Chapter 5 Workforce Planning

What were the guiding principles of the workforce development plan as they related to the Diablo Valley College example?

Criteria for making decisions that support goals

Looking at online databases, observations and interviews are part of which step of the job analysis process?

collecting data

The job design should address factors such as what, how and how many tasks are done, and:

in what order tasks are done

These are the two key elements of an assessment:

reliability and validity

OPM explains there are two key elements to an assessment:

reliability and validity Reliability is "the extent to which an assessment tool is consistent or free from random error in measurement." Validity is "the extent to which an assessment tool measures what it is intended to measure."

The purpose of a job analysis is to establish job duties and responsibilities, conditions of the job and:

required knowledge, skills, and abilities

A key difference between a job description and job specifications is that:

Details in job description are not personal

What can be done if it's impractical to conduct a job analysis of every role?

Group jobs into categories that have similar characteristics

When it's impractical to conduct a job analysis of every role, the human resources staff/department can:

Group jobs into categories that have similar characteristics

Where would a job code go in the job description?

Job Title

HRZone best defined workforce planning as:

"the process of ensuring an organization has current and future access to the human capital it needs to perform effectively."

Which of the choices below is the best definition of "workforce planning" as it relates to today's operating realities?

"the process of ensuring an organization has current and future access to the human capital it needs to perform effectively."

Steps in Job Analysis

1. Establish the organizational relevance of the specific role -Identify how the job relates to the organization's strategy. Reality check: If there isn't a clear connection, the job may not be necessary 2. Benchmark positions, if necessary. - If it's impractical to conduct an analysis of every role, jobs can be grouped into categories that have similar characteristics. This is analogous to grouping jobs into categories for compensation purposes 3. Identify inputs -Determine what data sources will be used and how the information will be collected. Review data and information; clarify any questions 4. Draft the job description -Formats vary, but there are common and required elements 5. Finalize the job description - Review the draft job description with the job supervisor and make revisions as appropriate. The supervisor should approve the final job description

What is the ultimate outcome of the workforce planning process?

a workforce development plan

The overall goal of job design is to:

increase employee motivation, productivity, and satisfaction

In OPM's recommended three-step process to developing valid assessment, "designing the assessment strategy" should encompass:

developing one or more assessments to determine a person's ability to successfully perform a job

Which of the following is NOT one of the purposes of a job analysis?

establish a career trajectory for the position

A job analysis serves four major purposes. Which of the following is NOT one of those purposes?

establish a succession plan for the position

The US Office of Personnel Management suggests the rating of tasks for:

frequency and importance

"Essential functions" are must-have capabilities and should be included in what part of the job description?

job summary

A job code for the open position might be found in the ________section of the job description.

job title

Job analysis serves four primary purposes:

1. Establish and document job-related competencies 2. Identify the job-relatedness of essential tasks and competencies 3. Establish the legal basis for assessment and selection procedures/decisions 4.Establish the basis for determining the relative worth

Job Description

A written statement of what a position entails: what is done, how it's done and under what conditions

Assessment

Any test or procedure used to measure an individual's employment or career-related qualifications and interests An improperly designed assessment may introduce bias and undermine diversification and equity efforts. A related challenge is lack of job relevance and/or outdated job criteria. Assessments that fail to measure job-related skills or capabilities may constitute a basis for a claim of discrimination

Job Analysis

As described by the OPM, a job analysis is "a study of what workers do on the job, what competencies are necessary to do it, what resources are used in doing it, and the conditions under which it is done." a systematic procedure for gathering, documenting, and analyzing information about the content, context, and requirements of the job a job analysis is the foundation of human resources management. A valid job analysis provides data that should be used to develop effective recruitment, qualification and assessment, selection, performance management, and career development methodologies

Workforce planning is usually generally done based on___________

A multi-year horizon (for example, 3-5 or 5-10 years) and consists of a six-step process

The ultimate outcome of the workforce planning process is:

a workforce development plan

Job design addresses what and how tasks are done, how many tasks are done, and what other element?

in what order the tasks are done

Your team is discussing how to determine the organization's demand for labor. Which of the following would you recommend as a first step?

