UGC NET Study Notes on Job Analysis – Part 1

• Job Analysis is a systematic and detailed study of jobs, to know its nature and to determine the characteristics of people to be employed on various jobs.
• Complete and detailed information relating to the nature and requirements of the jobs to be filled is necessary for determining the kind of personnel required. Such information can be gathered through the process of Job Analysis.
• It involves the collection of various facts regarding jobs and their analysis.
• It also includes the study and collection of necessary information relating to the responsibilities and operations of a specific job.
• A job can be analysed after it has been designed and someone is already performing that job.
• The data relating to the job may be :
  • The nature of the job
  • Operations or processes involved in doing the job
  • Materials and machines required to do the job
  • Qualities to be possessed by the employee to do the job.
  • Relation of the analysed job with other jobs present in the organisation.

USES OF JOB ANALYSIS

• Manpower Requirement
• Organisational Design
• Recruitment and Selection
• Placement and Orientation
• Training and development
• Job evaluation
• Job designing
• Performance appraisal

PROCESS OF JOB ANALYSIS

• Organising and planning for the job analysis programme.
• Obtaining current job design information
• Conducting ‘needs research’ – Investigate to determine which organisation, managers or staff requires job analysis or output from job analysis.
• Priority setting in the jobs to be analysed.
• Collecting Job data
• Redesign the job, if necessary.
• Preparing job classifications and job descriptions.
• Developing job specifications.

TECHNIQUES OF JOB ANALYSIS

• Questionnaire
• Observation Method
• Interview method
• Record – The personnel department maintains a record of the facts regarding job and jobholders. The analyst collects data and information from the records maintained by the personnel department.
• Critical Incidents – Employees are asked to provide information about incidents concerning the job on the basis of their past experience. The effective and ineffective critical incident will be available and can be analysed.
• Job Performance – The job analyst himself performs the job under study to obtain a real-time first-hand experience of the actual tastes, social and physical demand and the job environment. It is not suitable for jobs that are hazardous or jobs that require extensive training.

Quantitative Methods of Job Analysis

1. Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ):

• A highly structured Job Analysis Questionnaire, which measures job characteristics quantitatively and also correlates them with human traits.
• PAQ provides a quantitative score of any job in terms of the rating of the job on the basic activities. PAQ’s results can be used to compare with relative jobs and can be used to assign pay levels to each job.
• PAQ contains items, which represents a basic element that may or may not play an important role in the job. 194 Job elements were covered by PAQ and they are grouped into 6 Sections:
  • Information Input
  • Mental Processes
  • Work Output
  • Relationship with other persons
  • Job Context
  • Job-related variables.
• Earlier PAQ had only 187 job elements while the 2005 version, the Enhanced PAQ or PaQe contains 300 elements in total.

2. Management Position Description Questionnaire (MPDQ)

• It has 208 items.
• These items are grouped into 13 categories.
• It is in a narrative format, as a result, it requires proper training before it can be used correctly and would take almost 2 hours to complete the questionnaire.

3. Functional Job Analysis (FJA)

• Worker oriented approach of job analysis.
• It examines the components of people, data and things.
• FJA also rates :
  • The extent to which specific instructions are required to execute the task.
  • The extent to which judgement and reasoning skills are required to execute the task.
  • The mathematical ability required to execute the task
  • The verbal and language abilities required to perform the task

FJA then identifies the performance standards and training requirements. FJA helps in answering the question, “To meet these standards and to do this task, what training does the worker require?” There is no best method in job analysis. The choice of the method depends upon the purpose to be served by the data.

JOB DESCRIPTION

• A job description is the product of Job Analysis as the data collected through Job analysis acts as the base for the job description.
• Job Description specifies what, how and why the job is to be done.
• It classifies the job into various sub-jobs and analyses each sub-job.
• The objective of the Job description is to differentiate a particular job from other jobs and to set its outer limits.
• Describing the nature and constituents of a job.

Contents of Job Description

• Proper Job title
• Job summary – refers to the contents of the job in terms of activities or tasks performed.
• Job location
• Duties and Responsibilities
• Machines Tools and materials – describes the machines, tools and materials required in the performance of each job. It will indicate the complexity and characteristics of the job.
• Working conditions
• Nature of supervision
• Relation to other jobs – the jobs immediately below and above are mentioned so that it indicates whom the job holder will report to and who will report to him.

JOB SPECIFICATION

• Job specification is another output of job analysis.
• It is a statement showing the minimum acceptable qualities a person should possess for the proper performance of a job.
• It specifies the type of person required in terms of the Educational qualification one should possess, the previous experience, aptitude etc. and also assist in the selection of appropriate personnel for the job.

A proper job specification should include:

• Physical Characteristics required like height, weight, vision etc.
• Psychological and social characteristics like emotional stability, decision making etc.
• Mental characteristics like general intelligence, judgement, memory etc.
• Personal characteristics like education, family background etc.

Job Description vs Job Specification

• Job description is the summary of the responsibilities, duties and other features relating to the job while Job specification is a statement of the qualities the person doing the job should possess.
• Job description measures the job while Job specification measures the person handling the job.
• Job description assists the candidate in completely understanding the requirements of the job which are to be fulfilled by him while Job specification assists the management in selecting a proper match for the job.

JOB DESIGN

• It is an attempt to create a proper match between the requirements of the job and human attributes.
• It involves proper organising of the components of the job and the pattern of interaction among the members of the workgroup.
• It deals with developing an appropriate design for the job to improve efficiency as well as satisfaction.
• Job design is a process which integrates the content of a job like tasks, functions, relationships, the rewards associated with the job and the qualification to be possessed for each job, in a way that meets the needs of the employees as well as the organisation.

Mock tests for UGC NET Exam

UGC NET Online Coaching

Thanks!
Score better. Go BYJU’S Exam Prep.