chapter 4

STRUCTURES BASED ON JOBS, PEOPLE, OR BOTH

Exhibit 4.1 outlines the process for constructing a work-related internal structure. No matter what the approach, the process begins by looking at people at work. Job-based structures look at what people are doing and the expected outcomes; skill- and competency-based structures look at the person. However, the underlying purpose of each phase of the process, called out in the left-hand side of the exhibit, remains the same for both job- and person-based structures: (1) collect and summarize work content information that identifies similarities and differences, (2) determine what to value, (3) assess the relative value, and (4) translate the relative value into an internal structure. (The blank areas in the person-based structure will be filled in when we get to Chapter 6.) This chapter and Chapter 5 focus on the job-based structure. Exhibit 4.2 is part of a job description for a registered nurse. The job summary section provides an overview of the job. The section on relationships to other jobs demonstrates where the job fits in the organization structure: which jobs are supervised by this jobholder, which job supervises this jobholder, and the nature of any internal and external relationships. The section on essential responsibilities elaborates on the summary: "Provides a written assessment of patient within one hour of admission and at least once a shift." Collecting information on these essential responsibilities is the heart of job analysis.

JOB-BASED APPROACH: MOST COMMON

Exhibit 4.3 shows how job analysis and the resulting job description fit into the process of creating an internal structure. Job analysis provides the underlying information. It identifies the content of the job. This content serves as input for describing and valuing work. Job analysis is the systematic process of collecting information that identifies similarities and differences in the work. Exhibit 4.3 also lists the major decisions in designing a job analysis: (1) Why are we performing job analysis? (2) What information do we need? (3) How should we collect it? (4) Who should be involved? (5) How useful are the results? Why Perform Job Analysis? - Potential uses for job analysis have been suggested for every major human resource function. Often the type of job analysis data needed varies by function. For example, identifying the skills and experience required to perform the work clarifies hiring and promotion standards and identifies training needs. In performance evaluation, both employees and supervisors look to the required behaviors and results expected in a job to help assess performance. IBM identified every role (490 in all) performed by its 300,000-plus workers, managers, and executives. For example, IBM's vice president for learning has the roles of learning leader and manager. IBM also measures and monitors 4,000 skill sets. - An internal structure based on job-related information provides both managers and employees a work-related rationale for pay differences. Employees who understand this rationale can see where their work fits into the bigger picture and can direct their behavior toward organization objectives. Job analysis data also help managers defend their decisions when challenged. - In compensation, job analysis has two critical uses: (1) It establishes similarities and differences in the work contents of the jobs, and (2) it helps establish an internally fair and aligned job structure. If jobs have equal content, then in all likelihood the pay established for them will be equal (unless they are in different geographies). If, on the other hand, the job content differs, then the differences, along with the market rates paid by competitors, are part of the rationale for paying jobs differently. - The key issue for compensation decision makers is still to ensure that the data collected are useful and acceptable to the employees and managers involved. As the arrows in Exhibit 4.3 indicate, collecting job information is only an interim step, not an end in itself.

JOB ANALYSIS PROCEDURES

Exhibit 4.4 summarizes some job analysis terms and their relationship to each other. Job analysis usually collects information about specific tasks or behaviors. A group of tasks performed by one person makes up a position. Identical positions make a job, and broadly similar jobs combine into a job family. The U.S. federal government, one of the biggest users of job analysis data, has developed a step-by-step approach to conducting conventional job analysis. The government's procedures, shown in Exhibit 4.5, include developing preliminary information, interviewing jobholders and supervisors, and then using the information to create and verify job descriptions. The picture that emerges from reading the steps in the exhibit is of a very stable workplace where the division from one job to the next is clear, with little overlap. In this workplace, jobs follow a steady progression in a hierarchy of increasing responsibility, and the relationship between jobs is clear. So is how to qualify for promotion into a higher-level job. While some argue that such a traditional, stable structure is a shrinking part of the workplace landscape, such structures nevertheless persist, in varying degrees, in many large organizations. Thus, the federal Department of Labor's description of conventional job analysis provides a useful "how-to" guide.

