Chapter 4 Strategic Job Analysis
and Competency Modeling
· Definition: a systematic process of identifying and describing the
· important aspects of a job and the characteristics workers need to
· perform the job well
· Should be done regularly for all jobs, but focusing on key roles can have
· significant business impact
· Value creators: directly generate revenue, lower operating costs, and
· increase capital efficiency (e.g., leaders of research and development,
· marketing, human resources, or finance)
· Value enablers: perform indispensable work that enables the creators
· (e.g. leaders of support functions such as cybersecurity or risk
· management)
· Job design: specifying the content and method of doing a job, and the
· relationship between jobs, to meet both the technological and
· organizational job requirements and the social and personal
· requirements of the worker
· Job redesign: changing the job to increase work quality or productivity
· Job enrichment
· Job enlargement
· Analyzes how work progresses through the organization to improve
· efficiency by identifying bottlenecks, redundant tasks, and inefficient
· workspaces to enable better resource use
· 5 steps:
1. Identify what the organization does
2. Identify how it gets this done
3. Identify why it does all of the steps and tasks from #2
5. Evaluate whether employees are needed for every task or if
6. automation might be better
· Job analyses are used for multiple purposes, including:
· Determining job entry requirements
· Developing a company’s strategic recruiting plan
· Selecting individuals for employment
· Developing employee training plans
· Designing compensation systems
· Developing performance evaluation measures
· Job analyses also help group jobs into job families or groupings of jobs
· that either call for similar worker characteristics or contain parallel work
Job Analysis for Staffing
· A job analysis that produces a valid selection system identifies worker
· characteristics that:
· Distinguish superior from average and unacceptable workers;
· Are not easily learned on the job; and
· Exist to at least a moderate extent in the applicant pool.
· Future-oriented job analysis: job analysis technique for analyzing new
· jobs or analyzing how jobs will look in the future
Job-Worker Match
· Essential functions are the fundamental duties or tasks of a position
· (defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act)
· If disabled applicants can perform the essential functions of a job with
· reasonable accommodation, they must be considered for the position
· To meet legal requirements, a job analysis must:
· Be valid and identify the worker knowledge, skills, abilities, and other
· characteristics necessary to perform the job and differentiate superior
· from barely acceptable workers
· Be in writing and relevant to the particular job in question
· Be derived from multiple sources
Practical Reasons to do a Job Analysis
· A written description of the duties and responsibilities associated with
· the job itself.
· Job descriptions usually include:
· The size and type of organization
· The department and job title
· The salary range
· Position grade or level
· To whom the employee reports and for whom the employee is
· Brief summary of the main duties and responsibilities of the job
· Brief summary of the occasional duties and responsibilities of the job
· Any special equipment used on the job
· Any special working conditions (e.g. shift or weekend work, foreign
· travel, etc.)
· Purpose and frequency of contact with others
· The statement, “Other duties as assigned” to accommodate job
· changes and special projects
· Person specification: summarizes the characteristics of someone able to
· Essential criteria: job candidate characteristics that are critical to
· adequate performance of a new hire
· Desirable criteria: job candidate criteria that may enhance the new
· hire’s job success, but that are not essential to adequate job
· Criteria unrelated to job success should not be included in a person
Outcomes of Job Analysis
· Must be:
1. Reliable, or replicable
· A reliable job analysis procedure will produce the same results
· when it 1) is applied to the same job by a different job specialist; 2)
· when a different group of job experts is used; and 3) when it is
· done at a different time.
2. Valid, or accurately measure what it was intended to measure
· A valid job analysis accurately captures the target job.
Planning Job Analyses
· Job analyses should be performed in such a way as to meet the
· professional and legal guidelines that have been published in the
· Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures
· Determine time and resources necessary and available
· Collect background information about the company, its culture and
· business strategy, the job, and the job’s contribution to strategy
· execution and competitive advantage
· O*NET – Occupational Information Network (http://
· online.onetcenter.org/)
· Identify job experts
· Identify appropriate job analysis technique(s) to use
Job Analysis Steps
Weighting Job Duties
· Definition: a job analysis method that identifies the necessary worker
· competencies for high performance
· Competencies: more broadly defined components of a successful
· worker’s repertoire of behavior needed to do a job well
· Because competencies are linked to the organization’s business goals,
· strategy, and values, a person specification resulting from a job
· description can enhance hiring quality and strategy execution
· A competency-based job description:
· Enhances a manager’s flexibility in assigning work
· Lengthens the life of a job description
· Can allow firms to group jobs requiring similar competencies under a
· single job description
Crafting an Appealing Job Description for a Job Ad
· Include an understandable and engaging job title
· Include information about the company
· Include information that helps the job seeker get a feel for the job
· Describe minimum job requirements
· Reflect the organization’s culture
· Get input and feedback from high-performers
· Include link to the employer’s Careers page
Competencies Related to Specific Job Environments
HRM Competency Model
· Job rewards analysis: identifies the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards of a
· Analyzes the intrinsic rewards that are non-monetary and derived from
· the work itself and the firm’s culture
· Including the satisfaction of meeting personal goals, great
· coworkers, continuous learning, and doing meaningful work.
· Analyzes the extrinsic rewards that have monetary value
· Including base pay, bonuses, and benefits.
· The combination of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards are a job’s total
· Employee value proposition (EVP): the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards an
· employee receives by working for a particular employer in return for
· their job performance
· Communicating your EVP:
· First determine exactly what attracts job candidates, and why
· employees enjoy their work.
· Then craft a message to clearly state what makes your company the
· obvious choice over the competition.
3 Criteria for Employee Value Propositions
1. Magnitude refers to a reward package that is neither too small nor too
2. large in economic terms.
· Spending too much on rewards can negatively impact the firm’s
· financial stability, and hurt investor relations.
3. Mix refers to the composition of the reward package matching the
4. needs and preferences of applicants or employees.
· Offering stock options that vest in five years to a young, mobile
· workforce, or free daycare to an older workforce is not consistent with
· workers’ needs and preferences.
5. Distinctiveness refers to the uniqueness of the total reward package.
· Rewards with no special appeal and that do not set the organization
· apart as distinctive do not present a compelling value proposition.
Job Reward Dimensions
· Amount refers to how much of it is received.
· i.e., how much pay, what level of task variety
· Differential is how consistent the reward is across different employees.
· e.g., all employees receive the same number of vacation days, but
· merit bonuses range from 2% to 15% of base pay
· Stability is how reliable the reward is.
· Is the reward the same all of the time, or does it change (e.g., does it
· vary based on organizational performance or business requirements?)
Job Rewards Matrix
Job Rewards Analysis Results
“Handyman Job Rewards”
Enhancing Ethical Behavior Through Job Descriptions
· Because ethical issues are rarely neatly labeled, keeping ethics keeping
· ethics active in employees’ minds helps them maintain ethics as a core
· part of their schema
· Priming: recent cues or experiences increase our sensitivity to certain
· stimuli
· Crafting effective job descriptions and person specifications can support
· an ethical culture, prime ethical behavior, and influence the
· characteristics of job applicants
· Describe legal risks and ethical traps
Using Analytics to Improve Job Analysis
· Staffing analytics can take job analysis further and use data and statistics
· to evaluate how well the competencies, skills, and other characteristics
· identified in a job analysis predict job success, ethical behavior,
· retention, and other important outcomes.
· Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor
· Comprehensive resource of occupational information with a database on
· many different jobs
describes how O*NET OnLine can help with talent planning,
· employee retention, and employee reskilling efforts
· Provides information useful for creating job descriptions
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