Milkovich−Newman:
Compensation, Eighth
Edition

I. Internal Alignment:
Determining the Structure

4. Job Analysis

© The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2004

Chapter Four
Job Analysis
Chapter Outline
Structures Based on Jobs, People, or
Both
Job-Based Approach: Most Common
Why Perform Job Analysis?
Job Analysis Procedures
What Information Should Be Collected?
Job Data: Identification
Job Data: Content
Employee Data
“Essential Elements” and the Americans with Disabilities Act
Level of Analysis
How Can the Information Be Collected?
Conventional Methods
Quantitative Methods

Who Collects the Information?
Who Provides the Information?
What about Discrepancies?
Job Descriptions Summarize the Data
Describing Managerial/Professional Jobs
Verify the Description
Job Analysis: Bedrock or Bureaucracy?
Judging Job Analysis
Reliability
Validity
Acceptability
Usefulness
A Judgment Call
Your Turn: The Customer-Service Agent

Three people sit in front of their keyboards scanning their monitors. One is a sales representative in Ohio, checking the progress of an order for four dozen picture 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 picture cell 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 need no longer 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.
85

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STRUCTURES BASED ON JOBS, PEOPLE, OR BOTH
Exhibit 4.1 outlines the process for constructing a work-related internal structure. No matter the approach, the process begins by looking at people at work. Job-based structures look at the tasks the 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 column of the exhibit, remains the same for both job- and person-based structures: (1) collect and summarize information that identifies similarities and differences, (2) determine what is to be valued, (3) quantify the relative value, and (4) translate the relative value

EXHIBIT 4.1
Many Ways to Create
Internal
Structure

Business- and Work-Related
Internal Structure

Person Based

Job Based

Skill

Competencies

(Chapter 6)

(Chapter 6)

PURPOSE
Collect, summarize Job analysis work information
Job descriptions
(Chapter 4)

Determine what to value

Job evaluation: classes or compensable factors
(Chapter 5)

Assess value

Factor degrees and weighting (Chapter 5)

Translate into structure Job-based structure
(Chapter 5)

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Chapter 4 Job Analysis 87

into an internal structure. (The blank boxes for the person-based structure will be filled in when we get to Chapter 6.) This chapter and the next focus on the job-based structure.1
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 personnel 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.
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.

1Peter Cappelli, The New Deal at Work: Managing the Market-Driven Workforce (Boston: Harvard
Business School Press, 1999); Jason D. Shaw, Nina Gupta, and John Delery, “Congruence between
Technology and Compensation Systems: Implications for Strategy Implementation,” Strategic
Management Journal 22 (2001), pp. 379–386; P. K. Zingheim and J. R. Schuster, “Reassessing the Value of Skill-Based Pay,” WorldatWork Journal, Third Quarter 2002, pp. 72–77.

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EXHIBIT 4.2 Contemporary Job Description for Registered Nurse
Job Title
Registered Nurse
Job Summary
Accountable for the complete spectrum of patient care from admission through transfer or discharge through the nursing process of assessment, planning, implementation, and evaluation. Each R.N. has primary authority to fulfill responsibility of the nursing process on the assigned shift and for projecting future needs of the patient/family. Directs and guides patient teaching and activities for ancillary personnel while maintaining standard of professional nursing.
Relationships
Reports to: Head Nurse or Charge Nurse.
Supervises: Responsible for the care delivered by L.P.N.s, nursing assistants, orderlies, and transcribers.
Works with: Ancillary Care Departments.
External relationships: Physicians, patients, patients’ families.
Qualifications
Education: Graduate of an accredited school of nursing.
Work experience: Critical care requires one year of recent medical/surgical experience (special care nursing preferred), medical/surgical experience (new graduates may be considered for noncharge positions).
License or registration requirements: Current R.N. license or permit in the State of Minnesota.
Physical requirements: A. Ability to bend, reach, or assist to transfer up to 50 pounds.
B. Ability to stand and/or walk 80 percent of 8-hour shift.
C. Visual and hearing acuity to perform job-related functions.
Essential Responsibilities
1. Assess physical, emotional, and psychosocial dimensions of patients.
Standard: Provides a written assessment of patient within one hour of admission and at least once a shift.
Communicates this assessment to other patient care providers in accordance with hospital policies.
2. Formulates a written plan of care for patients from admission through discharge.
Standard: Develops short-and long-term goals within 24 hours of admission Reviews and updates care plans each shift based on ongoing assessment.
3. Implements plan of care.
Standard: Demonstrates skill in performing common nursing procedures in accordance with but not limited to the established written R.N. skills inventory specific to assigned area. Completes patient care activities in an organized and timely fashion, reassessing priorities appropriately.
Note: Additional responsibilities omitted from exhibit.

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.

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Chapter 4 Job Analysis 89

EXHIBIT 4.3 Determining the Internal Job Structure

→

Internal relationships within the organization →

Job analysis
The systematic process of collecting information that identifies similarities and differences in the work

→

Job descriptions
Summary reports that identify, define, and describe the job as it is actually performed

→

Job evaluation
Comparison of jobs within an organization

Job structure
An ordering of jobs based on their content or relative value

Some Major Decisions in Job Analysis
•
•
•
•
•

Why perform job analysis?
What information is needed?
How to collect information?
Who should be involved?
How useful are the results?

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.2
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.3 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,

2E. J. McCormick, “Job and Task Analysis,” in Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, ed.
M. D. Dunnette (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1976), pp. 651–696; Robert J. Harvey, “Job Analysis,” in
Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Vol. 2, ed. M. D. Dunnette and L. Hough (Palo
Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press, 1991), pp. 72–157.
3Particularly valuable sources of information on job analysis definitions and methods are U.S. Department of Labor, Manpower Administration, Revised Handbook for Analyzing Jobs (Washington, DC: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1992); Robert J. Harvey, “Job Analysis,” in Handbook of Industrial and
Organizational Psychology, Vol. 2, ed. M. D. Dunnette and L. Hough (Palo Alto, CA: Consulting
Psychologists Press, 1991), pp. 72–157; Sidney A. Fine and Steven F. Cronshaw, Functional Job Analysis
(Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1999).