Three people sit in front of their keyboards scanning their monitors. One is a customer representative in Ohio, checking the progress of an order for four dozen web-enabled cell phones from a retailer in Texas, who just placed the four dozen into his shopping cart on the company's website. A second is an engineer logging in to the project design software for the next generation of these phones. Colleagues in China working on the same project last night (day, in China) sent some suggestions for changes in the new design; the team in the United States will work on the project today and have their work waiting for their Chinese colleagues when they come to work in the morning. A third employee, in Ireland, is using the business software recently installed worldwide to analyze the latest sales reports. In today's workplace, people working for the same company no longer need to be down the hallway from one another. They can be on-site and overseas. Networks and business software link them all. Yet all their jobs are part of the organization's internal structure.

If pay is to be based on work performed, some way is needed to discover and describe the differences and similarities among these jobs—observation alone is not enough. Job analysis is that systematic method. Two products result from a job analysis. A job description is the list of tasks, duties, and responsibilities that make up a job. These are observable actions. A job specification is the list of knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics that are necessary for an individual to have to perform the job. Thus, the description focuses on the job and the specification focuses on the person.

Level of Analysis

The job analysis terms defined in Exhibit 4.4 are arranged in a hierarchy. The level at which an analysis begins influences whether the work is similar or dissimilar. The three jobs described in the beginning of the chapter—customer representative, engineer, account analyst—all involve use of computers, but a closer look showed that the jobs are very different. At the job-family level bookkeepers, tellers, and accounting clerks may be considered to be similar jobs, yet at the job level they are very different. An analogy might be looking at two grains of salt under a microscope versus looking at them as part of a serving of french fries. If job data suggest that jobs are similar, the jobs must be paid equally; if jobs are different, they can be paid differently. e-compensation= Many companies post a sample of job openings on their websites. Compare the job postings from several companies. How complete are the job descriptions included with the postings? Are "essential elements" listed? Are job titles specific or generic? Can you get any sense of a company's culture from its job postings? Does this mean that the microscopic approach is best? Not necessarily. Many employers find it difficult to justify the time and expense of collecting task-level information, particularly for flexible jobs with frequently changing tasks. They may collect just enough job-level data to make comparisons in the external market for setting wages. However, the ADA's essential-elements requirement for hiring and promotion decisions seems to require more detail than what is required for pay decisions. Designing career paths, staffing, and legal compliance may also require more detailed, finely grained information. Using broad, generic descriptions that cover a large number of related tasks closer to the job-family level in Exhibit 4.4 is one way to increase flexibility. Two employees working in the same broadly defined jobs may be doing entirely different sets of related tasks. But for pay purposes, they may be doing work of equal value. Employees in these broadly defined jobs can switch to other tasks that fall within the same broad range without the bureaucratic burden of making job transfer requests and wage adjustments. Thus, employees can more easily be matched to changes in the work flow. Recruiter, compensation analyst, and training specialist could each be analyzed as a separate, distinct job, or could all be combined more broadly in the category "HR associate." Still, a countervailing view deserves consideration. A promotion to a new job title is part of the organization's network of returns. Reducing the number of titles may reduce the opportunities to reinforce positive employee behavior. E*Trade experienced an increase in turnover after it retitled jobs. It reduced its vice presidents and directors to 85, down from around 170 before the retitling. Moving from the federal government job of assistant secretary to that of associate assistant secretary (or reverse) may be far more meaningful than people outside Washington, DC, imagine.

WHAT INFORMATION SHOULD BE COLLECTED?

