Lecture 1 – Chapter 1 and 4
Critical thinking: systematically check if something will work against a set of criteria
CHAPTER 1:
HRM:
 The process of managing human talent to achieve an organization’s objectives
 HRM involves a wide variety of activities, including analyzing a company's competitive
environment and designing jobs so that a firm's strategy can be successfully
implemented to beat the competition
Why study HRM?
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Having a good understanding of HRM is important for managers and entrepreneurs of
all types, not just human resources (HR) personnel
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All managers are responsible for at least some of the activities that fall into the category
of HRM. Managers play a key role in selecting, training, motivating, appraising, and
promoting employees
Human Capital and HRM:
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Human capital: The knowledge, skills, and capabilities of individuals that have economic
value to an organization
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The idea that organizations "compete through people" highlights the fact that achieving
success increasingly depends on an organization's ability to manage talent, or human
capital
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Although the value of these assets might not show up directly on a company's balance
sheet, it nevertheless has a tremendous impact on an organization's performance
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To build human capital in organizations, managers must continue to develop superior
knowledge, skills, and experience within their workforces and retain and promote top
performers
Competitive issues and HRM:
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Issue 1: Responding strategically to changes in the local and global marketplace:
o Being able to adapt has become the key to capturing opportunities and
overcoming obstacles, as well as the very survival of organizations
o HR Managers and Business Strategy
 Total quality improvement, reengineering, downsizing, and outsourcing
are also examples of the means organizations use to modify the way they
operate to be more successful.
 Six Sigma: A set of principles and practices whose core ideas include
understanding customer needs, doing things right the first time, and
striving for continuous improvement
 Reengineering: The fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of
business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in cost, quality,
service, and speed
 Downsizing: Planned elimination of jobs
 Outsourcing: Contracting out work that was formerly done by employees
 Change Management: A systematic way of bringing about and managing
both organizational changes and changes on the individual level
 Organizations that have been successful in engineering change:
 Link the change to the business strategy
 Show how the change creates quantifiable benefits
 Engage key employees, customers, and their suppliers early when
making a change
 Make an investment in implementing and sustaining change
 Some of the strategic changes companies pursue are reactive changes
that result when external forces, such as the competition, a recession, a
law change, or a crisis have already affected an organization's
performance
 Other strategies are proactive change, initiated by managers to take
advantage of targeted opportunities, particularly in fast-changing
industries in which followers are not successful
o Competing, recruiting, and staffing globally
 Companies are pursuing globalization
 Globalization: The trend to opening up to foreign markets to
international trade and investment
 How globalization affects HRM:
 HR personnel are frequently responsible for implementing
training programs and enhancing their firms' managers'
understanding of other cultures and practices, as well as dealing
with the culture shock these workers might experience and pay
differentials that must be adjusted, depending on the country
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Issue 2: Setting and achieving corporate social responsibility and sustainability goals:
o Anti-free trade protests have started in many nations
o Concerns such as these, coupled with corporate scandals over the years,
including the use of sweatshop labour in third-world countries, risky lending
tactics that fueled a worldwide banking crisis and more, have led to a new focus
on corporate social responsibility, or good citizenship
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o CSR: The responsibility of the firm to act in the best interests of the people and
communities affected by its activities
o Sustainability is closely related to corporate social responsibility
o Sustainability: refers to a company's ability to produce a good or service without
damaging the environment or depleting a resource
Issue 3: Advancing HRM with technology:
o Advancements in information technology have allowed organizations to take
advantage of the information explosion
o Computer networks and "cloud computing" (Internet computer services and
data storage) have made it possible for nearly unlimited amounts of data to be
stored, retrieved, and used in a wide variety of ways
o Collaborative software that allows workers anywhere, anytime to interface and
share information with one another electronically-wikis, document-sharing
platforms such as Google Docs, online chat and instant messaging, Web and
videoconferencing, and electronic calendar systems-have changed how and
where people and companies do business
o The Internet and social media are also having an impact on HRM
o Social media networking has become the new way to attract employees and
check them out to see if they are acceptable candidates
o Organizations can also use social media to manage talents, address mobility
issues, and allow for greater collaboration with employees and suppliers
o From touch labour to knowledge workers:
 Advanced technology tends to reduce the number of jobs that require
little skill and to increase the number of jobs that require considerable
skill
 Knowledge workers: workers whose responsibilities extent beyond the
physical execution of work to include planning, decision making, and