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EXHIBIT 4.4 Job Analysis Terminology

JOB FAMILY
Grouping of related jobs with broadly similar content; e.g., marketing, engineering, office support, technical. JOB
Group of tasks performed by one person that make up the total work assignment of that person; e.g., customer support representative.
TASK
Smallest unit of analysis, a specific statement of what a person does; e.g., answers the telephone.
Similar tasks can be grouped into a task dimension; e.g., responsible for ensuring that accurate information is provided to customer. in many large organizations.4 Thus, the federal Department of Labor’s description of conventional job analysis provides a useful “how-to” guide.

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.

4Steven

G. Allen, Robert L. Clark, and Sylvester J. Schieber, “Has Job Security Vanished in Large
Corporations?” NBER Working Paper 6966 (1999); Janet Marler, Melissa Barringer, and George
Milkovich, “Boundaryless and Traditional Contingent Employees: Worlds Apart,” Journal of
Organizational Behavior 23 (2002), pp. 425-453; Sanford M. Jacoby, “Are Career Jobs Headed for
Extinction?” Kenneth M. Piper Memorial Lecture at Chicago–Kent Law School, April 1999.

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EXHIBIT 4.5 General Procedures for Conventional Job Analysis
Step
1. Develop preliminary job information 2. Conduct initial tour of work site

3. Conduct interviews Notes on selection of interviewees 4. Conduct second tour of work site
5. Consolidate job information 6. Verify job description Things to Remember or Do
a. Review existing documents in order to develop an initial “big-picture” familiarity with the job: its main mission, its major duties or functions, work flow patterns.
b. Prepare a preliminary list of duties which will serve as a framework for conducting the interviews.
c. Make a note of major items that are unclear or ambiguous or that need to be clarified during the data-gathering process.
a. The initial tour is designed to familiarize the job analyst with the work layout, the tools and equipment that are used, the general conditions of the workplace, and the mechanics associated with the end-to-end performance of major duties
b. The initial tour is particularly helpful in those jobs where a firsthand view of a complicated or unfamiliar piece of equipment saves the interviewee the thousand words required to describe the unfamiliar or technical.
c. For continuity, it is recommended that the first-level supervisor-interviewee be designated the guide for the job-site observations
a. It is recommended that the first interview be conducted with the first-level supervisor, who is considered to be in a better position than the jobholders to provide an overview of the job and how the major duties fit together.
b. For scheduling purposes, it is recommended that no more than two interviews be conducted per day, each interview lasting no more than three hours.
a. The interviewees are considered subject-matter experts by virtue of the fact that they perform the job (in the case of job incumbents) or are responsible for getting the job done (in the case of first-level supervisors).
b. The job incumbent to be interviewed should represent the typical employee who is knowledgeable about the job (not the trainee who is just learning the ropes or the outstanding member of the work unit).
c. Whenever feasible, the interviewees should be selected with a view toward obtaining an appropriate race/sex mix.
a. The second tour of the work site is designed to clarify, confirm, and otherwise refine the information developed in the interviews.
b. As in the initial tour, it is recommended that the same first-level supervisorinterviewee conduct the second walk-through.
a. The consolidation phase of the job study involves piecing together into one coherent and comprehensive job description the data obtained from several sources: supervisor, jobholders, on-site tours, and written materials about the job.
b. Past experience indicates that one minute of consolidation is required for every minute of interviewing. For planning purposes, at least five hours should be set aside for the consolidation phase.
c. A subject-matter expert should be accessible as a resource person to the job analyst during the consolidation phase. The supervisor-interviewee fills this role.
d. The job analyst should check the initial preliminary list of duties and questions—all must be answered or confirmed.
a. The verification phase involves bringing all the interviewees together for the purpose of determining if the consolidated job description is accurate and complete. b. The verification process is conducted in a group setting. Typed or legibly written copies of the job description (narrative description of the work setting and list of task statements) are distributed to the first-level supervisor and the job incumbent interviewees.
c. Line by line, the job analyst goes through the entire job description and makes notes of any omissions, ambiguities, or needed clarifications.
d. The job analyst collects all materials at the end of the verification meeting.

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EXHIBIT 4.6
Typical Data
Collected for
Job Analysis

Data Related to Job
Job Identification

Job Content

Title
Department in which job is located
Number of people who hold job

Tasks
Activities
Constraints on actions
Performance criteria
Critical incidents
Conflicting demands
Working conditions
Roles (e.g., negotiator, monitor, leader)

Data Related to Employee
Employee Characteristics

Internal Relationships

External Relationships

Professional/technical knowledge
Manual skills
Verbal skills
Written skills
Quantitative skills
Mechanical skills
Conceptual skills
Managerial skills
Leadership skills
Interpersonal skills

Boss and other superiors
Peers
Subordinates

Suppliers
Customers
Regulatory
Professional industry
Community
Union/employee groups

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 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 Brookings Institute study accuses the U.S. government of creating more new job titles in a recent 6-year period than in the preceding 30 years.5 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.
On the other hand, your tax dollars are paying the wages of 484 deputy assistant secretaries, 148 associate assistant secretaries, 220 assistant assistant secretaries, and
5Paul

C. Light, The True Size of Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 1999); Candice
Prendergast, “The Role of Promotion in Inducing Specific Human Capital Acquisition,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 1993, pp. 523–534.

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82 deputy assistant assistant secretaries. But it is not only our government that is a wellspring of job titles. PepsiCo recently announced a new chief visionary officer. Many organizations are scrambling to hire visionaries of one sort or another. The Peabody Hotel in Orlando, Florida, recently advertised for a Duck Master to “join their flock.”6 A job title should be useful beyond providing fodder for the next Dilbert cartoon.

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
Once we have specified the tasks and outcomes, 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.7 The communication behavior in this exhibit is part of the relationships-with-other-persons factor.

6”If

It’s Easy, Don’t Call It Duck Soup,” Wall Street Journal September 3, 2002, p. B7. Who fits the bill?
Someone who can feed, exercise, and train the ducks to march.
7Much of the developmental and early applications of the PAQ was done in the 1960s and 1970s. See, for example, E. J. McCormick, “Job and Task Analysis,” in Handbook of Industrial and Organizational
Psychology, ed. M. D. Dunnette (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1976), pp. 651–696; E. J. McCormick et al., “A
Study of Job Characteristics and Job Dimensions as Based on the Position Analysis Questionnaire,”
Occupational Research Center, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 1969. The PAQ is distributed by PAQ
Services, www.paq.com; see PAQ’s website and newsletters for recent discussions. For more recent information, see Robert J. Harvey, “Job Analysis,” in Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology,
Vol. 2, ed. M. D. Dunnette and L. Hough (Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press, 1991).