Conduct an evaluation of current resources

Your Chief Human Resources Officer is committed to improving employee motivation and believes that job design is that way to achieve that end. You've been charged with making a recommendation on how to make it so. Your job design research indicates that the best way to improve motivation is to:

Establish relevance and significance

What source of data is an organization's organizational charts and position descriptions?

Internal Sources

The Workplace Planning Process

1. Strategic planning - Align the workforce planning process with the organization's strategic plan and annual business plan to support the achievement of long-term (strategic plan) and short-time (annual performance) goals and objectives. 2. Current workforce analysis - Analyze current resources, including projections for training and development and turnover. 3. Identification of future workforce requirements - Develop specifications for the types, quantity, and location of human resources required to accomplish strategic objectives 4. Gap analysis. - Identify the gaps between current and projected workforce needs 5. Action planning - Identify how to close resource gaps, including the development of implementation plans and associated evaluation metrics. Plans may encompass a range of activities including recruiting, training, reskilling, organizational restructuring, contracting/outsourcing, automation, and succession planning 6. Execution and evaluation - Execution involves, in brief, establishing roles and responsibilities and securing required resources. Evaluation involves monitoring progress relative to goals and making adjustments as necessary to reflect changes in plan assumptions or other relevant factors

Delphi Technique

A decision-making technique in which group members do not meet face-to-face but respond in writing to questions posed by the group leader Originally developed by the global policy think tank RAND in the 1950s to forecast the impact of technology on warfare The Delphi Technique uses a panel of experts to arrive at a consensus-based on multiple rounds of questions and review of a statistical representation of the consolidated response

You're walking your team through the job analysis process. Which of the following is a step you present?

A draft version of the job description should be routed by the job supervisor for review and comment

Job Analysis vs. Job Descriptions vs. Job Specifications

A job analysis is an internal document that serves as the basis for both job descriptions and job specifications. As discussed in the prior section, a job description summarizes key details of the job, including its purpose, essential functions, and job specifications Job specifications are a subset of the job description that detail the minimum acceptable qualifications for the job **A key distinction is that the details listed under the job description are not personal; they are aspects of the job. That is, the job description is what is to be done. Job specifications reflect what's required to complete the job and are personal in the sense that each candidate or employee will have a different job specification profile or combination of education, experience, and expertise.

A staff member has asked you to clarify the difference between job analysis, job description and job specifications. Which of the following is an accurate response?

A job analysis serves as the basis for both job descriptions and job specifications

Your team is preparing to conduct a number of job analyses and you want to set the stage. Which of the following points should you emphasize?

A job foundation is the foundation of human resources management

Markov Analysis

A method for tracking the pattern of employee movements through various jobs Named after Russian mathematician Andrei Andreyevich Markov In an HR context, Markov analysis can be used to track the pattern of employee movements within the organization and develop a transitional probability matrix for forecasting internal supply by specific categories, such as job title, role and gender.

The external labor supply is a function of:

A range of economic and qualitative factors, like availability of housing and transportation

What will impact an external labor supply?

A range of economic and qualitative factors, such as quality of life and availability of housing

Workforce planning, in order to be successful, must first

Align with the organization's strategic plan and annual business plan

Louisa has to respond to an organizational need for a possible new position. In which order should she plan her work?

Conduct a job analysis to serve as the basis for a job description and job specifications

You are facilitating a workforce planning kick-off meeting and a member of your staff asks how workforce planning relates to business strategy. Which of the following is the best response?

Business strategy drives workforce planning

Conducting a job analysis includes the following processes:

Collecting Data. Gathering information from published sources, observation, interviews, online databases, such as O*Net or career sites. Developing Tasks. Developing a description of the "activities an employee performs on a regular basis in order to carry out the functions of the job." Developing Competencies. Describing the knowledge, skills, abilities, behaviors, and other characteristics required for the successful performance of the role or occupational function. For information on how to write competencies, refer to OPM's Competencies Quick Tips sheet. Validating & Rating Tasks & Competencies. Subject matter expert (SME) review and rating of tasks and competencies. A director supervisor or highly accomplished incumbent would be considered SMEs. Finalizing Tasks & Competencies. Finalization of tasks and competencies; those that are not rated by SMEs are required to successfully perform the job are dropped. The job analysis should be documented for validity and dated to provide a reference for updates.