problem solving
o Influence of technology on HRM:
 The most central use of technology in HRM is an organization's human
resources information system (HRIS)
 HRIS: A computerized system that provides current and accurate data for
purposes of control and decision making
 The most obvious impact has been operational-that is, automating
routine activities, alleviating administrative burdens, reducing costs, and
improving productivity internal to the HR function itself
 The second way in which information technology is affecting HRM is
relational in nature-connecting people with each other and with HR data
they need
 The third effect of the HRIS is transformational in nature-changing the
way HR processes are designed and executed
Issue 4: Containing costs while retaining top talent and maximizing productivity:
o For years, most HR managers have been under pressure to cut labour costs
o Organizations take many approaches to lowering labour-related costs, including
carefully managing employees' benefits, down-sizing, outsourcing, offshoring,
furloughing employees, and engaging in employee leasing in an attempt to
enhance productivity
o Some companies are able to hire talented employees by offering them a great
deal of job security and very good benefits
o Downsizing:
 Instead of simply laying off people, however, the company started early
retirement and "sweetened" voluntary separation programs. Then the
company offered employee retreats for continuing education
 But downsizing is no longer being regarded as a short-term fix when
times are tough. It has now become a tool continually used by companies
to adjust to technological changes, globalization, and the firm's business
direction
 Advocates of a no-layoff policy often note that layoffs may backfire after
taking into account hidden costs, such as the following:
 Severance and rehiring costs
 Accrued vacation and sick-day payouts
 Pension and benefit payoffs
 Potential lawsuits from aggrieved workers
 Loss of institutional memory and trust in management
 Lack of staffers when the economy rebounds
 Survivors who are risk averse, paranoid, and political
 In contrast, companies that avoid downsizing say they get some
important benefits from such policies:
 A fiercely loyal, more productive workforce
 Higher customer satisfaction
 Readiness to snap back with the economy
 A recruiting edge
 Workers who are not afraid to innovate, knowing that their jobs
are safe
 To approach downsizing more intelligently, some companies have made
special efforts to reassign and retrain employees for new positions when
their jobs are eliminated
o Furloughing:
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An alternative to downsizing is furloughing
When a company furloughs employees, it asks them to take time off for
either no pay or reduced pay.
Although furloughs might sound preferable to downsizing, they have
their drawbacks too, say some HR experts
Costs are not cut as significantly as they would be with downsizing
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because employees generally retain their benefits while they are
furloughed
Employees who are not furloughed often end up with more work and feel
resentful, and prodsisuct and service quality, as well as innovation, suffer
as a result of the higher workloads
o Outsourcing:
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Companies hire accounting firms to take care of their financial services
o Offshoring:
 Also referred to as "global sourcing," involves shifting work to overseas
locations
 The business practice of sending jobs to other countries
 Another new trend is "nearshoring." Nearshoring is the process of
moving jobs closer to one 's home country
 For example, rising labour costs in China are now making it
attractive for North American firms to offshore work to Mexico
and Central America
o Employee leasing:
 Many companies, especially small ones, have decided to sign employee
leasing agreements with professional employer organizations
 Employee leasing: the process of dismissing employees who are then
hired by a leasing company and contracting with that company to lease
back the employees
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o Productivity enhancements:
 Employee productivity is the result of a combination of employees'
abilities, motivation, and work environment and the technology they use
to work
 Since productivity can be defined as "the output gained from a fixed
amount of inputs," organizations can increase their productivity either by
reducing their inputs (the cost approach) or by increasing the amount
that employees produce by adding more human and/or physical capital
to the process (the investment approach)
 Many companies are finding that providing work flexibility is a good way
to improve the productivity and motivation of valuable employees,
especially when giving them larger benefit packages is not an option
Issue 5: Responding to the demographic and diversity challenges of the workforce:
o Demographic changes:
 Among the most significant challenges to managers are the demographic
changes occurring in Canada
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Because they affect the workforce of an employer, these changes-in
employee background, age, gender, and education are important topics
for discussion
o The diversity/immigration challenge:
 Number of minorities are increasing
 Businesses know it is absolutely vital to increase their efforts to recruit
and train a more diverse workforce
 They realize that immigrants are not only critical to their very survival but
also add to their strength and allow them to better attract and serve a
larger customer base
o Age distribution of employees:
 The imbalance in the age distribution of the labour force is having a
significant effect on employers
 Companies are finding that large portions of their workforces are nearing
retirement
 Beyond the sheer number of employees they will have to replace,
managers are concerned that the expertise of these employees is likely to
be drained too rapidly from the company
 As a stopgap measure, employers are making positive efforts to attract
older workers, especially those who have taken early retirement
