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Job Analysis and Design

The performance steps for completing each task also
Applications of job analyses will be used in the development of a variety of related
materials. Whenever procedure is an issue, the perform-
ance steps of the tasks come into play. To use an example
Time and from the training of employees in psychomotor skills, the
Motion
Studies sequence of performance steps guides the instructor
Quality Assurance Job Descriptions/ through a demonstration of the steps of the learning
Standards Job Titles objective, to the student’s practice of the procedural steps,
to a final determination of the student’s ability to perform
the process on a performance test. In each of the three per-
Job
Analysis formance-related learning activities, procedure is funda-
mental to identification and development.

Organization Job INFORMATION CONTENT
Charts Classification The third question involves identifying the knowledge or
Training
Program informational component of the occupation. Depending
Development on the author, the three types of information most often
referred to are technical information, general information,
and career and occupational guidance information.
Figure 1
Technical information is that information the worker
must know to perform a specific task or group of tasks.
Technical information gives the worker the judgment-
Three questions seem to be basic to the majority of forming, decision-making ability to perform the task(s) in
the authors. These questions address the issues of organi-
a safe and correct manner. It is the knowledge base from
zation, activity, and informational content:
which the worker can make informed decisions affecting
• What is the structure of the occupation? and controlling his/her on-the-job performance.
• What does the worker do? General information, although related to the job
itself or to the individual tasks that comprise the job, does
• What does the worker need to know?
not have direct bearing on the performance of either the
job or its component tasks. General information comple-
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE ments the activities of the workers but is not crucial to
The first question concerns the structure or framework of their outcome. For example, detailed knowledge about the
the occupation being analyzed (Bortz, 1981). If the data manufacture of computer chips has no direct bearing on
derived from the job analysis are used in a situation where the performance of a computer programmer or systems
organizational structure is important to the product being analyst.
developed, then the structure of the occupation can serve
Career and occupational guidance information allows
as a basis from which the organizational structure of the
workers to make decisions about themselves and the
product is developed. For example, the hierarchical order workplace. It includes information on such topics as the
of occupational titles in a functionally related family of
short-, intermediate-, and long-range employment needs
occupations can serve as a basis for ordering and naming
of the community; the career interests and abilities of
the units and courses of the training program resulting
from the job analysis. individuals; work, work roles and responsibilities; job-
seeking skills; the employment outlook; and local, state,
national, and global economic trends.
WORK ACTIVITIES
The second question addresses the activities of the worker
APPLICATION
in terms of both tasks and performance steps. Once iden-
tified, the tasks, or completed units of work, serve in var- Each of the following are specific applications of the infor-
ious capacities ranging from the writing of learning mation gained from a completed job analysis. In some
objectives of a yet-to-be-developed competency-based cases, most or all of the information is used in the devel-
training program to the classification of job titles and opment of the final product, in other cases, only a portion
writing of job descriptions. of the job analysis data is used. (See Figure 1.)

442 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BUSINESS AND FINANCE, SECOND EDITION