UNIVERSITY OF ZIMBABWE

FACULTY OF COMMERCE
DEPARTMENT OF TOURISM, LEISURE AND HOSPITALITY STUDIES
DEPARTMENT OF BUSINESS STUDIES

THM 403/BS016 HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT

JOB DESIGN, JOB ANALYSIS AND JOB EVALUATION

LECTURE NOTES

JOB DESIGN

Definition

It is the specification of the contents, methods and relationships of jobs in order to

satisfy technological and organizational requirements as well as the social and
personal requirements of the job holder.

 Job design has 2 aims

1. To satisfy the requirements of the organisations for productivity ,
operational efficiency and quality of product/ survive
2. To satisfy the needs of the individual for interest, challenge and
accomplishment.
 The process of job design must start from an analysis of what work needs to
be done i.e. the tasks that have to be carried out if the purpose of the
organisations is to be achieved
 Job design should start from work requirements because that is why the job
exists.
 Most authors on Job design seem to imply that Job design only concerned
with human needs
 The job designer should consider how the jobs can be set up to provide the
maximum degree of intrinsic motivation for those who have to carry them
out

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  Some authors indicate a 3rd objective of job design, i.e. to fulfill the social
responsibility of the organisations to the people who work in it by improving
the quality of working life.

Factors affecting Job Design

 Job design should be considered within the context of the organizational

design. It must consider the following factors
1. The process of intrinsic motivation
 The use of job design techniques is based on the premise that effective
performance and genuine satisfaction in work follow mainly from
intrinsic content of the job.
 This follows from the concept that people are motivated when they
are provided with a means to achieve their goals
 A job fulfills both the extrinsic needs (money) and the intrinsic needs
( which are under the direct control of the worker himself)
2. Characteristics of task structure
 Job design assembles a number of tasks into a job or a group of jobs
 Complexity of a job is usually a reflection of the number and variety
of tasks to be carried out, the range and scope of the decisions to be
made or the difficulty of the predictions the outcome of decisions
 The internal structure of each task consists of 3 elements; planning,
executing and controlling.
 A completely integrated job includes all these elements for each task
involved
 In practice, management and supervisors are concerned with planning
and control, leaving non-managerial staff to execute. However, one of
the aims of job design is to extend the responsibilities of workers into
planning and control
3. Motivation characteristics of jobs
 Three characteristics should be available for a job to be motivating

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 i. Feedback: individuals should get meaningful feedback about
their performance, preferably by evaluating their own
performance and designing feedback
ii. Use of abilities: The jib must be perceived by individuals as
requiring them to use abilities they value to perform the job
efficiently
iii. Self-control: Individuals must feel that they have a high
degree of self- control over setting their own goals and over
defining the paths to these goals

Methods/Techniques of Job Design

1. Job rotation

The movement of employees from one task to another to reduce monotony by

increasing variety

2. Job enlargement

Combining previously fragmented tasks into one job, to increase the variety and
meaning of repetitive work

3. Autonomous work groups

Creating self-regulating groups who work largely without direct supervision

4. High performance work designs

Concentrates on setting up working groups in environments where high levels of

performance are required

It is generally recognized that although job rotation and job enlargement have their
uses in developing skills and relieving monotony, they do not go to the root of the
requirements for intrinsic motivation and for meeting the various motivating
characteristics of the jobs.

5. Job Enrichment

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It goes beyond job enlargement to add greater autonomy and responsibility to a job
.

It aims to maximize the interest and challenge of work by providing the employee
with a job that has these characteristics

 Which is a complete piece of work in the sense that the worker can identify a
series of tasks or activities that end in a recognizable and definable product
 Which affords the employee much variety and decision making
responsibility and control as possible in carrying out the work
 Which provides direct feedback through the work itself on how well the
employee is doing his job

Advocates of job enrichment claim that it can relive boredom, but may not result in
positive increases in motivation

JOB ENRICHMENT TECHNIQUES

There are several ways of enriching a job, depending on the circumstances and the
technology

 Increasing responsibility of individuals for their own work

 Giving employees more scope to vary the methods, sequence and pace of
their work
 Giving a person or work group a complete natural unit of work i.e reducing
task specialization
 Removing some controls from above while ensuring that individuals are
clearly accountable for achieving defined targets or standards
 Allowing employees more influence in setting targets for standards of
performance
 Giving employees the control information they need to monitor their won
performance
 Encouraging participation of employees in planning, innovating and review
of results
 Introducing new and more difficult tasks not previously handled
 Assigning individuals/group projects which give them more responsibility
and help them to increase their expertise
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JOB ANALYSIS

It is the process of collecting, analyzing and setting out the purpose, content,
accountability, performance criteria, competencies, responsibility, motivating
factors and development factors of a job.

In other words, it is the study of jobs within an organization.

It creates information on specific skills, abilities, experience required by the job to

be filled.

Armstrong (1998) considers if as one of the most important techniques in Human

Resources management

It provides information required to produce personnel and training specifications

and job descriptions and these are of fundamental importance to job design,
recruitment and selection, performance management and job evaluation as well as
in designing pay structures.

A thorough job analysis had 2 parts

1. Job description

Job description may be defined as a statement describing the purpose of the job,
the nature of the job and the duties and responsibilities which comprise the job.

It specifies the tasks , duties and responsibilities of the job.

