What is the difference between job design job job analysis?

JOB ANALYSIS :

Job analysis is the fundamental process that forms the basis of all human resource activities. In its simplest terms, job analysis is a systematic process for gathering, documenting and analyzing data about the work required for a job. The data collected in a job analysis, and reflected through a job description, includes a description of the context and principal duties of the job, and information about the skills, responsibilities, mental models and techniques for job analysis. These include the Position Analysis, Questionnaires, which focuses on generalized human behavior and interviews, task inventories, fundamental job analysis and the job element method.

The United States Govt's Union Guidelines on Employees Selection Procedure (1978) and the American Psychological Association's principles for the validation and use of personnel selection procedure stipulates that job analysis is essential to valediction of any and all major human resource activities.

A job analysis provides an objective picture of the job, not the person performing the job, and as such, provides fundamental information to support all subsequent and related HR activities, such as recruitment, training, development, performance management and succession planning.

Uses of Job Analysis:

Job analysis is the procedure for identifying those duties or behaviors that define a job. Aside from verifying the fairness of selection procedures, job analysis is the foundation of virtually every other area of industrial psychology, including performance appraisal training and human factors. Additionally, job analysis is the basis of job evaluation, the procedure for setting salary scales.

Fig-I suggests some of the many uses of job analysis.(page-8)

Information about jobs can be collected in a number of ways. McCormick (1976) list the following as potential sources : observation, individual interview, group interview, technical conference, questionnaire, diary, critical incidents, equipment design information, recording of job activities, or employee records. Possible agents to do the collecting are professional job analysis, supervisors, job incumbents, or even a camera in the work place.

In spite of both its importance and availability of data, however, the area of job analysis has not been studied in details. One reason for the lack of research is the nature of the data : Although qualitative information about jobs, collected through observations, is plentiful, translating this data into a quantitative form amenable to statistical analysis is often difficult.

Figure-I (Page-8)

Human Resource Management Cycle : Application of Job Analysis Data

Over time different approaches to dealing with data of job description have been developed. Some method designed to study jobs include :

1. Functional Job Analysis: The rationale behind the Functional Job Analysis(FJA) is that jobs must be defined in terms of interaction between the task, the individual responsible for accomplishing the task and the environment in which the task is to be performed. FJA was developed by Sidney A Fine during the 1950s as a part of Functional Occupational Classification Project that resulted in the third edition of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles.
2. Critical Incident Technique : In contrast to FJA where the experts make judgment about the contents of the job, the critical incidents technique (CIT) utilizes the actual episodes of on the job behavior. This job analysis method grew out of experiences of selecting candidates for flight school during World War II. Standards of acceptance or rejection were lax, and vague reasons such as "lack of inherent flying ability" were used for disqualifying individuals who might have been good crew members.
3. Job Element Method: this method of job analysis was developed by Ernest Primoff at the federal Office of Personnel Management and uses as its focus the elements that a worker uses in performing a specific job. Job elements include Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (KSAs) as well as willingness, interest, and personal characteristics
4. Position Analysis Questionnaire :The Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ) was developed by MacCormic and associates (1972) on the assumption that there is an underlying taxonomy to all jobs. That is in contrast to all other methods, the PAQ approach focuses on broad categories common to all jobs rather than on individual elements of specific jobs.

There are two basics ways in which work is organised. The first is related to the flow of authority and is known as organization structure or merely organization. The second relates to flow of work itself from one operation to another and is known as procedure. Synonyms are method, system, and work flow. Alert managers usually recognize the behavioral aspects of organization structure or "flow of authority" because of the superior-subordinate relationship which it establishes, but more often than not they ignore or overlook the behavioral aspects of work flow. The reason that work flow and the layout over which it flows are engineering factors, are to be distinguished from human factors. In the usual case however, work flow has many behavioral aspects because it involves people interaction as they perform their work.

One management's most fundamental idea is systems and method improvement, by which it seeks to make optimum use of division of labour, and specialization and to achieve order and balance in the performance of work. However, as indicated in the quotation introducing this chapter, workers do not lie to be "engineered" in methods improvement. They perceive that improvement is measure in technical terms and that the human dissatisfaction caused by the "improvement" are generally overlooked. The goal of methods improvement is greater productivity, but sometimes it brings human compilations which reduce effectiveness and offset the technical advantages gained.

This part discusses different aspects of work methods. Emphasis is upon the flow of work among people, rather than the personal work methods of an isolated individual. Subjects discussed are flow of work and different work system.