You are leading a HR team charged with assessing current human resources. One of the steps in the process is:

Develop a profile of your current workforce including numbers and competencies

The OPM recommends a 3-step process to developing valid assessments:

Identify job-relevant competencies. Based on a job analysis, discussed below Design the assessment strategy. Develop one or more assessments to determine a person's ability to successfully perform a job Identify assessment tools. Identify and evaluate assessment tools such as cognitive ability and job knowledge tests, work samples and structured interviews

An organization's organizational charts and position descriptions are examples of what kind of sources of data?

Internal sources

Elements of a Job Description:

Job Title. Job title and other reference information such as a job code. Reporting Relationships. Identification of the department the job is a part of, the position the role reports to and any supervisory responsibilities (i.e., number of staff supervised). Job Summary. A brief (1-2 sentence) overview of the role, including its purpose, level and scope of responsibility. Essential Functions. A representative description of the essential tasks, duties and responsibilities of the position. Although in templates this section is often titled "Job Duties and Responsibilities," using the terminology "essential functions" reinforces the point that these are considered "must have" capabilities. That is, they are required for the successful performance of the job and cannot be modified. For fairness and legal defensibility, these should include all but only those specific skills or abilities that are necessary. Employers who do not have job descriptions with current, defensible essential functions may find themselves unable to defend against a claim of discrimination. Job Specifications. This section identifies the minimum acceptable qualifications for the job including education, experience, and specialized knowledge or skills, if applicable. If applicable, a job description may also list a few preferred qualifications, which may reflect a preference for additional education, experience, knowledge, skills or ability. For example, the job may specify a minimum of a bachelor's degree but list a preference for a master's degree or a Human Resource certification.

Which of the following is a true statement?

Job analysis serves as a basis for job description and job specifications

You attended a presentation on job design this morning and are reflecting on what you learned. Which of the following best summarizes the concept?

Job design is a way of organizing a job to increase satisfaction, motivation, and safety

"Do I need a college degree for this position?" wonders an applicant. This information would be housed in which section of the job description?

Job specifications

"How much experience do I need to apply for this position?" wonders an applicant. This information would be housed in which section of the job description?

Job specifications

In which area would you find the minimum required qualifications for a position—in the job analysis, job specifications, or job description?

Job specifications

A method for tracking movement of employees within an organization and an aid for succession planning is called the:

Markov Process

You're briefing your team on sources of information for job analysis. Which of the following is the most comprehensive source of information?

O*Net Online

In order to compile and analyze human resource data, you must first understand the why you're doing the work, what your deliverable should be, and what steps you should take:

Purpose. Provides the data for the workforce plan, using the systematic analysis to reveal the department's workforce gaps. Deliverable. A comprehensive analysis of the department's staffing and competency gaps and a list of the department's classifications in order of risk level. Primary Steps. There are four primary steps, as follows: - Develop a profile of your current workforce that includes both staffing (composition such as the number of staff and demographics) and competencies (knowledge, skills, and abilities). Use the results from the strategic planning phase to project future human resource needs. Perform a gap analysis to identify current and future staff and competency needs. -Develop and prioritize a list of human resource risks to inform the workforce action planning.

Developing a job design model is based on the following five job characteristics

Skill Variety or the "degree to which a job requires a variety of different activities in carrying out the work, involving the use of a number of different skills and talents of a person." Task Identity or the "degree to which the job requires completion of a whole, identifiable piece of work; that is, doing a job from beginning to end with visible outcome." Task Significance or the "degree to which the job has a substantial impact on the lives of other people, whether those people are in the immediate organization or in the world at large." Autonomy or the "degree to which the job provides substantial freedom, independence, and discretion to the individual in scheduling the work and in determining the procedure to be used in carrying it out." Feedback or the "degree to which carrying out the work activities required by the job provides the individual with direct and clear information about the effectiveness of his or her performance."

You are responsible for managing your organization's workforce planning project. Which of the following should you emphasize in your final deliverable?