 Recruiting older workers may sound counterintuitive because they incur
higher health care costs - but older workers also have fewer dependents
and offer other cost savings
 Managers can find themselves challenged in terms of getting the three
generations to work well together
o Gender distribution in the workforce:
 Employers wanting to attract the talent that women have to offer are
taking measures to ensure that they are treated equally in the workplace
in terms of their advancement opportunities and compensation
Issue 6: Adapting to educational and cultural shifts affecting the workforce
o Education of the workforce:
 Higher education is a gateway to higher earnings, as did all previous
censuses
 Men and women of all ages, full-time, full-year earners with a university
degree earned substantially more than their counterparts who did not
have a high school diploma
o Cultural changes:
 The attitudes, beliefs, values, and customs of people in a society are an
integral part of their culture
 Their culture affects their behaviour on the job and the environment
within the organization, influencing their reactions to work assignments,
leadership styles, and reward systems
 Culture is undergoing continual change
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HR policies and procedures therefore must be adjusted to cope
with this change
Employee rights:
 New laws
 Among these are laws granting employees the right to equal employment
opportunity (Chapter 3), union representation if they desire it (Chapter
14), a safe and healthful work environment (Chapter 12), pension plans
regulated by the government (Chapter 11), equal pay for men and
women performing essentially the same job (Chapter 9), and privacy in
the workplace (Chapter 13)
Concern for privacy:
 HR managers and their staffs, as well as line managers in positions of
responsibility, generally recognize the importance of discretion in
handling all types of information about employees
 Globalization has added another twist to privacy compliance
The changing nature of jobs:
 The era of the full-time permanent job seems to have disappeared
 The number of self-employed is also increasing
Changing attitudes towards work:
 Employees today are less likely to define their personal success only in
terms of financial gains
 Many employees, especially younger ones, believe that satisfaction in life
is more likely to result from balancing their work challenges and rewards
with those in their personal lives
 Although most people still enjoy work and want to excel at it, they tend
to be focused on finding interesting work and are more inclined to pursue
multiple careers rather than being satisfied with just "having a job."
Balancing work and family:
 Because of the forms that the family now takes-such as the two-wage
earner and the single-parent family-work organizations are finding it
advantageous to provide employees with more family-friendly options
 "Family friendly" is a broad term that can include flexible work hours,
daycare, eldercare, part-time work, job sharing, pregnancy leave,
parental leave, executive transfers, spousal involvement in career
planning, assistance with family problems, and telecommuting
The Partnership of line managers or HR departments:
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Managing people is every manager's business, and successful organizations
combine the experience of line managers with the expertise of HR specialists to
develop and utilize the talents of employees to their greatest potential
Addressing HR issues is rarely the exclusive responsibility of HR departments
acting alone
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3.
4.
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Thus, HR managers must work side by side with line managers to address the
people-related issues of the organization.
 Line managers: Non-HR managers who are responsible for overseeing the work
of other employees
 Responsibilities of the HR manager:
o Although line managers and HR managers need to work together, their
responsibilities are different
Advice and counsel: The HR manager often serves as an in-house consultant to
supervisors, managers, and executives. HR managers can be an invaluable resource for
making decisions
Service: HR managers also perform a host of service activities, such as recruiting,
selecting, testing, planning and conducting training programs, and hearing employee
concerns and complaints
Policy formulation and implementation: HR managers generally propose and draft new
policies or policy revisions to address recurring problems or to prevent anticipated
problems
Employee advocacy: One of the continuing roles of HR managers is to serve as an
employee advocate-listening to employees' concerns and representing their needs to
managers-to ensure that the interests of employees and the interests of the
organization are aligned with one another
Abilities of the HR manager
o Business mastery:
 HR professionals need to know the business of their organization
thoroughly
 This requires an understanding of its economic and financial capabilities
so that they can become a key member of the team of business managers
to develop the firm's strategic direction
 It also requires that HR professionals develop skills at external relations
focused on their customers
o HR mastery:
 HR professionals are the organization's behavioural science experts
 HR professionals should develop expert knowledge in the areas of
staffing, development, appraisals, rewards, team building, and
communication
o Change mastery:
 HR professionals must be able to manage change processes so that their
firms' HR activities are effectively merged with the business needs of
their organizations
 This involves interpersonal and problem-solving skills, as well as
innovativeness and creativity
o Personal credibility:
 Like other management professionals, HR professionals must establish
personal credibility in the eyes of their internal and external customers
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Credibility and trust are earned by developing personal relationships with
one's customers, demonstrating the values of the firm, standing up for
one's own beliefs, and being fair-minded when dealing with others.