As Exhibit 4.5 suggests, a typical analysis starts with a review of information already collected in order to develop a framework for further analysis. Job titles, major duties, task dimensions, and work flow information may already exist. However, it may no longer be accurate. So the analyst must clarify existing information, too. Generally, a good job analysis collects sufficient information to adequately identify, define, and describe a job. Exhibit 4.6 lists some of the information that is usually collected. The information is categorized as "related to the job" and "related to the employee." Job Data: Identification - Job titles, departments, the number of people who hold the job, and whether it is exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act are all examples of information that identifies a job. - While a job title may seem pretty straightforward, it may not be. An observer of the U.S. banking system commented that "every employee over 25 seems to be a vice president." A study accuses the U.S. government of creating more new job titles in a recent six-year period than in the preceding 30 years. Some of the newer positions include deputy to the deputy secretary, principal assistant deputy undersecretary, and associate principal deputy assistant secretary. Most of these titles were created at the highest levels of government service, often to attract a specific person with unique skills. Our personal favorite is at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where the head of the Interplanetary Network Directorate is, naturally, the director of the Directorate. On the other hand, your tax dollars were at one point paying the wages of 484 deputy assistant secretaries, 148 associate assistant secretaries, 220 assistant assistant secretaries, and 82 deputy assistant assistant secretaries. Job Data: Content - This is the heart of job analysis. Job content data involve the elemental tasks or units of work, with emphasis on the purpose of each task. An excerpt from a job analysis questionnaire that collects task data is shown in Exhibit 4.7. The inventory describes the job aspect of communication in terms of actual tasks, such as "read technical publications" and "consult with co-workers." The inventory takes eight items to cover "obtain technical information" and another seven for "exchange technical information." In fact, the task inventory from which the exhibit is excerpted contains 250 items and covers only systems and analyst jobs. New task-based questions need to be designed for each new set of jobs. - In addition to the emphasis on the task, the other distinguishing characteristic of the inventory in the exhibit is the emphasis on the objective of the task, for example, "read technical publications to keep current on industry" and "consult with co-workers to exchange ideas and techniques." Task data reveal the actual work performed and its purpose or outcome. Employee Data - We can look at the kinds of behaviors that will result in the outcomes. Exhibit 4.6 categorizes employee data as employee characteristics, internal relationships, and external relationships. Exhibit 4.8 shows how communication can be described with verbs (e.g., negotiating, persuading). The verbs chosen are related to the employee characteristic being identified (e.g., bargaining skills, interpersonal skills). The rest of the statement helps identify whether the behavior involves an internal or external relationship. So both Exhibit 4.7 and Exhibit 4.8 focus on communication, but they come at it with different approaches. - The excerpt in Exhibit 4.8 is from the Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ), which groups work information into seven basic factors: information input, mental processes, work output, relationships with other persons, job context, other job characteristics, and general dimensions. Similarities and differences among jobs are described in terms of these seven factors, rather than in terms of specific aspects unique to each job. The communication behavior in this exhibit is part of the relationships-with-other-persons factor. - The entire PAQ consists of 194 items. Its developers claim that these items are sufficient to analyze any job. However, you can see from the exhibit that the reading level is quite high. A large proportion of employees need help to get through the whole thing. - Another, more nuanced view of "communication" focuses on the nature of the interactions required plus knowledge underlying them. Interactions are defined as the knowledge and behaviors involved in searching, monitoring, and coordinating required to do the work. Some interactions are transactional—routine, "do it by the book." The nine steps of a McFry job, shown in Exhibit 4.9, seem transactional to us. Other interactions are more tacit—complex and ambiguous. Work content that involves more tacit interactions is believed to add greater value than more transactional tasks. - The content of communications that occurs between the Merrill Lynch financial advisor and a client to complete a stock transaction differs substantively from that between a Merrill Lynch senior vice president investor and client who aims to build a long-term relationship to manage a client's $10 million in assets. Communication in both settings includes interactions with clients, but "building long-term relationships" versus "complete transactions" reveals substantive differences in content. - However appealing it may be to rationalize job analysis as the foundation of all HR decisions, collecting all of this information for so many different purposes is very expensive. In addition, the resulting information may be too generalized for any single purpose, including compensation. If the information is to be used for multiple purposes, the analyst must be sure that the information collected is accurate and sufficient for each use. Trying to be all things to all people often results in being nothing to everyone. "Essential Elements" and the Americans with Disabilities Act - In addition to the job description having sections that identify, describe, and define the job, the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that essential elements of a job—those that cannot be reassigned to other workers—must be specified for jobs covered by the legislation. If a job applicant can perform these essential elements, it is assumed that the applicant can perform the job. After that, reasonable accommodations must be made to enable an otherwise-qualified handicapped person to perform those elements. - ADA regulations state that "essential functions refers to the fundamental job duties of the employment position the individual with a disability holds or desires." The difficulty of specifying essential elements varies with the discretion in the job and with the stability of the job. Technology changes tend to make some tasks easier for all people, including those with disabilities, by reducing the physical strength or mobility required to do them. Unfortunately, employment rates for people with disabilities are still low. - The law does not make any allowances for special pay rates or special benefits for people with disabilities. Say, for example, a company subsidizes paid parking for its employees. An employee who does not drive because of a disability requests that the employer provide the cash equivalent of the parking subsidy as a reasonable accommodation so that the money can be used to pay for alternative transportation. - While the law does not require any particular kind of analysis, many employers have modified the format of their job descriptions to specifically call out the essential elements. A lack of compliance places an organization at risk and ignores one of the objectives of the pay model.