The connection between the workforce development plan goals and the organization's strategic plan

You're describing the elements of a job description to your staff. Which of the following is a point you want to emphasize?

The essential functions should include all "must have" capabilities

You're walking your team through the details of the job analysis process. Which of the following is a step you emphasize?

The list of tasks should only include those that are frequent and important

In order to understand and support short- and long-term organizational goals, with what process(es) should workforce planning be closely aligned?

The organization's strategic and annual business planning

What does OPM stand for?

United States Office of Personal Management

Job Design

Work arrangement (or rearrangement) aimed at reducing or overcoming job dissatisfaction and employee alienation arising from repetitive and mechanistic tasks Refers to the way that a set of tasks, or an entire job, is organized" and addresses factors such as: - What tasks are done. - How the tasks are done. - How many tasks are done. - In what order the tasks are done.

O*Net data is organized in the following six major domains:

Worker Characteristics. Enduring characteristics that may influence both performance and the capacity to acquire knowledge and skills required for effective work performance. Worker Requirements. Descriptors referring to work-related attributes acquired and/or developed through experience and education. Experience Requirements. Requirements related to previous work activities and explicitly linked to certain types of work activities. Occupational Requirements. A comprehensive set of variables or detailed elements that describe what various occupations require. Workforce Characteristics. Variables that define and describe the general characteristics of occupations that may influence occupational requirements. Occupation-Specific Information. Variables or other Content Model elements of selected or specific occupations

When conducting an assessment of your current human resources, what are you assessing?

Your employees' ability to meet projected future requirements

In Diablo Valley College's workforce development plan, what did the document feature?

a vision statement

Job relevance, job enlargement, and job enrichment are three broad theories related to:

job design

Frederick Herzberg suggested that a job should use the full ability of the employee and provide sufficient challenge. This is the theory of:

job enrichment

When a job uses the full ability of the employee and provides that employee with sufficient challenge, that is considered to be _________________, which is a theory supporting job design.

job enrichment

If a job has become so specialized that the employee is bored and feels alienated, the HR professional should look to what theory supporting job design?

job relevance

Specialization can increase productivity, but it can also result in boredom and create a sense of alienation. This is the antithesis of the___________ theory that supports job design.

job relevance

There are three broad theories of good job design related to human motivation

job relevance, job enlargement, and job enrichment

Where does an HR manager add in minimum requirements for education - in the job analysis, the job specification, or the job description?

job specification

Diablo Valley College's workforce development plan featured a:

mission statement

Generalized information about a thousand different standardized jobs throughout the country can be found:

on the O*Net website

Workforce planning

process of ensuring an organization has current and future access to the human capital it needs to perform effectively - a process for aligning human resources—as a function and the people—in support of the organization's strategy over a long-term planning horizon - it is a complex research and design problem that involves developing a detailed understanding of a role, it's requirements, and how that role relates to organizational strategy and to other roles within the organization.

The US Office of Personnel Management recommends rating tasks, and those should include:

ratings for frequency and importance

Which of the elements below is considered in job design?

safety and health

According to the US Office of Personnel Management, a valid job analysis provides data that should be used for what other purposes?

selection and performance measurement

In assessing human resources, one should develop a profile that includes:

staff levels, demographics, and competencies

Janel is performing a human resources assessment. What should be included in the profile she develops?

staff levels, demographics, and competencies

The purpose of a job analysis is to establish all that a job entails—duties and responsibilities, knowledge, skills and abilities of the employee, and what other element?

the conditions of the job

The organization's demand for labor will be based on a range of both macro- and micro-level factors including

the economy, geopolitical relations, government and regulatory policy, industry growth, competitive factors, and trends in technology and consumer preferences

When Shereen is conducting a job analysis, her first step will be:

to determine how the job relates to the organization's strategy

Role of Human Resource Management

to ensure that an organization has the talent—the right combination of skills, knowledge, aptitude, and attitude—to achieve its strategic goals

The primary purpose of job design:

to increase employee motivation, productivity and satisfaction

What is the intended purpose of job design?

to reduce or overcome job dissatisfaction