Lecture:
Video:
 Person upset, threatening people in the workplace, gets warned – serious consequences
if he doesn’t change
 How well did the supervisor deal with the issue?
o She did not deal with the situation well
 What did she do well and what did she not do well?
o “office gossip” making an assumption about what happened – didn’t ask the
actual people involved – telling other people
o She didn’t see his side of things – didn’t ask why he has been so
aggressive/unproductive in the workplace
o Didn’t discuss what it meant to be on probation
o She stood up, which was good but she should have tried to de-escalate the
situation
o Should have brought up performance issue when they got on the same page
o Organization needs to support him; however, he also has a contract to perform
with them at a reasonable level
o If people don’t want to go to HR, they should create a different image of
themselves
 How should the meeting have been conducted?
o She should have asked why he has been acting differently
Job Analysis (Chapter 4):
Overview:
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What does the job involve – what kind of work, how many people, what kind of
expectations
What exactly a job entails
Pieces involved in a job to be successful
Figure out what the job is (person-job fit)
Job analysis is costly; therefore, it is important to know what jobs need to be analyzed.
Understand the issues that surround jobs and see if there needs to be changes to the
job
Definition:
 The process of obtaining information about jobs by determining the duties, tasks, or
activities of jobs
Preparing for job analysis:
 Job design – responsibilities, work at home vs. at the office, team work vs individual,
doing part of job or whole job. How work is organized is job design
 Planning - What is the job – how do we plan who will be promoted
o How many people are retiring, need more accountants in tax season
 Recruiting
 Selection – what questions will we ask in an interview – other tests (speed typing test)
o Link these to job analysis – need to update it when it changes (ensures you get
the correct candidates for the job)
 What do we have to analyze? What are the different tasks involved
 Determine how work is organized = Job Design
 Determine uses of job analysis (see slide 29)
 Identify jobs to be analyzed
 In small groups
The process of job analysis:
 Understanding all of it
 Get job description or job specifications
 Specifications:
o A statement of the needed knowledge, skills, and abilities of the person who is to
perform the job. These qualifications serve an essential role in the recruiting
function
 Descriptions:
o Statement of the tasks, duties and responsibilities of a job to be performed. They
will contain a job title, a job identification section (location, reporting manager,
job posting date), and a job duties/specifications section.
Identify sources of data:
 Non-human sources
o Existing organizational data
o NOC – National Occupational Classification: have job descriptions for everything,
can see all the different descriptions
o Professional journals / magazines
o Internet research
 Human sources
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o Supervisors
o Employees
o Job experts
o Customers
Human sources – different people you can ask
Methods of job analysis:
 Qualitative:
o Interviews
 More intuitive
 A key piece to an interview is trust
 Need open communication “this is why we are doing this”
o Questionnaires
 Data is sourced
o Critical incidents technique
 Describe a situation, “this is what I did…”
 Did it go well or poorly, did the person make it go well or poorly
o Observation
 Perform better when someone observes you
 See what really happens
 Need a lot of time and trust – they need to know why you are observing
o Participant diary/log
 …. Every hour you fill out what you did
o Competency-based analysis
 Relies on building job profiles that looks at responsibilities and activities
of job and worker competencies necessary to accomplish them.
 This job is too complex to observe, tasks are too varied
 What abilities you need for the job
 Quantitative:
o PAQ - Position analysis questionnaire
 Very structured job analysis questionnaire
 194 items completed w/ 5-point scale
 Completed by job analyst
 Provides score on 11 dimensions of job elements
 Allows statistical comparison between jobs
 Expert consultants are expensive and hard to get buy in from employees
as they will not even understand the process is themselves.
 Bring people in to do the questionnaire
 Rarely used in the real world
 Asks: how does the job get done
 The reason you do this is to compare jobs – end up with a number, lets
you rank/compare jobs in terms of different aspects – very structured,
not subjective
o NOC - National Occupational Classification
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Reference tool for writing job descriptions/specifications
Compiled by the federal government for 30,000 occupations, provides:
 Standardized job descriptions
 Job requirements
 Career Handbook counseling component
 List of every job you can think about
 If you need to update description, what does the NOC’s look like? What is
the same and what is missing?
o Task inventory analysis
o Job-oriented
o Unique to each organization
o Comprehensive list of tasks that apply to all jobs
o Job analyst then rates jobs under review
 Whether task statements apply to a job
 Importance of task to a job
 Frequency of use of task within a job
o Can you run one? We need to look at all jobs
o List of tasks that apply to all jobs, rate to the extent to which they apply
o Creating a checklist of all possible tasks in the organization
o Tasks within a job
o For each job, does that task apply, do you do it often?
o HRIS job analysis tools
o Computer programs that run job analyses for companies
o SME’s select applicable task statements for jobs under review
o Program produces job description etc.
o Buy writing programs that allow HR programs to run analyses
o SME – subject matter expert – ex. Supervisor or employee of the job NOT
a customer
o Look at computer program, choose task statements that apply, “do the
tasks apply to the job?”