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EXHIBIT 4.7 Communication: Task-Based Data
Time spent in current position

Th is Ve ry Mu sma c l
Be h be l amo low low un
Sli av av t g e e Ab htly rage rage ou bel
Sli t a ow g v
Ab htly erag aver ag o a e e Mu ve a bove ch vera av
Ve ab ge era ry ov ge lar e a ge ve am rag ou e nt 1. Mark the circle in the “Do This” column for tasks that you currently perform.
2. At the end of the task list, write in any unlisted tasks that you currently perform. Please use a No. 2 pencil and fill all circles completely.

Do

3. Rate each task that you perform for relative time spent by marking the appropriate circle in the “Time Spent” column.
PERFORM COMMUNICATION ACTIVITIES
Obtain technical information
421. Read technical publications about competitive products.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

422. Read technical publications to keep current on industry.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

423. Attend required, recommended, or job-related courses and/or seminars.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

424. Study existing operating systems/programs to gain/maintain familiarity with them.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

425. Perform literature searches necessary to the development of products.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

426. Communicate with system software group to see how their recent changes impact current projects.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

427. Study and evaluate state-of-the-art techniques to remain competitive and/or lead the field.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

428. Attend industry standards meetings.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Exchange technical information
429. Interface with coders to verify that the software design is being implemented as specified.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

430. Consult with co-workers to exchange ideas and techniques.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

431. Consult with members of other technical groups within the company to exchange new ideas and techniques.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

432. Interface with support consultants or organizations to clarify software design or courseware content.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Source: Excerpted from Control Data Corporation’s Quantitative Job Analysis. Used by permission.

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EXHIBIT 4.8 Communication: Behavioral-Based Data
Section 4 Relationships with Others
This section deals with different aspects of interaction between people involved in various kinds of work.

Code Importance to This job (1)
N Does not apply
1 Very minor
2 Low
3 Average
4 High
5 Extreme

4.1 Communication
Rate the following in terms of how important the activity is to the completion of the job. Some jobs may involve several or all of the items in this section.
4.1.1 Oral (communicating by speaking)
99 _____ Advising (dealing with individuals in order to counsel and/or guide them with regard to problems that may be resolved by legal, financial, scientific, technical, clinical, spiritual, and/or professional principles) 100 _____ Negotiating (dealing with others in order to reach an agreement on solution, for example, labor bargaining, diplomatic relations, etc.)
101 _____ Persuading (dealing with others in order to influence them toward some action or point of view, for example, selling, political campaigning, etc.)
102 _____ Instructing (the teaching of knowledge or skills, in either an informal or a formal manner, to others, for example, a public school teacher, a machinist teaching an apprentice, etc.)
103 _____ Interviewing (conducting interviews directed toward some specific objective, for example, interviewing job applicants, census taking, etc.)
104 _____ Routine information exchange job related (the giving and/or receiving of job-related information of a routine nature, for example, ticket agent, taxicab dispatcher, receptionist, etc.)
105 _____ Nonroutine information exchange (the giving and/or receiving of job-related information of a nonroutine or unusual nature, for example, professional committee meetings, engineers discussing new product design, etc.)
106 _____ Public speaking (making speeches or formal presentations before relatively large audiences, for example, political addresses, radio/TV broadcasting, delivering a sermon, etc.)
4.1.2 Written (communicating by written/printed material)
107 _____ Writing (for example, writing or dictating letters, reports, etc., writing copy for ads, writing newspaper articles, etc.; do not include transcribing activities described in item 4.3 but only activities in which the incumbent creates the written material)
Source: E. J. McConnick, P. R., Jeanneret, and R. C. Mecham, Position Analysis Questionnaire, copyright © 1969 by Purdue
Research Foundation, West Lafayette, IN 47907. Reprinted with permission.

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The entire PAQ consists of 194 items. Its developers claim that these items are sufficient to analyze any job. However, you can see by the exhibit that the reading level is quite high. A large proportion of employees need help to get through the whole thing.
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.8
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.
Settlements of complaints filed under the law seem to target blanket exclusions that ignore the individual in hiring and job assignments. For example, the metropolitan government of Nashville, Tennessee, settled a lawsuit by agreeing to hire an applicant for an emergency medical technician-paramedic position who was deaf in one ear. Even though the applicant had been working part-time as a paramedic in the state for over six years,
Nashville applied an absolute medical/physical standard that automatically excluded him because of his hearing loss. His successful lawsuit forced the government to base hiring decisions on an individualized assessment of a candidate’s physical condition.
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.

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—sales rep, engineer, account analyst—all involve use of computers, but a closer look showed that the jobs are very different. At the
8Adrienne

Colella, “Co-worker Distributive Fairness Judgments of the Workplace Accommodation of
Employees with Disabilities,” Academy of Management Review 26(1) (January 2001), pp. 100–116;
Edward H. Yelin and Laura Trupin, “Disability and the Characteristics of Employment,” Monthly Labor
Review, May 2003, pp. 20–31.

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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, then the jobs must be paid equally; if jobs are different, they can be paid differently.
Cybercomp
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?
Links to fast-growing small private companies can be found via the Inc 500 link at www.inc.com/500/about.html. Are there any differences in job postings between large and small companies?

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 rewards. 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.9 Moving from the federal government job of assistant assistant secretary to that of associate assistant secretary (or reverse) may be far more meaningful than people outside Washington, DC, imagine. Reducing titles or labeling all employees as “associates,” as Target, Wal-Mart, and others have done, may signal an egalitarian culture. But it also may sacrifice opportunities to reward employees with advancement.10 9Susanne

Craig, “E*Trade Lowers Corporate Titles, in Move That Could Spur Departures,” Wall Street
Journal, September 6, 2001, pp. C1, C14.
10V. L. Huber and S. R. Crandall, “Job Measurement: A Social-Cognitive Decision Perspective,” in Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, Vol. 12, ed. Gerald R. Ferris (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press,
1994), pp. 223–269; Juan I. Sanchez, I. Prager, A. Wilson, and C. Viswesvaran, “Understanding Within-Job
Title Variance in Job-Analytic Ratings”, Journal of Business and Psychology 12 (1998), pp. 407–419.

