Organizational Structure - Scientific and Individual Contemporary Job Design Approaches - Essay Example

Organizational Structure Three Approaches for job analysis Three approaches of job analysis are observation approach, interview approach and questionnaire approach. The recruitment of customer service representatives can be done keeping this on mind. In the observation method the job analyst generally notices the employees physically or with the help of previous records (Franklin, 2005, pp. 23-25). This observation includes three types of techniques; those are direct observation, critical incident technique and work methods analysis. In the interview method the customer representatives are interviewed by the job analyst. Here in this method job analyst tries to analyze the job by interviewing the representatives. During this method representatives disclose their working pattern, what kind of problems they face during their duties. This method of job analysis is being conducted by face to face interview inside the small firm. Questionnaire method is an important method where customer representatives are provided with questionnaires to reveal their job related information. The company is a small one and so the number of employees is supposed to be low. This method might not be useful for a small company as sufficient amount of feedbacks for analysis may not be available. This method is a widely used method for the HR professionals to analyze a particular job. In this method customer representatives fill the questionnaires and submit them to the managers. Questionnaire can include checklists, open ended questions and close ended questions. The company sells high volume products over the internet and so the representatives will have to answer a number of queries from the customers. The representatives can bring forward those questions to their managers. Pros and Cons Observation method is a simple and one of the easiest methods but the method is highly elaborate to perform properly. Observation method has lots of limitations. There are lots of jobs available which do not have easily observable responsibilities and duties. In those contexts this method is not at all suitable. The process has high level of biasness. But this method is most suitable in case of this organization since being a small organization the number of jobs on offer will be limited and use of observation method will be handful. Interview method supports the analyst to know the customer representative reality in proper way. It helps the analysts to understand the real job requirement in more precise way. Interview method can be confusing sometimes. Different customer representatives may describe a same situation in different ways. Interview method takes too much time to analyze a single job. Although the interview method is time taking but proper conclusion taking into account the perspectives of different representatives can be attained using this method. Questionnaire method is a very popular method. The method saves lots of time and money. That means this method is cost effective and consumes less time. This questionnaire method is not suitable for the customer representatives belonging to various educational back grounds. This method requires high degree of precision. Recommendation Interview method will be the most effective method for conducting job analysis for the position of Customer Service Representative. With the help of this method the HR manager will be able to communicate with the existing employees of the Customer Service Representative Department. This method will allow the HR manger to communicate with them in a direct fashion. In this way employees of the concerned department will be able talk their heart out. They will be able to share their practical experiences in front of the HR manager. This method of job analysis will enable the HR manager to become aware about the required working styles for the department. It will assist the manager to analyze the possible difficulties related with the particular job profile. There will be no scope of confusion because all the experiences are real-time for the employees. Crucial position like Customer Service Representative requires critical job analysis. That critical job analysis can be achieved with the help of interview method. With the nature of the vacant position, this method is absolutely suitable and proper. Selection of two job designing approaches Two selected job designing approaches are Scientific and Individual contemporary job design approaches. These two approaches are significantly important to consider in this context (Armstrong, 2006, pp. 78-81). Scientific approaches of job designing takes extra pain to conduct job designing. This approach considers individual capabilities and conduct job design according to the individual capability only. With the help of this kind of job designing approaches, big works or duties can be partitioned into small parts of standardized segments. This approach of job designing is highly popular and very widely being used by the modern day organizations across the world. Team contemporary approach of job designing is highly important for teams of individual employees. This job designing approach is significantly focused towards the social needs of the employees. The particular job designing approach show cases technological constraints also. This kind of job designing approach allows the individuals to learn more than one duty. This type of job designing approach encourages employee empowerment. Challenges Scientific approaches have several challenges. Due to its vast nature of the job designing, conducting scientific approaches can be significantly boring and time consuming. This approach can take too much time