Job Analysis Leads to Optimal Job Design

The term job design is an all-encompassing term for the process of assigning tasks and authority to a job. Optimal job design or redesign depends on job analysis and thus job analysis can be best understood as the first step in job design or job redesign. The result of job analysis is a thorough understanding of the range, depth, and relationships of the job.

A thorough understanding of a job can be developed through job analysis along three dimensions (Gibson, Ivancevich, & Donnelly, 1994): job content, job requirements, and job context. Functional job analysis is a widely used method for determining job content such as what the worker does in relation to other jobs, what methods and techniques are employed, what tools and equipment are used, and what is the resultant output in terms of goods and services. Job requirements are the job candidate’s / employee’s personal attributes that are needed to perform the job content, such as education, credentials, experience and special skills, which can be discerned from methods like the position analysis questionnaire. Job context is the dimension that describes the working conditions, physical demands, accountability, responsibility, managerial role, and supervision needed.

Job design or job redesign can take place with respect to job range, job depth and job relationships. Job range is a term referring to the number of tasks an individual is expected to perform. Job depth refers to the amount of control, discretion, or influence that an individual can exercise in the performance of their duties. Job relationships are the way in which individual jobs are included within the context of the next level of managerial authority, specifically the span of control and departmentalization of related jobs. These three aspects of job design can help managers describe the observed, objective characteristics of jobs, which can be different from the subjective experiences of those actually filling the position.

Reference

Gibson, J.L., Ivancevich, J.M., & Donnelly, J.H., Jr. (1994). Organizations: Behavior, structure, processes (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Irwin.