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EXHIBIT 4.9 3M’s Structured Interview Questionnaire
I. Job Overview

Job
Summary

What is the main purpose of your job? (Why does it exist and what does the work contribute to 3M?)
Examples: To provide secretarial support in our department by performing office and administrative duties.
To purchase goods and services that meet specifications at the least cost.
To perform systems analysis involved in the development, installation, and maintenance of computer applications.
Hint: It may help to list the duties first before answering this question.

Duties and Responsibilities

What are your job's main duties and responsibilities? (These are the major work activities that usually take up a significant amount of your work time and occur regularly as you perform your work.)
Percentage of Time Spent
In the spaces below, list your job’s five most important or most frequent duties. Then, in the (Total may be less than but not more than 100%) boxes, estimate the percentage of the time you spend on each duty each day.
1.

II. Skills/Knowledge Applied
What is the level of formal training/education that is needed to start doing your job?

Formal
Example:High School, 2 Year Vo-Tech in Data Processing. Bachelor of Science in Chemistry.
Training In some jobs, a combination of education and job-related experience can substitute for academic degrees. or Example:Bachelor's Degree in Accounting or completion of 2 years of general business plus 3–4 years' work
Education
experience in an accounting field.

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 the information is correct. Or the analyst may observe the person at work and take notes on what is being done. Exhibit 4.9 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 job-

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EXHIBIT 4.9 continued
Experience

Skills/
Competencies

Months:
Years:
None
What important skills, competencies, or abilities are needed to do the work that you do? (Please give examples for each skill that you identify.)
A. Coordinating Skills (such as scheduling activities, organizing/maintaining records)
Are coordinating skills required?
Yes
No
If yes, give examples of specific skills needed
Example
B. Administrative Skills (such as monitoring

III. Complexity of Duties
Structure
and
Variation
of Work
Problem
Solving and Analysis

How processes and tasks within your work are determined, and how you do them are important to understanding your work at
3M. Describe the work flow in your job. Think of the major focus of your job or think of the work activities on which you spend the most time.
1. From whom/where (title, not person) do you receive work?
2. What processes or tasks do you perform to complete it?
3.
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?

VI. General Comments
General
Comments

What percentage of your job duties do you feel was captured in this questionnaire?
0–25%
26–50%
51–75%
What aspect of your job was not covered adequately by this questionnaire?

76–100%

holders 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.11
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, since 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.
11Richard

Arvey, Emily M. Passino, and John W. Lounsbury, “Job Analysis Results as Influenced by Sex of
Incumbent and Sex of Analyst,” Journal of Applied Psychology 62(4) (1977), pp. 411–416; Richard Arvey,
“Potential Problems in Job Evaluation Methods and Processes,” in Compensation, ed. L. Gomez-Mejia and D. Balkin (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1987). Juan I. Sanchez and Edward L. Levine, “Is Job
Analysis Dead, Misunderstood, or Both? New Forms of Work Analysis and Design,” in Evolving Practices in Human Resource Management: Responses to a Changing World of Work, eds. A. I. Kraut and A. K.
Korman (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999), pp. 43–68.

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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. Exhibit 4.10 shows part of an online job analysis questionnaire used by a U.K. consulting firm.12 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. Exhibit 4.11 is a job profile prepared from the results of the questionnaire used in Exhibit 4.10.
Some consulting firms have developed quantitative inventories that can be tailored to the needs of a specific organization or to a specific family of jobs, such as data/information processing jobs.13 Many organizations find it practical and cost-effective to modify these
EXHIBIT 4.10
Online Job
Analysis
Questionnaire
Source: Link
Group Consultants,
Limited,
www.hrlink.co.uk.
Used by permission. 12Link

Group Consultants, Limited, Chester, U.K., www.linkg.co.uk.
Perrin has done a lot of research on this issue. See its website at www.towers.com; “Joint
Compensation Study: Technical Occupational Analysis Questionnaire,” Control Data Business Advisors,
Minneapolis, 1985.
13Towers

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existing inventories rather than to develop their own analysis from ground zero. But keep in mind that the results are only as good as the items in the questionnaire. 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 seems to be that any analysis needs to include good performers to ensure that the work is usefully analyzed.14

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.15
EXHIBIT 4.11
Online Job
Profile
Source: Link
Group Consultants,
Limited,
www.hrlink.co.uk.
Used by permission. 14W.

C. Borman, D. Dorsey, and L. Ackerman, “Time-Spent Responses and Time Allocation Strategies:
Relations with Sales Performance in a Stockbroker Sample,” Personnel Psychology 45 (1992), pp. 763–777.
15Richard Arvey, Emily M. Passino, and John W. Lounsbury, “Job Analysis Results as Influenced by Sex of
Incumbent and Sex of Analyst,” Journal of Applied Psychology 62(4) (1977), pp. 411–416; Richard Arvey,
“Potential Problems in Job Evaluation Methods and Processes,” in Compensation, ed. L. Gomez-Mejia and D. Balkin (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1987); Paul Sackett, E. Cornelius, and E. T. Carron, “A
Comparison of Global Judgment versus Task-Oriented Approaches to Job Classification”, Personnel
Psychology 34 (1981), pp. 791–804.

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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.16

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 or ill-defined in the first place. 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. As in the previously mentioned case of the stockbrokers, employees with differences in performance or experience may have different views of the job. The crossfire from these differing views can make job analysis a dangerous assignment for a brand-new HR employee.
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 throttle back and 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. In general, the more unique the job, the more sources of data will be required. Holding a meeting of multiple jobholders and supervisors to discuss discrepancies and then asking both employees and supervisors to sign off on the proposed analysis helps ensure agreement on,

16V.

L. Huber and S. R. Crandall, “Job Measurement: A Social-Cognitive Decision Perspective,” in
Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, Vol. 12, ed. Gerald R. Ferris (Greenwich, CT:
JAI Press, 1994), pp. 223–269.

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or at least understanding of, the results. Discrepancies among employees may even reveal that more than one job has been lumped under the same job title.

Top Management Support Is Critical
In addition to involvement by analysts, jobholders, and their supervisors, support of top management is absolutely essential. 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 management is not willing to seriously consider any changes suggested by job analysis, the process is probably not worth the bother and expense.

JOB DESCRIPTIONS SUMMARIZE THE DATA
So now the job information has been collected, maybe even organized. But it still must be summarized in a way that will be useful for HR decisions, including job evaluation
(Chapter 5). 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.

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.17 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 computer 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. This is a classic example of how job-based and person-based approaches blend together in practice, even though the distinctions are easy to make in a textbook.
17K.

