TMA1 2014 Q2: Job Analysis

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TMA1 2014 Q2: Job Analysis

Analysing jobs involves determining in detail what the job is about and what kind of people the organisation should hire for the job.

a. Define the elements of a job analysis, and discuss its significance for human resource management.

b. Consider the job of a customer service representative, who service telephone calls from customers of an online sale retailer through ecatalogs.
What measures can the employer take to design this job to make it efficient and motivating? What might be the potential drawbacks or challenges in designing of this job? Justify your answer.   


Tutor's comment on b): State the approaches used.
To redesign the job to emphasize the mechanistic approach, you should discuss concepts such as more specialisation.
To redesign the job to emphasize the motivational approach, you should discuss making the job more complex.
To redesign the job to emphasize the biological approach, you should discuss adjusting or making changes in the equipment or job environment.
To redesign the job to emphasize the perceptual/motor approach, you should discuss ways to make the job less demanding mentally.

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EXAMPLE ANSWER 2

a)
Job analysis is defined under www.wikipedia.org as a family of procedures to identify a content of a job in terms of activities involved and attributes or job requirements needed to perform the activities.

Job analysis collects all relevant information such as work activities, human behaviors and performance standards. The use of job analysis is for various purposes such as recruitment and selection, compensation schemes and for training needs.

Job analysis is divided into two elements.

1. Job description.
This element describes the job’s attributes. Examples of these are duties of that job, responsibilities, working conditions, working hours and supervisory activities.


2. Job specification
This element focuses on the particular individual’s personal attributes. Examples of these are education level, skills and working experience and also personality behavior.

The significance of job analysis for HRM is as follows:-

1. Recruitment and selection
Job analysis specifies the job responsibilities and also the required individual behavior needed to perform the job. It helps the management to determine what sort of people is suitable for the job that they need.

2. Compensation
Compensation, usually in the form of salary and bonuses are largely dependent on the job’s skill level needed, experience, performance of that individual and safety hazards. As such management can categories them into different classes and provide appropriate compensation for each class of job.

3. Performance appraisal
Companies need to make sure their staff is working as expected or to perform above expectation. As such, job analysis collects such information and enables the management to make comparisons between actual standard set and budgeted standard. This also will lead to either training for underperforming staff and bonuses for staff that exceeds expectation.

4. Training
Job analysis provides human resource managers a specific idea on which course to send their employees for training. This is either to increase staff knowledge and performance on their job, or to give second chances for underperforming employees to be more competent in their jobs.


b)
Job design, according to www.businessdictionary.com, is a work arrangement aimed at reducing work dissatisfaction and employee resentment coming from repetitive or routine tasks. However, proper care needs to be exercised as not all employees dislike routine tasks.

Customer service representatives are persons who take calls from customers, who vary from enquiries about the products all the way to product after sales trouble shooting. They are exposed to different customer behavior, and their job are routine in nature. They do not get to see their customers face to face and usually stuck inside a work cubicle until their shift is over.

Measures that employer can take to design a customer service representative who service telephone calls from customers are as follows:-

1. Flexibility of workplace
Motorists in Cheras spend up to 5 hours on the road, according to a survey made by The Star Online (2014). This scene is common in major cities in Malaysia. This creates unnecessary stress to employees commuting to and from work. Since this job does not require actual physical presence in an office, employers can arrange a “work from home” scheme with their employees. As long as the employees can generate the same or even better productivity from home, it would be a win-win situation for all parties involved. This increases motivation and efficiency.

2. Encourage employees to be more efficient
Involve the employees in redesigning workflow, and set performance standards for number of calls taken, number of queries resolved, and customer satisfaction index. Discourage employees from working overtime. As such, employees can do their tasks efficiently and enable them to do whatever they want right after their shift finishes. Reward those employees who exceed expectation.

3. Send employees for their desired courses
Employees get very frustrated when customer asks them a question but they themselves do not know how to answer the questions. It gives them a feeling of helplessness and open themselves to be criticized by their customers, as customers making telephone calls expects their problems to be resolved immediately. Employers should give them training on what these employees feel they lacking in performing the job efficiently. Once they are empowered, they will be able to do their job more effectively, and increase the number of customer satisfaction as well. At the end of the day, they will feel that they have accomplished something in their job.

4. Job rotation
Each customer service representative has specific roles to play. Employer can switch roles from time to time to so these representatives won’t be bored.


The potential drawbacks are as follows:-

1. Lack of training
When employers do job rotation, employees will have to learn how to do their colleague’s job. They might not be interested in job rotation, and lack clarity in performing this job. This will make them more prone to making mistakes as that is not their area of expertise.

2. Flexibility challenges
Since employer employed flexibility in terms of workplace, it would be hard for employers to track the movement of their employees. It will be even harder to group all of them together for an emergency meeting. However, this can be resolved by video conferencing.

3. Undue stress
Some of the customer service representatives like to be status quo. They do not want their job to be changed in any way. As such, when employers introduce job enrichment, they might not be able to adjust to these changes, especially if it’s on a short notice.

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EXAMPLE ANSWER 1

a)
Job Analysis is mainly conducted to match the right job to the right person with the abilities and skills needed. This is to ensure the quality of employment. Two main purpose of job analysis is to extract and prepare job description and specification. The job shall be selected first prior to preparing the job analysis elements. Then, information shall be gathered to determine the type of data to be collected, method of data collection and also data collection tools. The data can either be gathered in qualitative method or quantitative. For instance, questionnaire can be distributed to get the information, or else the classic interview and observation can be used. Some companies also use the past analysis done on the particular position or job as a guideline. After the data collections are done, it shall be processed to get the elements such as job description, job specification, job classification and evaluation, job design and also performance appraisal.

