but how one does this depends on the firm’s strategy and its competitive environment.
Work-Flow Analysis
Analyzing work outputs
An output is the product of a work unit and is often an identifiable thing. An output can also be a service. Once the outputs have been identified, it is necessary to specify standards for the quantity or quality of these outputs.
Analyzing work processes
The work processes are the activities that members of a work unit engage in to produce a given output. Every process consists of operating procedures that specify how things should be done at each stage of the development of the product. For teams to be effective, it is essential that the level of task interdependence (how much they have to cooperate) matches the level of outcome interdependence (how much they share the reward for task accomplishment).
Analyzing work inputs
Inputs can be broken down into: - Raw materials = materials that will be converted into the work unit’s product. - Equipment = technology and machinery necessary to transform the raw materials into the product. - Human skills = workers available to the company.
Organization Structure
Dimensions Structure
Centralization = degree to which decision-making authority resides at the top of the organizational chart. The authority is decentralized when decision-making is distributed throughout lower levels.Departmentalization = degree to which work units are grouped based on functional similarity or similarity of work flow.
Structural Configurations
Functional structure
A functional structure employs a functional departmentalization scheme with relatively high levels of centralization. High levels of centralization tend to go naturally with functional departmentalization because individual units in the structures are so specialized that members of the unit may have a weak conceptualization of the overall organization mission.
Functional structures are most appropriate in stable, predictable environments, where demand for resources can be well anticipated and coordination requirements between jobs can be refined and standardized over consistent repetitions of activity. This type of structure also supports organizations that compete on cost, because efficiency is central to make this strategy work.
Divisional structure
Divisional departmentalization scheme with relatively low levels of centralization. Three types of divisional structure: the organization can be divisionally organized around: - Different products; - Geographic regions; - Different clients. Divisional structures tend to be more flexible and innovative.
Divisional structures are most appropriate in unstable, unpredictable environments, where it is difficult to anticipate demands for resources, and coordination requirements between jobs are not consistent over time. This type of structure also supports organizations that compete on differentiation or innovation, because flexible responsiveness is central to making this strategy work.
Structure and the Nature of Jobs
The nature of structure has implications for relationships. - In centralized and functional structures people tend to think of fairness in terms or rules and procedures. - In decentralized and divisional structures, they tend to think of fairness in terms of outcomes and how they are treated interpersonally.
Job Analysis
Job analysis = the process of getting detailed information about jobs.
The Importance of Jobs Analysis
Every human resource management program requires some type of information that is gleaned from job analysis: work redesign; human resource planning; selection; training and development; performance appraisal; job evaluation; career planning.
The Importance of Jobs Analysis to Line Managers
- Managers must have detailed information about all the jobs in their work group to understand the work-flow process.- Managers need to understand the job requirements to make intelligent hiring decisions.- A manager is responsible for ensuring that each individual is performing satisfactorily
Job Analysis Information
Nature of Information
- Job description = a list of the tasks, duties, and responsibilities (TDR) that a job entails. (TDRs are observable actions) - Job specification = a list of the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) that an individual must have to perform a job. - KSAOs are not directly observable; they are observable only when individuals are carrying out the TDRs of the job: + Knowledge = factual or procedural information that is necessary for successfully performing a task. + Skill = individual’s level of proficiency at performing a particular task. + Ability = a more general enduring capability that an individual possesses. + Other characteristics = personality traits.
Sources of Jobs Analysis Information
Although job incumbents and supervisors are the most obvious and frequently used sources of job analysis information, other sources, such as customers, can be helpful, particularly for service jobs.
Job Analysis Methods
Two methods for analyzing jobs: - Position analysis questionnaire (PAQ) - Occupational Information Network (O*NET)
Dynamic Elements of Jobs Analysis
In addition to statically defining the job, the job analysis process must also detect changes in the nature of jobs.
Job Design
Job design = the process of defining the way work will be performed and the tasks that will be required in a given job. Job redesign = the process of changing the tasks or the way work is performed in an existing job.
Mechanistic approach
Identifying the simplest way to structure work that maximizes efficiency. This most often entails reducing the complexity of the work to provide more human resource efficiency. Jobs are designed around the concepts of task specialization, skill simplification, and repetition. Scientific management was a statement of the mechanistic approach. Production could be maximized by taking a scientific approach to the process of designing jobs. Jobs designed via mechanistic practices result in work that is so simple that a child could do it.
Motivational approach
Focus on the job characteristics that affect psychological meaning and motivational potential / focus on increasing the meaningfulness of jobs. According to the job Characteristic Model, jobs can be described in terms of five characteristics: - Skill variety = extent to which the job requires a variety of skills to carry out the tasks. - Task identity = degree to which a job requires completing a whole piece of work from beginning to ending. - Autonomy = degree to which the job allows an individual to make decisions about the way the work will be carried out. - Feedback = extent to which a person receives clear information about performance effectiveness from the work itself. - Task significance = extent to which the job has an important impact on the lives of other people. These five job characteristics determine the motivating potential of a job by affecting the three critical psychological states of “experienced meaningfulness,” “responsibility,” and “knowledge of results.”
Biological approach
Science of biomechanics, work physiology, and occupational medicine. Ergonomics = the interface between individuals’ physiological characteristics and the physical work environment.
Perceptual-motor approach
Focus on human mental capabilities and limitations. The goal is to design jobs in a way that ensures they do not exceed people’s mental capabilities and limitations. In designing jobs, one looks at the least capable worker and then constructs job requirements that an individual of that ability level could meet.
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