C. O’Shaughnessy, David Levine, and Peter Cappelli, “Changes in Management Pay Structures,
1986–1992, and Rising Returns to Skill,” working paper, University of California–Berkeley, Institute of
Industrial Relations, 1998.

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EXHIBIT 4.12
Job
Description for a Manager

Title: Nurse Manager
Department: ICU
Position Description:
Under the direction of the Vice President of Patient Care Services and Directors of Patient
Care Services, the Nurse Manager assumes 24-hour accountability and responsibility for the operations of defined patient specialty services. The Nurse Manager is administratively responsible for the coordination, direction, implementation, evaluation, and management of personnel and services. The Nurse Manager provides leadership in a manner consistent with the corporate mission, values, and philosophy and adheres to policies and procedures established by Saint Joseph’s Hospital and the Division of Patient Care Services. The Nurse
Manager participates in strategic planning and defining future direction for the assigned areas of responsibility and the organization.
Qualification:
Education: Graduate of accredited school of nursing. A bachelor’s degree in Nursing or related field required. Master’s degree preferred. Current license in State of Wisconsin as a
Registered Nurse, Experience: A minimum of three years’ clinical nursing is required.
Minimum of two years’ management experience or equivalent preferred.

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 interviewees 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.

JOB ANALYSIS: BEDROCK OR BUREAUCRACY?
HRNet, an Internet discussion group related to HR issues, provoked one of its largest number of 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.
If the job information is needed to manage compensation, the compensation specialist or

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EXHIBIT 4.13
Job
Description for Nurse 100
Years Ago

In addition to caring for your 50 patients each nurse will follow these regulations:
1. Daily sweep and mop the floors of your ward, dust the patient’s furniture and window sills. 2. Maintain an even temperature in your ward by bringing in a scuttle of coal for the day’s business.
3. Light is important to observe the patient’s condition. Therefore, each day, fill kerosene lamps, clean chimneys, and trim wicks. Wash the windows once a week.
4. The nurse’s notes are important in aiding the physician’s work. Make your pens carefully, you may whittle nibs to your individual taste.
5. Each nurse on the day duty will report every day at 7 A.M. and leave at 8 P.M. except on the Sabbath on which day you will be off from 12:00 noon to 2:00 P.M.
6. Graduate nurses in good standing with the director of nurses will be given an evening off each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if you go regularly to church. 7. Each nurse should lay aside from each pay day a goodly sum of her earnings for her benefit during her declining years, so that she will not become a burden. For example, if you earn $30 a month you should set aside $15.
8. Any nurse who smokes, uses liquor in any form, gets her hair done at a beauty shop, or frequents dance halls will give the director good reason to suspect her worth, intentions, and integrity.
9. The nurse who performs her labors and serves her patients and doctors faithfully and without fault for a period of five years will be given an increase by the hospital administration of five cents a day, provided there are no hospital debts that are outstanding. HR generalist collects it. In many cases, the job analysis is simply no longer performed.
The 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.”18 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?
A large part of the disagreement centers on the issue of flexibility. Many organizations today are using fewer employees to do a wider variety of tasks as part of a cost reduction strategy. Streamlining job analysis and reducing the number of different jobs can reduce costs by making work assignments more fluid.19
Generic 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,
18”The
19Lee

Future of Salary Management,” Compensation and Benefits Review, July/August 2001, p. 10.

Dyer and Richard A. Shafer, “From HR Strategy to Organizational Effectiveness,” in Strategic Human
Resources Management in the Twenty-First Century, Suppl. 4, eds. Patrick M. Wright, Lee D. Dyer,
John W. Boudreau, and George T. Milkovich (Stamford, CT: JAI Press, 1999).

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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.
Where work relationships are poor, both managers and employees may use detailed job descriptions as a “weapon.”20
On the other hand, the hierarchies and distinctions among jobs also represent rewards— career paths and promotion opportunities. Changing jobs often means a promotion and/or recognition of performance, not to mention a fatter paycheck. Reducing the number of jobs reduces these opportunities for recognition and advancement. Some people value a title change from “engineer” to “senior engineer” rather than the more generic “engineer associate”, which includes the work of both. Johnson & Johnson (J&J) in China sought to cut turnover from around 25 percent a year by relayering. J&J went from 7 levels in its structure to 28, thereby responding to employees’ desires for a greater sense of progress and promotion.

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.
Research on employee and supervisor agreement on the reliability of job analysis information is mixed.21 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. To date, no studies have found that gender and race differences affect reliability.22
Obviously, the way to increase reliability in a job analysis is to reduce sources of difference. Quantitative job analysis helps do this. But we need to be sure that we do not
20S.

G. Cohen and D. E. Bailey, “What Makes Teams Work: Group Effectiveness Research from the Shop
Floor to Executive Suite,” Journal of Management 23 (1997), pp. 239–291.
21Juan I. Sanchez and E. L. Levine, “The Impact of Raters’ Cognition on Judgment Accuracy: An Extension to the Job Analysis Domain,” Journal of Business and Psychology 9 (1994), pp. 47–57; Juan I. Sanchez and Edward L. Levine, “Accuracy or Consequential Validity: Which Is the Better Standard for Job Analysis
Data?” Journal of Organizational Behavior 21 (2000), pp. 809–818; Frederick P. Morgeson and Michael
A. Campion, “Accuracy in Job Analysis: Toward an Inference-Based Model,” Journal of Organizational
Behavior 21(2000) pp. 819–827.
22Richard Arvey, Emily M. Passino, and John W. Lounsbury, “Job Analysis Results as Influenced by Sex of
Incumbent and Sex of Analyst,” Journal of Applied Psychology 62(4) (1977), pp. 411–416; Sara L. Rynes,
Caroline L. Weber, and George T. Milkovich, “Effects of Market Survey Rates, Job Evaluation, and Job
Gender on Job Pay,” Journal of Applied Psychology 74(1) (1989), pp. 114–123.

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eliminate the richness of responses while eliminating the differences. Sometimes there really may be more than one job.

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.23 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 jobholders 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.”24 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.

