Human Resources Planning Process with Example
The type and number of employees that will be hired must now be decided upon in the procurement process. The government places much weight on the desirability of having adequate job analyses as the foundation for making personnel decisions. You will discover that the line supervisor, along with a few other staff members like time study and production control, has a lot to offer. This chapter, which is broken up into two sections, is devoted to the broad issue of human resources requirements. The first section discusses how to determine the type or number of employees that is needed. The question of how many workers are required to efficiently run the business is then posed and examined. The creation of a personnel requisition allowing the hiring of a specific number of individuals of a particular type is the immediate, concrete outcome of these two assessments.
QUALITY OF PERSONNEL | HR Implementation Steps
In order to hire personnel on a scientific basis, one should establish in advance a standard of personnel with which applicants can be compared. To evaluate the human abilities needed for execution, this standard shall establish the minimal acceptable attributes required for carrying out the job duties and obligations in an effective manner. “Job analysis” is the study of job content to ascertain human requirements. Personnel specialists in large organizations should be intimately involved in both activities. In the small firm, these two tasks must also be performed and, of necessity, will be executed by line managers.
Job Terminology | HR Strategy and Planning
Most academic fields require a certain degree of technical jargon to make communication easier. It is therefore desirable to list and define terms in the job analysis field, as well as some terms that are related to and often confused with job analysis.
Job | Strategic Human Resource Planning
A job can now be defined group positions that are similar as to kind and level of work. In some instances, only one position be involved, simply because no other similar position exists. For examples in the typical firm the position of personnel manager also constitutes a lob since there is only one personnel manager in the organization.
Occupation | Human Resource Management Planning
An occupation is a collection of jobs that share the same type of labour and are present across an industry or the entire nation. An occupation is a eategon, of work found in many firms. The United States Employment Service has attempted to survey and define the occupations of the United States in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. It has also prepared occupational descriptions for various industries. These descriptions are necessarily general in nature and can be used only for background purpose for a particular firm’s job analysis program. To show the relationship among these first three definitions, we can say that one person can hold a position, a job, and an occupation simultaneously. One must always have a position and a job, but may not be in a type of work that is found generall throughout an industry and thus may have no occupation.
Job Analysis | HR Strategic Goals
Employment analysis is the process of learning about and gathering data regarding the duties and tasks associated with a particular job. The immediate products of this analysis are job descriptions and job specifications, which are defined below.
Motion study | Human Resource (HR) Planning System with Example
Many people confuse job analysis with motion study, which also looks at the job. There are two different ways of studying the same job. Motion studs is a process of analyzing a job to find the easiest, most effective, and most economical method of doing it. As a result, the role of work design includes motion study. If a job is subjected to both processes of study, motion study should precede job analysis.
Job description
A job description is a detailed, ordered listing of the obligations and responsibilities of a particular position. It should succinctly explain what must be done, how it must be done, and why. It is a standard of function, in that it defines the appropriate and authorized content of a job. A more complete explanation of this document follows in a later section.
Job specification
A job specification is a list of the minimal acceptable human characteristics required to do a job well. not as stated in the job description. It identifies the characteristics needed for performance that is deemed acceptable. This product of job analysis is also covered at greater length in a later section.
Job classification
A classification of jobs is a collection of jobs on some such as kind of work or pay. It can refer to a grouping by any selected characteristic specified basis but probably is used most often in connection with pay and job evaluation.
Job evaluation
The value of a work in comparison to other employment is established through a rigorous and structured process known as job appraisal. Finding the appropriate compensation rate is the goal of this method. As a result, it differs from a job analysis. Instead, it should adhere to the job analysis process, which offers the fundamental information to be assessed. Job evaluation is discussed at length in a later chapter and is included at this point in order to reduce confusion with the term “job analysis.”
Job Analysis Process
The process of analyzing a job after its design is essentially one of data collection. Various approaches can be utilized, and the four currently most popular are
(1) questionnaires,
(2) written narratives,
(3) observation,
(4) interviews.
A survey of 899 firms ranging in size from under 500 employees to over 100,000 revealed that the most widely used method was the interview: 85 percent reported using this research method for both salaried and hourly workers. The second most popular was observation, which was more widely for hourly employees. Questionnaires and written narratives were about equally divided in popularity, ranking behind the other two. In addition, there were many miscellaneous sources of information such as old job descriptions, time and motion.
The questionnaire technique places great faith in the jobholder’s ability to organize studies, and daily diaries or logs. The employment reporting process. Frequently, incomplete information is discovered to have been provided, Y and sometimes incoherent. Such a questionnaire can be used, however, in Providing background information for the interview, which must necessarily follow, in order to analyze the job properly.
Narrative descriptions can be requested of both the job incumbent and the supervisor. This approach is used more often on salaried jobs. A more detailed reporting of this type would be the daily diary or log. Under this technique, the employee keeps a daily log of the significant tasks completed, noting the start and end times of each work. Narratives, logs, and questionnaires can be of material assistance to the job analyst, but as single techniques unsupported by follow-up interviewing and observation, they leave much to be desired.
The third and fourth methods of collecting job information hold the greatest promise of completeness, accuracy, and better utilization of time. If a task is straightforward and repetitious, observation may be the only method needed. The ideal method, however, is typically interviews combined with observation. The interview will provide information that is not immediately visible as well as the confirmation of data gathered through other methods.