Record the Job Data:
 Confirm with SMEs
 Ensure that the Job Analysis describes the job not person doing the job
 Interview more than one person to remove bias
o Questions should be consistent
 Different people perceive job descriptions differently (perception)
Generating a job description:
 Job Identity
 Title, location, code, & status.
 Job summary, authority, & duties
 What is job?
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How job is performed?
Why job exists?
Responsibilities?
Actions required on the job?
Performance standards
Working conditions
Relationship of job requirements and HRM functions:
 Job: A group of related activities and duties
 Position: The different duties and responsibilities performed by only one employee
 Job family: A group of individual jobs with different characteristics
 The information collected for jobs is useful for almost all HRM functions, including
strategic HR planning, recruitment, selection, training and development, performance
appraisals, compensation management, and legal compliance.
 Strategic HRP:
o Information on jobs is used to examine a company's organizational structure and
strategically position it for the future
 Recruitment:
o Before they can find capable employees for an organization, recruiters need to
know the job specifications for the positions they are to fill.
o Job specification: A statement of the needed knowledge, skills, and abilities of
the person who is to perform the job
 Selection:
o Managers and supervisors use job descriptions to select employees and orient
them to jobs
o Job description: A statement of the tasks, duties, and responsibilities of a job to
be performed
 Training and development:
o Any discrepancies between the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other factors
(often referred to as KSAOs) demonstrated by a jobholder and the requirements
contained in the description and specification for that job provide clues to
training needs
o Career development as part of the training function is concerned with preparing
employees for advancement to jobs where their capacities can be utilized to the
fullest extent possible
 Performance appraisal:
o The requirements contained in the description of a job provide the criteria for
evaluating the performance of the holder of that job
o The results of performance appraisal may reveal, however, that certain
requirements established for a job are not completely valid
o As we have already stressed, these criteria must be specific, and job related
 Compensation management:
o In determining the rate to be paid for performing a job, the relative worth of the
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job is one of the most important factors
o This worth is based on what the job demands of an employee in terms of skill,
effort, and responsibility, as well as the conditions and hazards under which the
work is performed
Legal compliance:
o A systematic collection of job data ensures that a job's duties match its job
description
o If the criteria used to hire and evaluate employees are vague and not job related,
employers are more likely to find themselves being accused of discrimination
o In fact, before firms recognized the importance of regularly engaging in the job
analysis process, examples of non-job-related criteria were prevalent: job
applicants for labourer positions were required to have high school diplomas;
applicants for skilled craft positions-plumbers, electricians, machinists-were
sometimes required to be male
 These kinds of job specifications are discriminatory
Job analysis:
o Job analysis is the process of obtaining information about jobs by determining
the duties, tasks, or activities of those jobs
o The ultimate purpose of job analysis is to improve organizational performance
and productivity
o Job analysis is concerned with objective and verifiable information about the
actual requirements of a job
Gathering job information:
o Interviews:
 The job analyst may question individual employees and managers about
the job under review
o Questionnaires.
 The job analyst may circulate carefully prepared questionnaires to be
filled out individually by jobholders and managers
 These forms will be used to obtain data in the areas of job duties and
tasks performed, purpose of the job, physical setting, requirements for
performing the job (skill, education, experience, physical and mental
demands), equipment and materials used, and special health and safety
concerns
o Observation.
 The job analyst may learn about the jobs by observing and recording on a
standardized form the activities of jobholders
 Videotaping jobs for later study is an approach used by some
organizations
o Diaries.
 Jobholders themselves may be asked to keep a diary of their work
activities during an entire work cycle
 Diaries are normally filled out at specific times of the work shift (such as
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every half-hour or hour) and maintained for a two- to four-week period.
Controlling the accuracy of job information:
o If job analysis is to accomplish its intended purpose, the job data collected must
be accurate
o Care must be taken to ensure that all important facts are included
o A job analyst should be alert for employees who tend to exaggerate the difficulty
of their jobs to inflate their egos and their pay cheques
o When interviewing employees or reviewing their questionnaires, the job analyst
must look for any responses that do not agree with other facts or impressions
the analyst has received
The NOC and job analysis:
o The National Occupational Classification is compiled by the federal government
o The purpose of the NOC is to compile, analyze, and communicate information
about occupations
Approaches to job analysis:
o The Position Analysis Questionnaire System
 The position analysis questionnaire (PAQ) is a quantifiable data
collection method covering 194 different worker-oriented tasks
 Using a five-point scale, the PAQ seeks to determine the degree, if any, to
which the different tasks, or job elements, are involved in performing a
particular job
o The Critical Incident Method:
 The objective of the critical incident method is to identify critical job
tasks
 Critical job tasks are those important duties and job responsibilities
performed by the jobholder that lead to job success
 Information about critical job tasks can be collected through interviews
with employees or managers or through self-report statements written
by employees
 The final product comprises written task statements that are clear,
complete, and easily understood by those unfamiliar with the job. The
critical incident method is an important job analysis method because it
teaches the analyst to focus on employee behaviours critical to job
success.