JUDGING JOB ANALYSIS

Beyond beliefs about its usefulness—or lack thereof—for satisfying both employees and employers, there are several ways to judge job analysis. Reliability - If you measure something tomorrow and get the same results you got today, or if I measure and get the same result you did, the measurement is considered to be reliable. This doesn't mean it is right—only that repeated measures give the same result. Reliability is a measure of the consistency of results among various analysts, various methods, various sources of data, or over time. Reliability is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for validity. - The mean correlation between work content ratings of jobs from two different raters, a typical way to estimate reliability, is .083.27 So, using a single rater to conduct a job analysis typically results in very poor reliability. By using multiple raters and taking their average rating, the reliability increases. With 5 raters, it is .312. With 15 raters, it is .488. These are still not terribly high reliabilities and indicate that the outcome of a job analysis depends to an important degree on who conducts it. There is higher reliability between professional job analysts and also when more specific tasks are rated (as opposed to more general job requirements or knowledge and skill requirements). Research on employee and supervisor agreement in job analysis information is mixed. For instance, experience may change an employee's perceptions about a job since the employee may have found new ways to do it or added new tasks to the job. The supervisor may not realize the extent of change. In such cases, the job the employee is actually doing may not be the same as the job originally assigned by the supervisor. Differences in performance seem to influence reliability. Other research finds that reliability is lower for jobs that are more interdependent with other jobs, and have more autonomy/are less routine. Research does not show that gender and race differences affect reliability. Obviously, the way to increase reliability in a job analysis is to understand and reduce sources of difference. Quantitative job analysis helps do this. But we need to be sure that we do not eliminate the richness of responses while eliminating the differences. Sometimes there really may be more than one job. Training can also improve reliability. - See the section "Reliability of Job Evaluation Techniques" in Chapter 6 for further details on how reliability can affect pay outcomes. Validity - Does the analysis create an accurate portrait of the work? There is almost no way of showing statistically the extent to which an analysis is accurate, particularly for complex jobs. No gold standard exists; how can we know? Consequently, validity examines the convergence of results among sources of data and methods. If several job incumbents, supervisors, and peers respond in similar ways to questionnaires, then it is more likely that the information is valid. However, a sign-off on the results does not guarantee the information's validity. It may mean only that all involved were sick to death of the process and wanted to get rid of the analyst so they could get back to work. Acceptability - If job holders and managers are dissatisfied with the initial data collected and the process, they are not likely to buy into the resulting job structure or the pay rates attached to that structure. An analyst collecting information through one-on-one interviews or observation is not always accepted because of the potential for subjectivity and favoritism. One writer says, "We all know the classic procedures. One [worker] watched and noted the actions of another . . . at work on [the] job. The actions of both are biased and the resulting information varied with the wind, especially the political wind." However, quantitative computer-assisted approaches may also run into difficulty, especially if they give in to the temptation to collect too much information for too many purposes. After four years in development, one application ran into such severe problems due to its unwieldy size and incomprehensible questions that managers simply refused to use it. Currency - To be valid, acceptable, and useful (see below), job information must be up to date. Some jobs stay relatively stable over time, while others may change in important ways, even over short time periods. As Exhibit 4.16 shows, most organizations report that they have up-to-date job information, but a substantial portion report that job information is not up to date. That can hinder not only compensation practice and decision-making, but also employee selection, training, and development. Most organizations do not engage in any regular (e.g., annual or biannual) updating of job analysis information, instead being more likely to update job information when the significant changes are believed to have occurred or when the job is being reevaluated for compensation purposes. It may be useful to develop a systematic protocol for evaluating when job information needs to be updated. Usefulness - Usefulness refers to the practicality of the information collected. For pay purposes, job analysis provides work-related information to help determine how much to pay for a job—it helps determine whether the job is similar to or different from other jobs. If job analysis does this in a reliable, valid, and acceptable way and can be used to make pay decisions, then it is useful. - As we have noted, some see job analysis information as useful for multiple purposes, such as hiring and training. But multiple purposes may require more information than is required for pay decisions. The practicality of all-encompassing quantitative job analysis plans, with their relatively complex procedures and analysis, remains in doubt. Some advocates get so taken with their statistics and computers that they ignore the role that judgment must continue to play in job analysis. Dunnette's point, made more than 35 years ago, still holds true today: "I wish to emphasize the central role played in all these procedures by human judgment. I know of no methodology, statistical technique or objective measurements that can negate the importance of, nor supplement, rational judgment." A Judgment Call - In the face of all the difficulties, time, expense, and dissatisfaction, why on earth would you as a manager bother with job analysis? Because work-related information is needed to determine pay, and differences in work determine pay differences. There is no satisfactory substitute that can ensure the resulting pay structure will be work-related or will provide reliable, accurate data for making and explaining pay decisions. - If work information is required, then the real issue should be, How much detail is needed to make these pay decisions? The answer is, Enough to help set individual employees' pay, encourage continuous learning, increase the experience and skill of the work force, and minimize the risk of pay-related grievances. Omitting this detail and contributing to an incorrect and costly decision by uninformed managers can lead to unhappy employees who drive away customers with their poor service, file lawsuits, or complain about management's inability to justify their decisions. The response to inadequate analysis ought not to be to dump the analysis; rather, the response should be to obtain a more useful analysis.