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.25
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
23Juan

I. Sanchez and E. L. Levine, “The Impact of Raters’ Cognition on Judgment Accuracy: An Extension to the Job Analysis Domain,” Journal of Business and Psychology 9 (1994), pp. 47–57; Juan I. Sanchez and Edward L. Levine, “Accuracy or Consequential Validity: Which Is the Better Standard for Job Analysis
Data?” Journal of Organizational Behavior 21 (2000), pp. 809–818; Frederick P. Morgeson and Michael
A. Campion, “Accuracy in Job Analysis: Toward an Inference-Based Model,” Journal of Organizational
Behavior 21 (2000), pp. 819–827.
24E. M. Ramras, “Discussion,” in Proceedings of Division of Military Psychology Symposium: Collecting,
Analyzing, and Reporting Information Describing Jobs and Occupations, 77th Annual Convention of the
American Psychological Association, Lackland Air Force Base, TX, September 1969, pp. 75–76.
25Edward

L. Levine, Ronald A. Ash, Hardy Hall, and Frank Sistrunk, “Evaluation of Job Analysis Methods by Experienced Job Analysts,” Academy of Management Journal 26(2) (1983), pp. 339–348.

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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 25 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.”26

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 dissatisfied 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.

Your Turn

The Customer-Service Agent

Read the accompanying article on a day in the work life of Bill Ryan. Then write a job description for the job of customer service agent. Use the exhibits in this chapter to guide you in deciding what information in the story is relevant for job analysis.
1. Does the day diary include sufficient information?
2. Identify the specific information in the article that you found useful.
3. What additional information do you require? How would that information help you?
Pick a teammate (or the instructor will assign one) and exchange job descriptions with your teammate. 1. How similar/different are the two descriptions? You and your teammate started with exactly the same information. What might explain any differences?
2. What process would you go through to understand and minimize the differences?
3. What are some of the relational returns of the job?
(Editor: article is on separate pages. It is a photocopy of a newspaper article.)

26M.

D. Dunnette, L. M. Hough, and R. L. Rosse, “Task and Job Taxonomies as a Basis for Identifying
Labor Supply Sources and Evaluating Employment Qualifications,” in Affirmative Action Planning, eds.
George T. Milkovich and Lee Dyer (New York: Human Resource Planning Society, 1979), pp. 37–51.

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The Customer-Service Agent
When you’re the public face of ecommerce, you have the power to make or break a business
Bill Ryan often deals with difficult people. It’s what he gets paid for.
He’s one of 30 customer-service agents at
Half.com, an online marketplace owned by eBay
Inc., the Internet auction company. Like eBay,
Half.com attempts to match buyers and sellers in a vast flea market featuring millions of products ranging from trading cards to camcorders. But unlike eBay, there’s no bidding. Half.com lists items only at fixed prices. If you see something you like, pay the price and it’s yours.
The other big difference with eBay is that for most of the products listed on Half.com, there’s no way for buyers and sellers to interact directly.
Usually there’s no need to. To make a purchase, buyers use their credit cards or checking accounts to pay Half.com, which then automatically credits the amount to the seller’s card or account—minus a transaction fee. Once the payment is made, the seller ships the product.
Despite a well-oiled system, however, questions arise. Things can go wrong. A purchased item doesn’t arrive, or isn’t in the condition the buyer expected. Or maybe an interesting product is listed but its description isn’t clear.
And that’s where Mr. Ryan and his colleagues come in, handling the buckets of e-mail and intermittent phone calls from curious, addled and upset users. They pass information between buyers and sellers, answer questions and resolve the occasional dispute. Half.com says that fewer than 1% of the site’s transactions require customer service’s involvement. But with more than
15 million items for sale—well, you do the math.
In fact, the customer-service department receives about 1,500 to 2,000 e-mails a day, of which nearly a third are complaints about trans-

actions. The rest are mostly questions about the goods and how the site works. Mr. Ryan himself on a typical day fields between 60 and 100 emails and half a dozen phone calls. The calls are the most stressful. “People panic and they want answers,” Mr. Ryan says. “If they are calling, they are not happy.”
For Half.com—as well as most other e-commerce companies—customer-service agents like
Mr. Ryan are the crucial link between the faceless
Web site and the consumer. And how they deal with the public can make or break a business. As
George Leimer, Half.com’s vice president for operations, says, “It costs too much to get a new customer only to fumble the relationship away.”
Mr. Leimer says there has been virtually no turnover in customer service since the company began a year and a half ago. Half.com wouldn’t discuss salaries. But Mr. Ryan and his colleagues, who are split into two shifts covering 8 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week, say they’re satisfied with their wages, which include quarterly bonuses.
What he likes about the work, Mr. Ryan says, is the kind of customer problem that requires research and deep digging to find the resolution. What he sometimes doesn’t like about his work are the routine questions that generate stock responses.
Here’s a day in Mr. Ryan’s work life:

The Answer Man
8 AM Mr. Ryan strolls into the Half.com office in
Plymouth Meeting, Pa., a short drive from his home. The company’s single-story gray building is a former tire factory in this colonial-era industrial town on the outskirts of Philadelphia. The office has an open feel with tall ceilings.
Mr. Ryan works in a low-slung, black cubicle toward the back of the office, his space sparsely decorated save for photos of his parents, his wife,
Melissa, their two-year-old beagle, Max, and an
8 1/2-by-11 inch picture of Dikembe Mutombo, the Philadelphia 76ers’ star defensive center.

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The atmosphere at Half.com is decidedly young and casual. Jeans are the uniform.
Mr. Ryan certainly fits in, though at 32 he’s a few years older than most of his cubicle mates.
He wears a well-groomed goatee and small round glasses, and sits up straight at his desk. He started with Half.com last August, which makes him something of an old-timer, since the department has doubled in size since then.
He started doing strictly customer service, answering customer e-mails. Now he also does what the company calls “trust and safety work”: investigating fraud and looking for things on the site that are “funky.” For instance, when
Half.com receives a complaint from a buyer about a seller, it’s Mr. Ryan’s job to contact both parties and make sure there is no fraud occurring.
This day, because the site has received a high volume of e-mails, he’s on regular customerservice duty. After checking the few internal email messages he receives each day, he gets right to work.
Mr. Ryan downloads his first batch of 10 emails for the day. He says it usually takes him about an hour to get through 10 messages.
8:10 AM The first e-mail is from a woman interested in buying an audio book on CD that she saw listed on the site. She wants to know whether the CD will work on her DVD player.
But since she doesn’t specify the exact listing,
Mr. Ryan is stuck. He can’t search for it among all the listings or contact the seller. The best he can do is suggest that she send him an item number so he can contact the seller with her question.
8:15 AM The next e-mail comes from a user who sold the Diana Krall CD “When I Look in Your
Eyes,” but lost the buyer’s shipping information.
The seller is concerned that a delay in her shipment will give the buyer reason to give her a negative rating on the site. After each purchase is made, the buyer gets a chance to rate the seller’s performance on a scale from 1 to 5—“poor” to
“excellent.” Every rating sellers collect is dis-