o Task Inventory Analysis
 Task inventory analysis: an organization-specific list of tasks and their
descriptions used as a basis to identify components of jobs
 Unlike the PAQ, which uses a standardized form to analyze jobs in
different organizations, a task inventory questionnaire can be tailor-made
to a specific organization
 The technique is developed by identifying with the help of employees
and managers a list of tasks and their descriptions that are components
of different jobs
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The goal is to produce a comprehensive list of task statements that are
applicable to all jobs
 Task statements are then listed on a task inventory survey form to be
completed by the person analyzing the job under review
 A task statement might be, "Inventories current supplies to maintain
stock levels."
 The job analysis would also note the importance and frequency of use of
the task to the successful completion of the job
Competency-based analysis:
 When organizations operate in a fast-moving environment, managers
may adopt a competency-based approach to job analysis
 This job analysis method relies on building job profiles that look at the
responsibilities and activities of jobs and the worker competencies
necessary to accomplish them
 The objective is to identify "key" competencies for organizational success
 Competencies can be identified through focus groups, surveys, or
interviews and might include such things as interpersonal communication
skills, decision-making ability, conflict resolution skills, adaptability, or
self-motivation
HRIS and job analysis:
 HRISs have greatly facilitated the job analysis process
 Available today are various software programs designed specifically to
analyze jobs and to write job descriptions and job specifications based on
those analyses
Job descriptions:
 A job description is a written description of a job and the types of duties
it includes
 No standard format, however, most job descriptions will contain at least
three parts:
 job title
 job identification section
 job duties section
Job title:
 Very important
 The job title is of psychological importance, providing status to the
employee
 The title should provide some indication of what the duties of the job
entail
 The job title also should indicate the relative level occupied by its holder
in the organizational hierarchy
Job identification section:
 The job identification section of a job description usually follows the job
title


It includes items such as the departmental location of the job, the person
to whom the jobholder reports, and the date the job description was last
revised
o Job duties
 Statements covering job duties are typically arranged in order of
importance
 These statements should indicate the weight, or value, of each duty
 Usually, but not always, the weight of a duty can be gauged by the
percentage of time devoted to it
 The statements should stress the responsibilities all the duties entail and
the results they are to accomplish
o Job specification section:
 The personal qualifications an individual must possess to perform the
duties and responsibilities contained in a job description are compiled in
the job specification
 Typically, this section covers two areas:
 (1) the skill required to perform the job
 (2) the physical demands the job places on the employee performing it
o Problems with job descriptions:
 If they are poorly written, using vague rather than specific terms, they
provide little guidance to the jobholder.
 They are sometimes not updated as job duties or specifications change.
 They may violate the law by containing specifications not related to job
success.
 They can limit the scope of activities of the jobholder, reducing
organizational flexibility
o Writing clear and specific job descriptions:
 Essential to use statements that are terse, direct, and simply worded.
Unnecessary words or phrases should be eliminated
Job design:
o Job analysis is the study of jobs as currently performed by employees. It helps
with the job description, which identifies job duties and the requirements
needed to perform the work successfully
o Job design: An outgrowth of job analysis, concerned with structuring jobs to
improve organization efficiency and employee job satisfaction
o Job design is concerned with changing, modifying, and enriching jobs to capture
the talents of employees
o Job design is a combination of four basic considerations:
 The organizational objectives the job was created to fulfill
 Behavioral concerns that influence an employee's job satisfaction
 Industrial engineering considerations, including ways to make the job
technologically efficient
 Ergonomic concerns, including workers' physical and mental capabilities
o Behavioural concerns:
 Job design methods seek to incorporate the behavioural needs of
employees as they perform their individual jobs.
 The two methods discussed below strive to satisfy the intrinsic needs of
employees and motivate them in their work environments
 The job enrichment model and the job characteristics model have long
been popular with researchers and practitioners as ways to increase the
job satisfaction of employees
o Job enrichment:
 Any effort that makes work more rewarding or satisfying by adding more
meaningful tasks to an employee's job is called job enrichment
 Job enrichment is touted as fulfilling the high motivational needs of
employees, such as self-fulfillment and self-esteem, while achieving longterm job satisfaction and performance goals
 Job enrichment, or the vertical expansion of jobs, may be accomplished
by increasing the autonomy and responsibility of employees.
 Herzberg discusses five factors for enriching jobs and thereby motivating
employees: achievement, recognition, growth, responsibility, and
performance of the whole job versus only parts of the job.