HOW CAN THE INFORMATION BE COLLECTED?

Conventional Methods - The most common way to collect job information is to ask the people who are doing a job to fill out a questionnaire. Sometimes an analyst will interview the jobholders and their supervisors to be sure they understand the questions and that the information is correct. Or the analyst may observe the person at work and take notes on what is being done. - Exhibit 4.10 shows part of a job analysis questionnaire. Questions range from "Give an example of a particularly difficult problem that you face in your work. Why does it occur? How often does it occur? What special skills and/or resources are needed to solve this difficult problem?" to "What is the nature of any contact you have with individuals or companies in countries other than the United States?" These examples are drawn from the Complexity of Duties section of a job analysis questionnaire used by 3M. Other sections of the questionnaire are Skills/Knowledge Applied (19 to choose from), Impact This Job Has on 3M's Business, and Working Conditions. It concludes by asking respondents how well they feel the questionnaire has captured their particular job. - The advantage of conventional questionnaires and interviews is that the involvement of employees increases their understanding of the process. However, the results are only as good as the people involved. If important aspects of a job are omitted, or if the jobholders themselves either do not realize or are unable to express the importance of certain aspects, the resulting job descriptions will be faulty. If you look at the number of jobs in an organization, you can see the difficulty in expecting a single analyst to understand all the different types of work and the importance of certain job aspects. Different people have different perceptions, which may result in differences in interpretation or emphasis. The whole process is open to bias and favoritism. As a result of this potential subjectivity, as well as the huge amount of time the process takes, conventional methods have given way to more quantitative (and systematic) data collection. Quantitative Methods - Increasingly, employees are directed to a website where they complete a questionnaire online. Such an approach is characterized as quantitative job analysis (QJA), because statistical analysis of the results is possible. Exhibits 4.7 and 4.8 are excerpts from quantitative questionnaires. In addition to facilitating statistical analysis of the results, quantitative data collection allows more data to be collected faster. - A questionnaire typically asks jobholders to assess each item in terms of whether or not that particular item is part of their job. If it is, they are asked to rate how important it is and the amount of job time spent on it. The responses can be machine-scored, similar to the process for a multiple-choice test (only there are no wrong answers), and the results can be used to develop a profile of the job. Questions are grouped around five compensable factors (discussed in Chapter 5): knowledge, accountability, reasoning, communication, and working conditions. Knowledge is further subcategorized as range of depth, qualifications, experience, occupational skills, management skills, and learning time. Assistance is given in the form of prompting questions and a list of jobs whose holders have answered each question in a similar way. Results can be used to prepare a job profile based on the compensable factors. If more than one person is doing a particular job, results of several people in the job can be compared or averaged to develop the profile. Profiles can be compared across jobholders in both the same and different jobs. - Quantitative inventories can be tailored to the needs of a specific organization or to a specific family of jobs, such as data/information-processing jobs. Many organizations find it practical and cost-effective to modify these existing inventories rather than to develop their own analysis from ground zero. But, remember, as we have said, the results depend on the quality of the inputs. Here, the items on the questionnaire matter. If important aspects of a job are omitted or if the jobholders themselves do not realize the importance of certain aspects, the resulting job descriptions will be faulty. In one study, the responses of high-performing stockbrokers on amounts of time spent on some tasks differed from those of low performers. The implication is that any analysis needs to include good performers to ensure that the work is usefully analyzed. Who Collects the Information? - Collecting job analysis information through one-on-one interviews can be a thankless task. No matter how good a job you do, some people will not be happy with the resulting job descriptions. In the past, organizations often assigned the task to a new employee, saying it would help the new employee become familiar with the jobs of the company. Today, if job analysis is performed at all, human resource generalists and supervisors do it. The analysis is best done by someone thoroughly familiar with the organization and its jobs and trained in how to do the analysis properly. Who Provides the Information? - The decision on the source of the data (jobholders, supervisors, and/or analysts) hinges on how to ensure consistent, accurate, useful, and acceptable data. Expertise about the work resides with the jobholders and the supervisors; hence, they are the principal sources. For key managerial/professional jobs, supervisors "two levels above" have also been suggested as valuable sources since they may have a more strategic view of how jobs fit in the overall organization. In other instances, subordinates and employees in other jobs that interface with the job under study are also involved. - The number of incumbents per job from which to collect data probably varies with the stability of the job, as well as the ease of collecting the information. An ill-defined or changing job will require either the involvement of more respondents or a more careful selection of respondents. Obviously, the more people involved, the more time-consuming and expensive the process, although computerization helps mitigate these drawbacks. - Whether through a conventional analysis or a quantitative approach, completing a questionnaire requires considerable involvement by employees and supervisors. Involvement can increase their understanding of the process, thereby increasing the likelihood that the results of the analysis will be acceptable. But it also is expensive. What about Discrepancies? - What happens if the supervisor and the employees present different pictures of the jobs? While supervisors, in theory, ought to know the jobs well, they may not, particularly if jobs are changing. People actually working in a job may change it. They may find ways to do things more efficiently, or they may not have realized that certain tasks were supposed to be part of their jobs. - 3M had an interesting problem when it collected job information from a group of engineers. The engineers listed a number of responsibilities that they viewed as part of their jobs; however, the manager realized that those responsibilities actually belonged to a higher level of work. The engineers had enlarged their jobs beyond what they were being paid to do. No one wanted to tell these highly productive employees to slack off. Instead, 3M looked for additional ways to reward these engineers rather than bureaucratize them. - What should the manager do if employees and their supervisors do not agree on what is part of the job? Differences in job data may arise among the jobholders as well. Some may see the job one way, some another. The best answer is to collect more data. Enough data are required to ensure consistent, accurate, useful, and acceptable results. Holding a meeting of multiple jobholders and supervisors in a focus group to discuss discrepancies and then asking both employees and supervisors to sign off on the revised results helps ensure agreement on, or at least understanding of, the results. Disagreements can be an opportunity to clarify expectations, learn about better ways to do the job, and document how the job is actually performed. Discrepancies among employees may even reveal that more than one job has been lumped under the same job title. Top Management (and Union) Support Is Critical - In addition to involvement by analysts, jobholders, and their supervisors, support of top management is absolutely essential. Support of union officials in a unionized workforce is as well. They know (hopefully) what is strategically relevant. They must be alerted to the cost of a thorough job analysis, its time-consuming nature, and the fact that changes will be involved. For example, jobs may be combined; pay rates may be adjusted. If top managers (and unions) are not willing to seriously consider any changes suggested by job analysis, the process is probably not worth the bother and expense.