played along with their user name next to subsequent items they list. Just one negative rating can ruin a seller’s reputation, depending on how many sales he or she has made overall.
Mr. Ryan tracks down the details on this particular transaction in the Half.com user database.
He identifies the buyer and writes an e-mail to explain that the seller lost the shipping address and “wants to let you know they are sorry for the inconvenience.” He then e-mails the buyer’s shipping address to the seller.
Mr. Ryan says he doesn’t find the e-mails tedious. “There is such a variety of topics to respond to,” he says. “I never get 50 of the same questions in a row”. But, a few e-mails later, he shrugs with disapproval. The user’s question could easily have been answered by going to the help section of the Web site: “Do I include shipping in the sale price or is it added later?”
Says Mr. Ryan, “It’s a general question.
Nothing specific. Nothing major. I like the detailed research questions.” Mr. Ryan pastes in an answer from a database of stock responses the customer-service team has put together. He then tacks onto the end of the e-mail a salutation that he draws from a list of suggested message closers provided by Half.com. The list, the company says, makes it easier for the agents to write so many e-mails. For this message, Mr. Ryan chooses, “It was my pleasure to assist you.”

Got Juice
9:30 AM After answering a few more messages, it’s time for a coffee break. Mr. Ryan says he drinks two cups of coffee a day, a habit he picked up since starting at Half.com.
“A year ago I wouldn’t have touched the stuff,” he says. He heads to the kitchen, which is just down the hall from his desk. The well-lit room is stocked with free cappuccino, juice, soda, fruit, cereal, cookies and other munchies.
The cafeteria also doubles as a lounge with a satellite television playing ESPN, a Foosball

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table and a ping-pong table. This early in the morning, however, most people are interested in the coffee.
9:48 AM An e-mail arrives from a Half.com colleague in charge of the stock-answer database.
He writes that a response Mr. Ryan submitted on how users can sign up for direct deposit—linking their Half.com transactions with their checking accounts—would be included in the database.
“There are so many things we don’t have responses to,” Mr. Ryan says. “It makes everyone’s life easier to have the [database].”
9:50 AM The first 10 e-mails are done. Mr. Ryan downloads 10 more. One is from a father who several days earlier ordered a Sony PlayStation 2 for his son’s birthday and is concerned because it hasn’t arrived yet. Half.com’s policy is that if a buyer hasn’t received an item within 30 days of the purchase, he or she can lodge an official complaint. The PlayStation 2 seller is thus a long way from the delivery deadline. Nevertheless, as a courtesy, Mr. Ryan sends the seller an e-mail asking whether he can provide a shipping date and tracking number that Mr. Ryan can pass on to the restless father.
Half.com believes that help like this—beyond the requirements of its own rules—separates its customer-service approach from that of other companies. When the company was starting out, says Training Supervisor Ed Miller, customer service tried to respond to as many messages as it could, as fast as possible. What the company learned, however, is that “customers don’t mind if you take a little more time to answer their specific question.” Instead of just firing off e-mails,
Half.com now sees it as important to personalize each message. Even with the personalization,
Half.com says it responds to most messages within 24 hours.
Chris Finnin, the company’s community liaison, is charged with ensuring that communications with customers have a consistent and pleasant tone. E-mail messages should conform to the

“grandmother rule,” says Mr. Finnin. Each message should “make sense to my grandmother.” If it doesn’t, “then we are not heading in the right direction.” 10:10 AM Bathroom break.
10:15 AM “All right,” Mr. Ryan says eagerly, returning to his desk. He cracks his knuckles and starts typing.
A buyer who purchased the video game
“Twisted Metal II” two months ago but never received it writes to thank Half.com for “hounding” the seller to send him the item. But he wants a refund. Mr. Ryan verifies the buyer’s version of events in Half.com’s records, then refunds the buyer’s money and charges the seller’s account for the amount of the sale. Mr. Ryan sends emails to both parties informing them of his action. Half.com’s rules say that when an official complaint has been lodged the other party has five days in which to respond. In this case, the seller didn’t respond, so the buyer won the dispute by default.
10:25 AM Snack time. Mr. Ryan breaks into a high-energy Balance bar—a little nourishment to get him ready for what comes next.

Wrecking Crew
10:30 AM Time to knock down some walls.
Lively human-resources worker Alicia DiCiacco invites Mr. Ryan and his colleagues to pick up sledgehammers and knock through a wall at the end of the office. Half.com’s staff has doubled in the past year, and the company is expanding into adjacent space in the old tire factory.
Everyone in the office takes turns whacking at the wall. Some of the younger males dish out screams of “I’m not going to take it any more!” and “Where’s the Pink Floyd?!”—a reference to the 1970s rock album “The Wall” by Pink Floyd.
Mr. Ryan eats up the office energy. “It’s exciting to work here,” he says. “We’re growing.

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We had the second launch of the site. [Half.com expanded its product line in April]. We’re doing construction. It’s good to come to work when the company is doing well.”
11:15 AM Finished with another batch of 10 emails, he downloads 10 more.
Mr. Ryan’s wife, Melissa, a corporate recruiter for a dot-com in a nearby town, calls to ask who is walking their dog today. Mr. Ryan quickly informs her that it’s her sister’s turn. She lives nearby.
No chit-chat. He gets straight back to work answering e-mails, including two separate queries from customers who can’t redeem special introductory coupons Half.com offers to new users. 11:47 AM Mr. Ryan gets an e-mail from a seller responding to a message from Half.com. A potential buyer has asked Half.com whether the seller’s 75-cent copy of Carolyn Davidson’s Harlequin romance “The Midwife” is a paperback or hardcover. Half.com forwarded the question to the seller, who now is writing back to say it’s a paperback. Mr. Ryan sends two e-mails: one to the buyer, answering his question, and one to the seller, thanking him for the information.
12:10 PM Lunch. Mr. Ryan usually packs his lunch, but today he drives over to the local supermarket for takeout. He eats his turkey wrap in the company cafeteria with some colleagues and heads back to his desk by 1 p.m.
1:06 PM E-mail from a user who can’t find the new Stephen King novel, “Dreamcatcher,” on
Half.com. The site is supposed to list all new books from major publishers, even if no one is selling them. That way, if a user is interested, he or she can put it on a wish list and the site will automatically e-mail him or her when a copy has been posted for sale.

