Human Resource - Organizational Structure - Essay Example

Human Resource: Organizational Structure Job analysis is a one or more procedures that managers design and use to gather information about the various tasks employees perform and the skills they need to conduct the responsibilities efficiently. It is a process of attempting to seek the actual work activities, work equipment, standards of job performance, job context, and personnel skills and requirements. The retail company customer may use one, or a combination of three job analysis approaches- Interview, use of Questionnaire or Observation. A. Interview The Human Resource Manager can collect job analysis data from employees by using three types of interviews. He can conduct an individual interview or a group interview with workers that do in the same customer service department (Campion & Thayer, 2001). He may also conduct supervisor interviews with at least one supervisor who is well versant with the Customer Service Representative Job. The Human Resource Manager can use group interviews when a larger number of employees are in the client service department because it is a quick and cheap way of collecting information. It is advisable for the worker’s immediate supervisor to attend the group sessions. Alternatively, the manager can separately interview the supervisor to get his opinions on the duties and responsibilities of the job. Whichever type of interview, the manager should be sure that the interviewee fully understands that the reason for the interview is for the purpose of job analysis to fill up the position of customer service representative. Otherwise, the respondent may think that it is for efficiency evaluation. Typical questions in the interview may include: • What are your duties on the job position? • What is your work physical location? • What is your education, experience, skill? • In what activities do you take part? • What are the performance standards that typify your work? • What are the environmental and working conditions? • What are the job’s physical, emotional, and mental demands? B. Questionnaire The human resource manager can have the employees in the customer care department fill out questionnaires to describe their duties and responsibilities in their jobs. According to Prenhall (2012), the manager should decide on the best structure of the questionnaire and the specific questions to include. He can use very structured checklists questionnaires. Each worker gets an inventory of specific duties or tasks. He then indicates whether he performs each of the tasks and the amount of time that he spends on each task. On the other hand, the manager can use an open-ended questionnaire. He would require the employee to describe the primary duties of his/her job. Practically, the manager should use a questionnaire that falls between these two extremes. Thus, the questionnaire will typically have several open-ended questions plus structured questions. C. Observation The manager can directly observe the employees as they physically engage with the customers, contact them via telephone, or carry out other activities as pertains to handling customers. The manager can combine the observation and the interview methods together. He can observe one or more workers in the department over a considerable period and take notes of all their job activities. The manager can then interview the worker. He can ask the employee to clarify some points and explain any other additional activities that he/she performs that the manager failed to capture. Alternatively, the manager can simultaneously observe and interviewer, posing questions while the worker carries out his/her job (Dessler, 2000). The most useful approach the manager can use is a combination of all of the three methods of job analysis. The manager can observe all the activities in the customer service department. He should then perform an interview with the employees and the supervisors in the department. The combination is simple and quick. The methods can also unearth important activities that are not reflected in written form since they take place only occasionally (Prenhall, 2012). The interview also allows the manager to explain the purpose of the job analysis and the employee to vent out any frustration in the department. 2. The next step after job analysis is job design. It is a process of outlining and organizing tasks nad responsibilities related to an individual job. It aims at achieving an integration of required skills or qualification and the job responsibilities. The Human resource manager can two approaches to designing the customer service representative job: perpetual/motor approach and motivational approach. A. Perpetual/motor approach The human resource manager can use this approach to job design to ensure that the responsibility of the position does not exceed the mental capabilities of the customer service representatives (Campion & Thayer, 2001). The design’s principles extend beyond the content of the task to the work environment and equipment. The client service job requires some of the perceptual/motor elements such as memory requirements, information processing, readability of printed job materials, lighting, programs on the computer, and workplace layout. Designing the job around peoples’ perceptual/motor limitations will help in decreasing the likelihood of errors in the process of receiving and attending to customers’ orders over the internet, telephone or in person. It also reduces mental demands of the representative job. Thus, the approach lowers the chances of stress and mental overload, training times and improves utilization level of workers. However, perceptual/motor approach may reduce satisfaction and motivation since it can create representative jobs that are less mentally stimulating. For example, the manager can design customer service job by availing the most up-to-date programs, hardware, ambient light, fast internet connections, and continuous electrical power for the job. The employee will thus have lower stress and mental load in his/her activities. However, when he becomes used to doing the daily activities that do not require much of his mental inputs, he becomes less motivated and less satisfied. B. Motivational job design approach The approach emanates