Since the interview will serve as the primary way of data gathering for the job analyzer, there are a few fundamental attitudes and strategies that will help to elicit the most accurate and comprehensive information possible. The supervisor’s and employee’s natural trepidation about a staff specialist operating out of the personnel unit will also be lessened by these actions and tactics. They consist of the following:
1. Make an introduction so that the employee understands who you are and why you are there. When it comes to explaining in advance what the job analysis programme is and how it affects other personnel actions like hiring and compensation, the supervisor can be of significant help. The employee should be assured that the objectives of the process are not detrimental to his or her well-being. On the contrary, the program may easily result in more realistic training, better organization, and more equitable compensation for the job.
2. Show a sincere interest in the person and the task under consideration. A sporadic, robotic “yeah huh” in response to employee contributions is unsatisfactory and frequently grating because it is difficult to manufacture sincerity. This employee spends a significant percentage of his or her time at work. In general, improved receptivity and openness follow if the analyst can show a genuine interest in the position and the person.
3. Avoid attempting to instruct the worker on how to complete the task. In this process, the incumbent is the job expert and the analyst’s task is to extract the information and organize it in a significant manner. The job analysis process is basically descriptive in nature. Correction of mistakes and possible changes in job content should be initiated by those without authority in the area concerned.
An interesting question might he raised at this point. What type of back-ground should a job analyst possess? To ask intelligent questions about a job. one must know something about it. Yet, if a large number of different types of jobs are covered, how can one he expert in all? The job analyst’s skills are in extracting correct information. organizing that material in logical order. and presenting it in understandable and usable form. One need not he expert in the job, though preliminary familiarization with certain aspects is necessary in order not to appear too ignorant during the interview.
4. Make an effort to communicate with employees and managers in their native tongues. This will involve some preparation, particularly when the analyst covers many different fields: but the establishment of rapport is facilitated if the worker feels that the analyst is not a complete novice. This process can, however, be overdone. It is wise to confine oneself to the jargon that a member of the firm would reasonably be expected to acquire: an attempt to use all the shop terminology smacks of “getting down to their level” and thereby incurs resentment.
5. Do not confuse the work with the worker. The particular worker being inter-viewed is the medium through which information is derived about the job. Instead of describing this specific individual, the goal is to define the position held by the incumbent and, later, the skills required for effective performance of work obligations. The fact that this particular jobholder has a college degree does not necessarily mean that such a degree is a minimum requirement. In this process of data collection, the basic approach should be scientific insofar as it attempts to distinguish between fact and inference and between fact and opinion.
6. Complete a career study that aligns with the program’s goals. The information desired in job analysis is of the type that will assist in var o Job analysis is not motion study, and we do not need a —”blow-by-blow” physical description of what the worker does. Suppose that the worker tells the analyst that a production part is placed in a solution to be electroplated and is taken out when done. How the object is dipped and removed may likely be of interest to a motion study analyst. The job analyst must have information required. One may a on that will reveal the skill and knowledge the worker, —How do you know when the item should be removed from the solution?” Typically, a person may say, “I just know from experience.” The job analyst must support the “just know how” because this insufficiently demonstrates skill level. Knowing what knowledge one wants and understanding how to ask a worker for it are two distinct things.
7. Verify the job information obtained. Data gathered from a single employee should be double-checked by speaking with several people in that position. As a result, the analyst may discover some conflicts and inconsistencies as well as extra information. Resolution of such discrepancies, if they are factual, is the responsibility of supervision. The analysis should not be confined to work done by the best worker on the job; a reasonable sample is necessary when the fob is com-posed of a considerable number of positions.
The Job Description
The first and immediate product of the job analysis process is the job description. As its title indicates, this document is basically descriptive nature and constitutes a record of existing pertinent job facts. These facts most be organized in some fashions in order to be usable. A suggested order as follows:
1. Job identification
2. Job summary
3. Duties performed
4. Supervision given and received
5. Relation to other jobs
6. Machines, tools, and materials
7. Working conditions
8. Definitions of unusual terms
9. Addenda and clarifications to the foregoing
The identification section includes such information as job title, alternative – department, division, plant, and code number for the job.
The job summary has two purposes
(1) to provide a short definition that will be useful as additional identification information of the job title is not sufficient, and
(2) act as a summary in order to guide the reader toward comprehension of the in-depth material that follows. In practice it is easier to write this section after writing section3.
The duties-performed section is the heart of the job description and is the most difficult to write properly. It is supposed to tell what is being done, how it is done (without involving the detail of a motion study), and the purpose behind each duty. It often found advisable to list major duties with a statement of —what— and why followed by subduties detailing the —how.” These should, if possible. be arranged ire chronological order. In addition, an estimate concerning the approximate percentage of time devoted to each major duty is helpful. Research has indicated that employee reasonably accurate in estimating these time percentages. When checking the actual times against the estimates, Hinrichs discovered that 232 technical employees were within 5 percent of the time proportions obtained through work sampling. A study of 16 clerical workers. done in the same manner, revealed that differences were no larger than t percent, one of the larger errors being in an excessively small estimate of idle time. Despite these differences, the estimates are sufficiently accurate to be used as a general guide in recruitment, training, compensation, and reorganizing.