JOB ANALYSIS: BEDROCK OR BUREAUCRACY?

HRNet, an Internet discussion group related to HR issues, provoked one of its largest responses ever with the query, "What good is job analysis?" Some felt that managers have no basis for making defensible, work-related decisions without it. Others called the process a bureaucratic boondoggle. Yet job analysts are an endangered species. Many employers, as part of their drive to contain expenses, no longer have job analysts. The unknown costs involved are too difficult to justify. One expert writes, "Whenever I visit a human resources department, I ask whether they have any [job analysis]. I have not had a positive answer in several years, except in government organizations."21 Yet if job analysis is the cornerstone of human resource decisions, what are such decisions based on if work information is no longer rigorously collected? This disagreement centers on the issue of flexibility. Many organizations today are using fewer employees to do a wider variety of tasks in order to increase productivity and reduce costs. Reducing the number of different jobs and cross-training employees can make work content more fluid and employees more flexible. Generic job descriptions that cover a larger number of related tasks (e.g., "associate") can provide flexibility in moving people among tasks without adjusting pay. Employees may be more easily matched to changes in the work flow; the importance of flexibility in behavior is made clear to employees. Traditional job analysis that makes fine distinctions among levels of jobs has been accused of reinforcing rigidity in the organization. Employees may refuse to do certain tasks that are not specifically called out in their job descriptions. It should be noted, however, that this problem mainly arises where employee relations are already poor. In unionized settings, union members may "work to the rules" (i.e., not do anything that is not specifically listed in their job descriptions) as a technique for putting pressure on management. In some organizations, analyzing work content is now conducted as part of work flow and supply chain analysis. Supply chain analysis looks at how an organization does its work: activities pursued to accomplish specific objectives for specific customers. A "customer" can be internal or external to the organization. So Starbucks, in its continuous quest for improved service, frets over "average wait time." If the time to put that Venti Double Chocolate Chip Frappuccino Blended Creme in your hand is increased because customers in front of you are musing over the new CD for sale at the register, you may decide that the Dunkin' Donuts across the street might be a better choice. Starbucks shaved 20 seconds off its wait time by redesigning the barista job to include "floating." Floaters walk the queue, take your order, mark the cup, and hand the cup to the barista who will actually fill your order—all before you get to the cash register. Floaters also "communicate" with the customers to make the experience enjoyable. Notice that as part of a work flow study, job analysis is conducted to understand the work and how it adds value. Is the barista job content now different with the floating tasks? Yes. We will face the issue of whether to pay floaters differently in later chapters.

JOB ANALYSIS, GLOBALIZATION, AND AUTOMATION

Job Analysis and Susceptibility to Offshoring - Offshoring refers to the movement of jobs to locations beyond a country's borders. Historically, manual, low-skill jobs were most susceptible to offshoring. As we saw in Chapter 1, there are substantial differences in hourly compensation costs across countries for manufacturing workers; this has played an important role in companies' decisions about where to locate production operations. Similar differences in cost in other low-skill occupations (e.g., in call centers) have had similar ramifications. (So, when you call for an airline reservation or help with your printer, you may well reach someone in another country.) Of course, as we also noted, labor cost is only part of the story. There are productivity differences across countries as well, meaning that lower labor costs may in some cases be offset by lower productivity. Availability of workers with needed education and skills is another potential constraint. Proximity to customers is yet another issue. Sometimes that argues for moving offshore, sometimes it does not. - Increasingly, susceptibility to offshoring is no longer limited to low-skill jobs. White-collar jobs are also