from the work on job enrichment and enlargement. The manager can develop the representative job to allow for autonomy, job feedback, social interaction, goal clarity, task variety, and work identity. He should also consider enriching the task significance, promotion, achievement, participation, growth/learning, job security, compensation, and communication. The job design helps in reducing absenteeism. It improves satisfaction, performance, motivation, and involvement (Mondy, Noe, & Gowan, 2005). The challenge with motivational job design approach is that the customer service job will require a longer period of training in order to match the job with the layout. Additionally, employees may suffer stress and mental overload if the representative position is made to be mentally stimulating. The result is difficulties in staffing. For instance, a customer representative may require an increase in pay in order to motivate him/her. The retail company may fail to meet his demands, especially in off-peak seasons where products markets are small. 3. A. Job enrichment and enlargement The human resource manager should enrich the job to create prestige and a sense of achievement. The job should have autonomy by allowing freedom, independence, and discretion in work scheduling and methods. There should be feedback, both intrinsic and extrinsic. The work itself need to provide direct information about the effectiveness of quality of customer service. Other employees must provide information about the efficiency of the employee’s job performance. The job needs to allow for teamwork and coworker assistance to enhance social interaction. The job should clearly outline the duties, requirements, varieties, identity, significance, and goals of the tasks. The manager can also describe the required types and varieties of skills. If possible, the retail company should provide learning, promotion, achievement recognition, participation in decision-making, and job security. B. Enriching the work-place environment The human resource manager can ensure that the lighting and electrical systems are ambient. The print-outs, computer monitors, and other data displays should clearly display data about customers information. The software and office equipments should be easy to learn. The workplace layout should allow employees to hear, see well and have enough space to perform activities around the office. The input, processing and output of information should be excellent by ensuring computers, printers, storage disks and other hardware parts work properly. The customer service representative should be enabled to remember any information to reduce mental overload and stress. 4. The manager can use the information from the job analysis to establish the performance of Customer Service Representatives. Measuring performance will enable the retail company to maintain and increase its sales of products via the internet. The manager can use three ways to do so: personal data, judgmental methods, and production counts. A. Production counts The manager can attempt to measure what the representative produces on the job. The employee with higher production is assumed to be the best one (Mondy, Noe, & Gowan, 2005). The manager can interview or observe the number of calls that the employee. He can assess the number of successful orders that the employee handled with the customers. The proper usage of internet, equipments, and time can also be helpful. The computerized monitoring systems may be used in measuring the various elements of production counts. If all equipments, facilities, and other factors are optimum, the production count can give an accurate performance of the employee since they show that the employee was actively serving the customers. B. Personnel Data The various pieces of information in the file of the employee can be helpful in objectively measuring the job performance of the workers. The manager can assess the employee’s attendance and performance in the training sessions. His suggestions to improve the quality of customer services and the number of complaints made against him can also be important pieces of information. The Human resource can also use employee absenteeism, a most common personnel index. The assumption is that the worker who works 8 hours per day is more productive than the one who is frequently absent. The rationale behind using personnel information recorded in files is that it eliminates the Hawthorne effect since employees may not notice that their real behavior is carefully being noted. Hawthorne says that when people discover that someone is monitoring their actions, they change their behavior to invent a favorable impression (Dessler, 2000). C. Judgmental Measures of Performance The manager can use either the rankings or the rating techniques. The rationale behind these methods is that they enable measurement of performance on a particular task that are part of each representative’s job description (Campion & Thayer, 2001). They also allow the organization to capture the cooperation and communication behaviors necessary for it to run smoothly. The ranking techniques include forced distribution, full ranking, and pair comparison method. Full classification involves sorting customer service representatives into general categories and ultimately ranking them so that only one worker occupies one level of performance. Forced distribution involves dividing the employees into high performance, average performance, and low performance. The manager forces the distribution to allow only small percentages of workers in high and low rankings. On the other hand, pair comparison method involves comparing each worker to every other worker, prompting him to make relative judgments. References Campion, M., & Thayer, P. (2001). Job Designs: Approaches, Outcomes, and Trade-offs. Human Resource Management, 21(3), 66-79. Retrieved from http://www.krannert.purdue.edu/faculty/campionm/Job_Design_Approaches.pdf Dessler, G. (2000). Human resource management. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Mondy, R. W., Noe, R. M., & Gowan, M. (2005). Human resource management. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. Prenhall. (2012, February 2). Job Analysis. Retrieved from http://www.prenhall.com/desslertour/chapter3.pdf Read More