 For example, managers can use these five factors to enrich the jobs of
employees by
 Increasing the level of difficulty and responsibility of the job
 Allowing employees to retain more authority and control over
work outcomes
 Providing unit or individual job performance reports directly to
employees
 Adding new tasks to the job that require training and growth
 Assigning individuals specific tasks, enabling them to use their
particular competencies or skills
 Vertical job enrichment can also be accomplished by organizing workers
into teams and giving these teams greater authority for self-management
o Job characteristics:
 Job design studies explored a new field when behavioural scientists
focused on identifying various job dimensions that would improve
simultaneously the efficiency of organizations and the job satisfaction of
employees.
 Their job characteristics model proposes that three psychological states
of a jobholder result in improved work performance, internal motivation,
and lower absenteeism and turnover
 A motivated, satisfied, and productive employee experiences:
 (1) meaningfulness of the work performed
 (2) experiences responsibility for work outcomes
 (3) has knowledge of the results of the work performed

Hackman and Oldham believe that five core job dimensions produce the
three psychological states.
 The five job characteristics are as follows:
 Skill variety: the degree to which a job entails a variety of
different activities, which demand the use of a number of
different skills and talents by the jobholder
 Task identity: the degree to which the job requires completion of
a whole and identifiable piece of work, that is, doing a job from
beginning to end with a visible outcome
 Task significance: the degree to which the job has a substantial
impact on the lives or work of other people, whether in the
immediate organization or in the external environment
 Autonomy: the degree to which the job provides substantial
freedom, independence, and discretion to the individual in
scheduling the work and in determining the procedures to be
used in carrying it out
 Feedback: the degree to which carrying out the work activities
required by the job results in the individual being given direct and
clear information about the effectiveness of his or her
performance
o Employee empowerment:
 A less structured method is to allow employees to initiate their own job
changes through the concept of empowerment
 Employee empowerment is a technique of involving employees in their
work through the process of inclusion
 Empowerment encourages employees to become innovators and
managers of their own work and involves them in their jobs in ways that
give them more control and autonomous decision-making capabilities
o Industrial engineering considerations:
 The study of work is an important contribution of the scientific
management movement
 Industrial engineering, which evolved with this movement, is concerned
with analyzing work methods and establishing time standards
 Specifically, it involves the study of work cycles to determine which, if
any, elements can be modified, combined, rearranged, or eliminated to
reduce the time needed to complete the cycle.
 Unfortunately, the concern of industrial engineering for improving
efficiency and simplifying work methods may cause the behavioural
considerations in job design to be neglected
 Ex. the assembly line, with its simplified and repetitive tasks,
embodies sound principles of industrial engineering, but these
tasks are often not psychologically rewarding for those who must
perform them.
o Ergonomic considerations:
 Ergonomics is the study of people at work and the practice of matching
the features of products and jobs to human capabilities, preference, and
the limitations of those who are to perform a job.
 Ergonomics focuses on ensuring that jobs are designed for safe and
efficient work while improving the safety, comfort, and performance of
users

Designing for work groups and teams:
o Although a variety of group techniques have been developed to involve
employees more fully in their organizations, all of these techniques have two
characteristics in common:
 Enhancing collaboration and increasing energy
 In increasing the degree of collaboration in the work environment, these
techniques can improve work processes and organizational decision
making
o Research has shown that working in a group setting strengthens employee
commitment to the organization 's goals, increases employee acceptance of
decisions, and encourages a cooperative approach to workplace tasks.
o Two collaborative techniques are discussed here: employee involvement groups
and employee teams.
o Employee involvement groups:
 Groups of employees who meet to resolve problems or offer suggestions
for organizational improvement
 Groups of 5 to 10 employees doing similar or related work who meet
regularly to identify, analyze, and suggest solutions to shared problems
are often referred to as employee involvement groups (Els)
 Although EI’s have become an important employee contribution system,
they are not without their problems and their critics.
 First, to achieve the results desired, those participating in EIs must
receive comprehensive training in problem identification, problem
analysis, and various decision-making tools, such as statistical analysis
and cause-and-effect diagrams. Comprehensive training for EIs is often
cited as the most important factor leading to their success
 Second, managers should recognize the group when a recommendation
is made, regardless of whether the recommendation is adopted. This
approach encourages the group to continue coming up with ideas even
when they are not all implemented by management.
 Third, some organizations have found that EIs run out of ideas, and
management must feed them ideas to keep the process going.