increasingly at risk. Is there a way to systematically measure which jobs are most susceptible to offshoring? The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has attempted to do just this with respect to service-providing occupations. Exhibit 4.14 shows the list of occupations it found to have the highest and lowest susceptibility to offshoring. The offshoring susceptibility scores are based on the sum of scores on the four items shown. So, jobs are most susceptible to outsourcing when inputs and outputs can easily be transmitted electronically, little interaction with other workers is required, little local knowledge is required, and the work can be routinized. - Interestingly, highly susceptible jobs include not only those that require little education and training, such as data entry keyers and telemarketers, but also computer programmers and tax preparers. Turning to jobs with low susceptibility to outsourcing, we see various managerial positions and also positions where local knowledge is required (e.g., marketing managers presumably need to know consumer preferences in particular regions of the world) or where being "on the ground" (literally, in the case of landscape architects) is necessary. - To our knowledge, the system for assessing susceptibility to offshoring has not been rigorously validated to see how well it predicts actual offshoring of occupations. Nevertheless, as Exhibit 4.14 indicates, growth rates (in the United States) for jobs on the highly susceptible list are generally small or negative, while jobs on the low susceptibility list have shown strong growth. Unless the two sets of jobs have different growth rates across countries, the differential growth rates seem consistent with the possibility that jobs on the highly susceptible list have lower growth rates, at least in part because they have experienced greater offshoring. Also, there are certainly numerous examples of jobs on the highly susceptible list (e.g., data entry keyers, telemarketers, and computer programmers) being offshored. In Chapter 7, we return to the topic of offshoring to discuss labor cost and effectiveness ramifications. - In Exhibit 4.15, we also report the probability that various jobs can be automated (their susceptibility to automation). The estimates are based on (1) expert judgment of potential automation, based on answers to the question "Can the tasks of this job be sufficiently specified, conditional on the availability of big data, to be performed by state of the art computer-controlled equipment" and (2) an estimate of the "potential bottlenecks" to automation, as indicated by the following job attributes/requirements: finger dexterity, manual dexterity, cramped workspace/awkward position, originality, fine arts, social perceptiveness, negotiation, persuasion, and assisting/caring for others. For example, with respect to manual dexterity, a low level, which would increase probability of automation, would correspond to "Screw a light bulb into a light socket"; medium (level) would be "Pack oranges in crates as quickly as possible"; and a high (level) would be "Perform open heart surgery with surgical instruments."25 We thus see, for example, that there is a very low probability that the jobs of physicians and surgeons will be automated. In contrast, there is a high probability that the jobs of cashiers and tellers will become automated. Perhaps less expected, a number of white-collar jobs (e.g., real estate brokers, loan officers, tax preparers) have a high probability, as do models and umpires. Job Analysis Information and Comparability across Borders - As firms spread work across multiple countries, there is an increasing need to analyze jobs to either maintain consistency in job content or else be able to measure the ways in which jobs are similar and different. For example, for a software development team to work equally effectively with programmers in the United States and India, the job descriptions and job specifications need to be measured and understood. One potential challenge is that norms or perceptions regarding what is and what is not part of a particular job may vary across countries. However, a study of three different jobs (first-line supervisor, general office clerk, and computer programmer) in the United States, China, Hong Kong, and New Zealand found that ratings of the importance and amount of work activities and job requirements were "quite similar" across countries, suggesting that job analysis information "is likely to transport quite well across countries."