to come up with a proper job design. It can reduce the focus of the HR people from their duties. Scientific approach can create high turnover for the organization (Mathis and Jackson, 2010, pp. 56-58). Due to their elaborate job designing approach, turnover will be high and there will be high scope of sabotage and absenteeism. Team contemporary approach requires high level of interaction among the representatives. This employee interaction can be a significant challenge for this approach. Employees are generally preoccupied with their own responsibilities. It is very difficult for them to take time out of their busy schedules and interact with other representatives. This kind of job designing approach requires high level of training and interpersonal skill. It is being noticed that many organizations try to implement this kind of job designing approach without enough scope of training and development program. Advantages and disadvantages Scientific approach has an advantage of predictability. This advantage will allow the HR manger of the small retail company to predict the various requirements of the job design in proper way. This method will support the manager to bring clarity into their job designing. Clear job design will be helpful for the manager to recruit the customer service representatives suitably. This method is highly efficient and productive in nature which will be significantly helpful for the manager in terms time and money. Boring nature of this approach may cause distraction for the manger during the process of job designing, which is a serious disadvantage related with the process. Team contemporary approach gives significant importance towards social requirements of the employees. This advantage will assist the HR manager to give serious considerations towards the social requirements of the employees. Employee interaction is also an advantage of this approach. This advantage will allow the manager to design the job by interacting with other employees. This approach is over dependent upon social interaction. If the manager does not want to interact with other people then the approach will be faulty and job designing will be a failure for the organization. Two strategies The organization can go for recruitment consultancy. The recruitment consultancy will help the small retail company to attract and select qualified applicants for the Customer Service Representative position. This strategy will suitably incorporate all the four job designing approaches. This approach will provide advantage of predictability and it will be highly efficient and productive in nature. This is significantly aliened with scientific approach. The strategy of recruitment consultancy will reduce the boredom and applicants will be attracted towards the position. This strategy is highly suitable with scientific and individual contemporary approach. Recruitment consultancy creates an environment of social interaction and accommodates jobs to people. That means this strategy is falling in line with team contemporary and ergonomics approach also. The organization can advertise their vacant position of Customer Service Representative in the job portals. This strategy will be significantly attractive for the quality applicants and the strategy will allow selecting good quality people. The strategy has all the fundamental advantages of the job designing approaches. Justifications for strategies The two selected strategies will be significantly effective for the organization. These two strategies will allow the small retail company to invest their money in a calculative way. The strategy of recruitment consultancy will help the organization to conduct a primary screening before they conduct the interview. That means applicants will be filtered extensively before they are being recruited. This strategy will support the organization to fill up the vacant positions of Customer Service Representative Department in a quick fashion. Expenses related with this strategy will be reasonable. Advertising through job portals will allow the company to reach up to high numbers of applicants within small time period. It will allow the small retail company to finish up the whole procedure by spending less money. It will allow the company to showcase their vacant position of Customer Service Representative for 24*7. Applicants will be able to access the job information at any point of time with the help of internet. Proposal of three ways Job analysis information gives a clear cut idea for the value estimation purpose of various jobs. Job analysis provides required information related with the education level and needed skill. This allows the organization to set the proper compensation for the employees. This is an important factor for measuring performance of Customer Service Representatives. Performance appraisal is also an important factor which is being done on the basis of job analysis. In this way the manger will be able to compare actual performances of   Customer Service Representatives with the standardized performance. That is why this particular way has high significance for measuring the performance of the employees. Job analysis has significant importance for the purpose of revealing unassigned duties to the employees. With the help of this way all the duties will be clarified towards the Customer Service Representatives and their performance will be measured on the basis of those duties only. References Armstrong, M. (2006). A handbook of human resource management practice. New York: Kogan Page Publishers. Franklin, M.(2005). A guide to job analysis. New York: American Society for Training and Development. Mathis, L. R. and Jackson, J. (2010). Human resource management. London: Cengage Learning. Read More