 Finally, and most importantly, managers and supervisors must exhibit a
participative /democratic leadership style in which employees are
encouraged to work collaboratively with management to improve
organizational performance.
o Employee teams:
 Employee teams are a logical outgrowth of employee involvement and
the philosophy of empowerment
 Although many definitions of teams exist, we define a work team as a
group of individuals working together toward a common purpose, in
which members have complementary skills, members' work is mutually
dependent, and the group has discretion over tasks performed
 Furthermore, teams seek to make members of the work group share
responsibility and account- ability for their group's performance.
 Teams can operate in a variety of structures, each with different strategic
purposes or functional activities.
 One form, self-directed teams, is often championed as being the highest
form of team structure
 Self-directed teams, also called autonomous work group self-managed
teams, or high-performance teams, are groups of employees who are
account- able for a "whole " work process or segment that delivers a
product or service to an internal or external customer.
 To compete in today's national and international markets, managers
increasingly form virtual teams.
 Virtual teams use advanced computer and telecommunications
technology to link team members who are geographically dispersed,
often worldwide.
 Virtual teams: a team with widely dispersed members linked together
through computer and telecommunications technology
 Regardless of the structure or purpose of the team, the following
characteristics have been identified with successful teams:
 Commitment to shared goals and objectives
 Motivated and energetic team members
 Open and honest communication
 Shared leadership
 Clear role assignments
 Climate of cooperation, collaboration, trust, and accountability
 Recognition of conflict and its positive resolution
 Does not always happen, issues arise in all teams
 Some employees may also have difficulty adapting to a role that includes
traditional supervisory responsibilities
 Therefore, extensive attention must be given to training team
members as they move through the four stages of team
development: forming, storming, norming, and performing.
o Flexible work schedules:
 Flexible work schedules are not a true part of job design because job
tasks and responsibilities are not changed.
 Flextime: flexible work hours that permit employees the option of
choosing daily starting and quitting times provided that they work a set
number of hours per day or week
 The more common flexible work schedules are the compressed
workweek, flextime, job sharing, and telecommuting
o Compressed workweek:
 Under the compressed workweek, the number of days in the workweek is
shortened by lengthening the number of hours worked per day
 Managers cite the following reasons for implementing compressed
workweek schedules:
 Recruitment and retention of employees
 Coordinating employee work schedules with production schedules
 Accommodating the leisure-time activities of employees while
facilitating employee personal appointments (medical, dental,
financial)
 Improvements in employee job satisfaction and morale
o Flextime:
 Flextime, or flexible working hours, permits employees the option of
choosing daily starting and quitting times provided that they work a
certain number of hours per day or week
 With flextime, employees are given considerable latitude in scheduling
their work
 However, there is a "core period" during the morning and
afternoon when all employees are required to be on the job
 By allowing employees greater flexibility in work scheduling:
 Employers can reduce some of the traditional causes of tardiness
and absenteeism
 Employees can adjust their work to accommodate their particular
lifestyles and, in doing so, gain greater job satisfaction
 Disadvantages:
 First, it is not suited to some jobs. It is not feasible, for example,
where specific workstations must be staffed at all times
 Second, it can create problems for managers in communicating
with and instructing employees. Flextime schedules may also
force these managers to extend their workweek if they are to
exercise control over their subordinates.
o Job sharing:
 The arrangement whereby two part-time employees perform a job that
other- wise would be held by one full-time employee is called job sharing
 Job sharers usually work three days a week, "creating an overlap day for
extended face-to-face conferencing."
 Their pay is three-fifths of a regular salary.

Job sharing is suited to the needs of families in which one or both
spouses desire to work only part-time
 It is also suited to the needs of older workers who want to phase into
retirement by shortening their workweek
 The key to making job sharing work is good communication between
partners, who can use a number of ways to stay in contact-phone calls,
written updates, email, and voice mail
 Disadvantages:
 Employers may not want to employ two people to do the work of
one because the time required to orient and train a second
employee constitutes an added burden
 Managers may find it more difficult to supervise two employees,
particularly when one job sharer is not dependable, job sharers
cannot effectively work together, or they simply distrust one
another
o Telecommuting:
 Telecommuting is the use of personal computers, networks, and other
communications technology to do work in the home that is traditionally
done in the workplace
 Telecommuting has several advantages:
 Increased flexibility for employees-better work-life balance
 Reduced absenteeism
 Retention of valued employees who might otherwise quit
 Reduced "carbon footprints" through minimizing daily commuting
 Increased productivity (ex. reduced wasted office time)
 Lower overhead costs and reduced office space
 Disadvantages:
 Loss of creativity as employees are not interacting with one
another on a regular basis, the difficulty of developing
appropriate performance standards and evaluation systems for
telecommuters, and the need to formulate an appropriate
technology strategy for allocating the necessary equipment
 Managers may believe that telecommuting negatively affects
employee-supervisor relationships through loss of knowledge or
information, training or development, and a sense of
connectedness.