JOB DESCRIPTIONS SUMMARIZE THE DATA

So now the job information has been collected, maybe even organized. But it still must be summarized and documented in a way that will be useful for HR decisions, including job evaluation (Chapter 5). As noted previously, that summary of the job is the job description. The job description provides a "word picture" of the job. Let us return to Exhibit 4.2, our job description for a registered nurse. It contains information on the tasks, people, and things included. Trace the connection between different parts of the description and the job analysis data collected. The job is identified by its title and its relationships to other jobs in the structure. A job summary provides an overview of the job. The section on essential responsibilities elaborates on the summary. It includes the tasks. Related tasks may be grouped into task dimensions. This particular job description also includes very specific standards for judging whether an essential responsibility has been met—for example, "Provides a written assessment of patient within one hour of admission and at least once a shift." A final section lists the qualifications necessary in order to be hired for the job. These are the job specifications that can be used as a basis for hiring—the knowledge, skills, and abilities required to adequately perform the tasks. But keep in mind that the summary needs to be relevant for pay decisions and thus must focus on similarities and differences in content. Using Generic Job Descriptions - To avoid starting from scratch (if writing a job description for the first time) or as a way to cross-check externally, it can be useful to refer to generic job descriptions that have not yet been tailored to a specific organization. One readily accessible source is the Occupational Information Network, or O*NET (www.onetcenter.org). Exhibit 4.11 shows the information O*NET provides using the job of computer programmer as an example. e-Compensation= Use O*NET to find the knowledge, skills, and other characteristics needed to be a computer programmer (or an occupation of your choice). Describing Managerial/Professional Jobs - Descriptions of managerial/professional jobs often include more detailed information on the nature of the job, its scope, and accountability. One challenge is that an individual manager will influence the job content. Professional/managerial job descriptions must capture the relationship between the job, the person performing it, and the organization objectives—how the job fits into the organization, the results expected, and what the person performing it brings to the job. Someone with strong information systems and finance expertise performing the compensation manager's job will probably shape it differently, based on this expertise, than someone with strong negotiation and/or counseling expertise. - Exhibit 4.12 excerpts this scope and accountability information for a nurse manager. Rather than emphasizing the tasks to be done, this description focuses on the accountabilities (e.g., "responsible for the coordination, direction, implementation, evaluation, and management of personnel and services; provides leadership; participates in strategic planning and defining future direction"). Verify the Description - The final step in the job analysis process is to verify the accuracy of the resulting job descriptions (step 6 in Exhibit 4.5). Verification often involves the jobholders as well as their supervisors to determine whether the proposed job description is accurate and complete. The description is discussed, line by line, with the analyst, who makes notes of any omissions, ambiguities, or needed clarifications (an often excruciating and thankless task). It would have been interesting to hear the discussion between our nurse from 100 years ago, whose job is described in Exhibit 4.13, and her supervisor. The job description paints a vivid picture of expectations at that time, although we suspect the nurse probably did not have much opportunity for input regarding the accuracy of the job description.