Mr. Ryan searches for the book meticulously, checking by title, author and publisher’s ISBN number. Once he’s sure the book isn’t listed, he e-mails Matt Walsh, who is in charge of fixing catalog errors. Mr. Ryan then e-mails the user and instructs him to check back at the site soon.
1:21 PM First phone call of the day. Because
Half.com prefers to conduct customer service on e-mail, to keep its costs down, it doesn’t display its phone number on its Web site. Still, persistent users get the number through directory assistance or other sources.
This caller, an agitated buyer of the video
“Valley Girl,” a 1983 comedy starring Nicolas
Cage, says she received a damaged tape. She has lodged an official complaint against the seller on the Web site, but the seller hasn’t responded.
Mr. Ryan tells her that the five days the seller has to respond aren’t up yet. He assures her that if the seller doesn’t respond within the allotted time, he will refund her money and charge the seller’s account. Until then, there’s nothing
Mr. Ryan can do except comfort the caller with apologies and explanations.
In the event that the seller disputes the buyer’s claim about the tape, Half.com is still likely to grant a refund, especially on such an inexpensive item. Half.com makes it clear, however, that its customer-service team keeps a close watch on users’ complaints, looking out for fraudulent refund requests. If Half.com suspects foul play, it doesn’t grant refunds so easily.
2:02 PM A seller of the video “I Know What
You Did Last Summer” got the package returned, marked address unknown. Mr. Ryan looks up the buyer’s information in the user database and e-mails him, asking for an updated address to forward to the seller. He then e-mails the seller, telling him the address should be on its way shortly.
2:21 PM He downloads 10 more e-mails.

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Home Stretch
2:30 PM The day is starting to get long, at least to an observer. But Mr. Ryan says sitting still all day doesn’t cramp his style. “Sometimes it’s tough to work at a desk, but it doesn’t really bother me,” he says. “I work out after work, and that really loosens thing up.”
3 PM Bathroom break.
3:15 PM With the clock ticking toward quitting time, Mr. Ryan hunkers down to finish his last batch of e-mails. It’s more of the same: a user unsure how Half.com works; a seller who wants to list a 1976 edition of “The Grapes of Wrath” but can’t figure out where to put it on the site; a buyer who wants a book shipped second-day air, even though the order was already placed.
3:30 P M A call from a buyer interrupts
Mr. Ryan’s streak of dispensing e-mails. The buyer felt the quality of a book she bought was not up to snuff. The book, a $2 copy of Danielle
Steel’s “Secrets,” apparently had a torn cover.
The buyer is upset, but Mr. Ryan remains calm, calling on skills he learned in a one-day seminar called “Dealing With Difficult People.”

Summary

In the class, which he took before coming to
Half.com, he learned to paraphrase what the customer is saying to make sure he understands the complaint. Mr. Ryan also takes care to speak clearly with a strong sense of empathy. At one point he says, “I understand your frustration.”
When he explains that the buyer will have to wait some time for a final resolution of the matter, he makes sure to preface it with a heartfelt “I’m sorry to let you know . . .” An observer listening to Mr. Ryan gets the sense that he is not acting.
“If you don’t understand what they are saying, then you have a problem,” he says. Though he can’t satisfy this customer then and there, he promises to talk to his supervisor and to call her back tomorrow with more information.
4 PM The day is done. Mr. Ryan finishes his last e-mail, closes up his desk and shoves on home.
A new shift of workers picks up where Mr. Ryan left off, toiling from 4 p.m. to 12 a.m. When they finish, the customer-service staff in eBay’s facility in Salt Lake City will take over.
Tomorrow, Mr. Ryan will be back on duty at
8 a.m., downloading his first 10 e-mails.
Source: Alex Frangos, Wall Street Journal, July 16, 2001.

Encouraging employee behaviors that help achieve an organization’s objectives and fostering a sense of fairness among employees are two hallmarks of a useful internal pay structure. One of the first strategic pay decisions is how much to align a pay structure internally compared to aligning it to external market forces. Do not be misled. The issue is not achieving internal alignment versus alignment with external market forces. Rather, the strategic decision focuses on sustaining the optimal balance of internally aligned and externally responsive pay structures that helps the organization achieve its mission. Both are required. This part of the book focuses on one of the first decisions managers face in designing pay systems: how much to emphasize pay structures that are internally aligned with the work performed, the organization’s structure, and its strategies. Whatever the choice, the decision needs to support (and be supported by) the organization’s overall human resource strategy.

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Next, managers must decide whether job and/or individual employee characteristics will be the basic unit of analysis supporting the pay structure. This is followed by deciding what data will be collected, what method(s) will be used to collect the information, and who should be involved in the process.
A key test of an effective and fair pay structure is acceptance of results by managers and employees. The best way to ensure acceptance of job analysis results is to involve employees as well as supervisors in the process. At the minimum, all employees should be informed of the purpose and progress of the activity.
If almost everyone agrees about the importance of job analysis, does that mean everyone does it? Of course not. Unfortunately, job analysis can be tedious and time-consuming.
Often the job is given to newly hired compensation analysts, ostensibly to help them learn the organization, but perhaps there’s also a hint of “rites of passage” in such assignments.
Alternatives to job-based structures such as skill-based or competency-based systems are being experimented with in many firms. The premise is that basing structures on these other criteria will encourage employees to become more flexible, and thus fewer workers will be required for the same level of output. This may be the argument, but as experience increases with the alternatives, managers are discovering that they can be as timeconsuming and bureaucratic as job analysis. Bear in mind, job content remains the conventional criterion for structures.

Review Questions
1. Job analysis has been considered the cornerstone of human resource management. Precisely how does it support managers making pay decisions?
2. What does job analysis have to do with internal alignment?
3. Describe the major decisions involved in job analysis.
4. Distinguish between task data and behavioral data.
5. What is the critical advantage of quantitative approaches over conventional approaches to job analysis?
6. How would you decide whether to use job-based or person-based structures?
7. Why do many managers say that job analysis is a colossal waste of their time and the time of their employees? Are they right?