Job Description
Explains about the duties or task which is needed to be carried out by the selected employee. It also explains about the money, material and people that will be handled by the individual assigned for the job. Job description also explains about the job hazards and environment involved during the job is carried out. The inter-relation with other departments which is involved with the particular job is also explained if required.

Job Specification
In this element, it explains about the attributes needed by the employee to adapt to the specific job. It enables the employee to understand the physical characteristics needed such as education background, gender requirement, age, experience needed and also specific skills needed physically and psychologically. Psychologically, it is very important for the employee to be aware on the attitude, aptitude and personality characteristics needed for the job.

Job Classification and Job Evaluation
This element is mainly used to group the employees with similar task or job description in a cluster, for instance in education line, there are cluster of academic staffs and also cluster of non- academic, administration staffs. This will make the role of Human Resource easier to manage them in terms of rules and regulations, trainings, briefings and more.
Job Evaluation is used for evaluating the salary range according to the person’s ability or skills shown or accordance to their profile upon hiring. Human Resource department of an organization will also do a comparison research on salary scale in other organizations as well to match the pay for the particular job.

Job Design
Job design is basically done to meet the expectation of the employer on the job, and also for the employee to feel content with the job scope given. Job design allows the employer to tweak the job according to needs of the organization that requires the employee to fulfill for a particular job. Employee on the other hand will feel the job is interesting and challenging through the job enlargement done and also through job enrichment they will feel more motivated to work and free to make certain decisions.

Performance Appraisal
Data collected through analysis will enable the human resource department to develop appraisal instrument to evaluating the performance of the employee. This will be useful to detect whether the job is carried out well by the employee and also enhancement or development needed for the employee. This will help to increase the efficiency of the employee as well as the organization.

Job analysis is very useful for Human Resource Management as it helps in personnel planning.
It also helps the employers to do performance appraisal and to send employees for needed training to suit the job. Recruitment and selection process is also made easier through job analysis. Other aspects such as compensation or health and safety programs can be planned and carried out accordingly. Work scheduling and career enhancement planning can also be done more efficiently.




B)
According to (Herzberg. F et al. 1959), worker’s have a basic need or he coined it as ‘hygiene factors’  which the basic need for the worker. If not getting this basic need, they will be unsatisfied or dissatisfied. But if this basic need is fulfill, doesn’t mean that the workers will be satisfied, they just simply ignore it. They will make an issue only they dissatisfied. For example is the workers salary, they will get it at the end of every month. When they get their salary doesn’t mean that they satisfied their job but an issue will raise or they will be dissatisfied when during the payday, they didn’t get the salary. This factor is just there to fulfill workers minimum requirement. Among this factors are; company policy and regulation, supervision, interpersonal relations, status, working conditions, security and salary.
        On the other hand, another factor whereby when it’s fulfill, worker will be satisfied. It’s call a ‘motivation factors’, which when it’s not fulfill, workers not just dissatisfied, but they will be not satisfied. A not satisfied worker; will not support the productivity improvement and will not do the job at their level best. In opposite, the satisfied worker will always feel motivated to contribute their level best as well as put extra effort when working. Among this factors are; growth, work itself, responsibility, achievement, advancement and recognition. Both factors are called Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory or  Herzberg’s two-factor theory.
In the context of improving work efficiency and increase motivation of customer service representative whom function are to serve the customers by phone calls, employers first need to look on above motivation factors and implement it. On the growth factors, employers need to ensure that their personal growth is well handled. Training need to be consistence as they need to maintain their job performance at high level and getting new skills. The work itself need to be properly define to ensure worker doesn’t feel that they’re doing a routine job daily. The job need to have a meaning and at the same time incorporate a new challenge to the job to make it more fascinating. One example from this context is maybe the job rotation. They might be classified in their job by the types of items or etc. So to enhance this factor and give meaning to it, workers should be rotated in timely basis. Another factor is the responsibility. By giving the responsibility for example in term of target or number of success  ‘close deal’, worker will feel responsible and motivated and at the same time will increase their efficiency. Achievement and recognition is normally the same factor whereby the employer need to gradually recognize their top achievers (using certain indicator or KPI) in  proper manner. The recognition maybe for achievement of personal or in group or team. For advancement, employers need to make a transparent career advancement so all the worker are motivated and they will know that upon getting the consistent result, they will be climbing a job category. Beside that, employer can also provide the child care center and kindergarten and provide a staggered time for a mother (their worker) to go breast feeding their infant. This is the practical approach as it can give a women worker relief and worry free of their children condition and in result would increase their efficiency. On top of that, employer can design an office in such away that it doesn’t look dull, stereotype and old office environment. This modification can bring a good mood and good feeling to work.  
The potential challenges of this job function might comes from few factors. Incompetent worker is among the factors. Dealing with customer even through a telephone need a different  set of skills. For example when talking with the customer through telephone, worker need to smile in order to create good talking atmosphere. Receiving phone calls ethics should be imposed and strictly adhered. Incompetent worker who doesn’t follow this simple rule will give bad image to the company and customer will ease away. Normally, the conversation details is recorded to monitor the worker attitude towards customer. The art of closing the deal also very important skill set which needed to be mastery by all the customer service representative.
In the online sale retailer business, the goods are so many and varies, worker need to be updated regularly to ensure they know the spec of all the goods or at list can refer to it quickly whenever required by the customer.