Major items in a job description are

 Main duties
 Percentage time devoted to each duty
 Performance standards to be achieved
 Working conditions and potential hazards

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  Reporting relationships
 Machines and equipment to be used to perform the job

The information required to prepare the job description can be obtained by means
of:

 Interviews of the present employee and his/her immediate superior

 Observation of the job while it is being carried out, which helps clarify the
relative importance of the various tasks and duties
 Questionnaires, in which job incumbent prepare written answers to questions
about the job
2. Job specification/ person specification
Identifies the personal characteristics, skills, abilities and experience
necessary for effective performance of the job

USES OF JOB ANALYSIS

A job analysis is performed for many reasons

1. Personal planning – to develop job categories

2. Recruiting- to describe the job opening and advertise new positions
3. Selection- to identify the skills and activities that serve as the criteria
for deciding the candidates to select
4. Orientation- To tell employees what activities they must perform
5. Evaluation- To identify the standards and performance objectives
against which employees are evaluated
6. Compensation- to evaluate job worth to aid in developing a wage
structure
7. Training – to conduct a training needs assessment by identifying the
activities that employees ought to be able to perform

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 8. Discipline- To identify standards of acceptable performance which
employees are expected to achieved
9. Safety- to identify safe working procedures so that unsafe activities
can either be changed or discontinued
10.Job redesign- to analyze the characteristics of a job that need to be
changed in job redesign projects

Methods of Job evaluation

A number of methods can be used to gather job information

a. Observation
Observers may watch an individual work and then record a brief description
of the activities performed
Disadvantages
 They can create an unrealistic situation since employees may behave
differently when they know they are being observes. It is worse when
employees know that the information will be used to determine their
wage levels-adding of unnecessary time- consuming activities to make
their job look difficult
Video tapes or films of workers as they perform their duties
sometimes provide more accurate work information
 Some jobs cannot be easily observed e.g. jobs that primarily involve
thinking and problem solving activities
b. Interviews
Involve interviewing the incumbent as well as his/her supervisor
c. Questionnaires
Asking employees and supervisors to complete a questionnaire regarding
their job
Advantages
 Though costly, questionnaires have the advantage of probing in great
detail into the various aspects of work in a specific situation
 The information gathered is quantitative in nature and can be easily
updated as their jobs change
d. Self-Description

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 Job holders are asked to analyze their own jobs and prepare a job
description.
It saves time to the job analyst
However, workers need to be trained first for them to do it effectively
A guide is required on how to analyze
e. Checklists and inventories
 Checklists are similar to questionnaires but responses require fewer
subjective judgments and tends to be yes/no variety
 They need to be thoroughly prepared and a field trial is essential to
ensure that the instructions for completion are adequate and clear
 Inventories /rating scales are an improvement on checklists
 They present job holders with a list of activities.
 However, instead of simply marking the activities, they carry out ,
they are asked to rank /rate them according to time spent and
sometimes the importance of the job

f. Diaries and Logs

 Job holders analyze their own jobs by keeping diaries or logs of their
activities
 These can be used as a basic material for the job descriptions
 Best used for managerial jobs which are fairly complex and where the
job holders have the analytical skills required as well as the ability to
express themselves on paper

g. Critical incident technique

 Involves eliciting data about effective or less effective behavior
which is related to examples of actual events or ‘critical incidents’
 Explanations on what constitutes good or poor performance or
successful or unsuccessful outcomes need to be explained
 Information on critical incidents should be collected under the
following
o What the circumstances were
o What the individual did
o The outcome of what the individual did

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  The critical incidents are then used to rate /rank the levels of
effectiveness of less effectiveness of what the individual did.

JOB EVALUATION

A method of establishing the relative positions of jobs in a job hierarchy.

Cherrington (1998) defines it as a procedure for developing a wage stricter that is
somehow based upon an evaluation of a job

Methods of Job evaluation

The following methods can be sued for job evaluation

1. Job ranking
2. Classification method
3. Point method
4. Factor comparison method

Job ranking

 The simplest of all the JE methods

 A committee rank the jobs from the highest to the lowest in value
 The advantages of job ranking are
o It is simple
o It requires little time or paperwork
 Its disadvantages are
o The differentials between the ranks are assumed to be equal where
they usually are not e.g. there is usually very little difference in worth
between jobs in the middle of the ranks
o Evaluating each job as a whole is not conducive to a careful analysis
and cannot give an accurate measurement of worth
o A ranking method is difficult to use in organisations with large
numbers of jobs
 A useful technique to help evaluations rank a large list of jobs is to arrange
them into clusters of related jobs (job series) then rank each series
separately.

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 Classification Method

 Also known as predetermined grading

 Consists of establishing a predetermined number of grades or
classes
 The classification process specifies a number of grades beforehand
and broad descriptions are then written of the types of jobs to be
placed in each grade.
 One advantage is that it standardizes the wages for similar jobs and
maintains pay differentials between jobs within extremely large
organisations.
 Its disadvantage is that its stability makes it inflexible regarding
such factors as regional wage differences and labor market
variances

Point Methods

 It is the most frequently used method of Job evaluation

 It is easy to administer
 Consist of analyzing the content of jobs from the written job descriptions
and the allocating points for specific factors. The number of pints assigned
to each job determines the range of pay for that job.

Factor Comparison Method

 Conceptually similar to the point method but slightly more complex

 Not very popular because of its complexity
 It consist of the following steps
o Identify key (benchmark) jobs- these are equitably paid jobs. Only 5
to 8 key jobs are usually used
o Identify job factors- i.e. The important dimensions of worth i.e.
Mental requirements, physical requirements, skill, responsibility and
working conditions
o Rank jobs- rank jobs in respect of each key factor separately

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o Assign monetary amounts to each job on each factor- the amount of
money assigned to each job on a given factor should be consistent
with how the jobs were ranked on that factor. This step is subjective
o Compare unique jobs with key jobs- done factor by factor to
determine how much each job should be paid

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