Job Analysis of Human Resource Director - Coursework Example

Job Analysis Name: Institution: Student Number: Job Analysis Job description My father works as a Human Resource Director in a United State-based Communication Company. His major duties are to implement and promote human resource values by managing and planning human resource programs and directing the company`s staff. He is also responsible for orienting, selecting, recruiting, and coaching, training, disciplining staff and counseling; appraising, monitoring, review staff job contribution and planning; determining production; maintaining compensation, quality, productivity and customer-service strategies(Ahmed, 2014). He also has the responsibility of developing the strategies of the organization by researching and identifying issues related to human resource, analysis, contributing information, and recommendations to company`s direction and strategic thinking as well as the establishment of human resource goals in line with the objectives of the organization. As a Human Resource Director, he carries out the duties of developing human resources operations estimation of financial strategies by anticipating, estimating and forecasting requirements, variances and trends; developing action plans; aligning monetary resources; measuring and analyzing results as well as initiating corrective actions. Human Resource Director Job requires one to support diversity, be conversant with the employment law, have good communication skills, be able to classify employees and hire without any discrimination. My father has been holding the human resource director position in this company for a period of fifteen years. Job Analysis Job analysis is referred to the process of determining and identifying in detail the specific job requirements and duties and the relative significance of those particular duties for a given job. In other words it is a practice where judgments about data collected on a job are made. Notethat the job and not the person is a vital concept of job analysis and is only conducted about the job. While Job analysis data collected from executives through questionnaires or interviews, the analysis product is a specification or description of the job and not a description of the person. Job analysis is useful for Human Resource Managers to conduct as it aids in documenting and establishing the job relatedness of the procedures of the employment such as selection, training, performance appraisal and compensation(Prien, 2009). Job analysis is useful in determining the training needs. In this case, it is used to develop or identify assessment tests used to measure the effectiveness of the training, training content, the methods of training (video based, small group, classroom or computer based) and identify the equipment to be used in delivering the training process. Another importance of job analysis is that it helps managers in identifying the method of compensation in such a way they are able to identifythe levels of skills, the work environment, determine the compensable job factors, identify the required levels of education and determine the responsibilities. Job analysis also help managers to get a comprehensive familiarization of the job by understating the level and scope, the amount of authority, accountability and responsibility required to perform the job, minor and major activities and the context in which these jobs are to be performed(Ahmed, 2014). Job analysis is important in carrying out performance review. It can be used to develop or identify performance standards, goals and objectives, duties to be evaluated, evaluation criteria and the probability periods. It is also applicable in selection procedures to develop or identify the orientation material for new hire or applicants, selection instruments or tests, interview questions, applicant appraisal and job duties that should be considered in the vacancy advertisements. In selection procedures it can also be used to identify the minimum requirements for screening applicants as well as identifying the level of salary for the position in order to determine what salary the candidate has to receive. It is also essential as it helps managers in identifying performance behavior. With this, they are able to know the performance expectations, the duties and responsibilities of each position and know the working processes of the trainees to give an excellent and a satisfactory job(Prien, 2009). Data Collection The two methods of collecting data selected in this case are interviews and questionnaires. The two are both useful as the significant methods of conducting a job analysis (Brannick & Levine, 2012).Questionnaires are important as they are used to help incumbents to describe their jobs and inform human resource managers the conditions under which they want to carry it out so that it can be analyzed. The questionnaire can also be used by supervisors and managers to describe a new job to applicants. The method of administering questionnaires in analyzing the human resource director job involved the formulation of questions which were to be answered by the director. Questionnaires can be sent by mail or handed out andlater collected or given back by a stamped addressed envelope. The method is often adopted for sampled sectors of even for entire population. This method may be used to collect infrequent or regular routine data, and data for specialized studies. While the information from job analysis applies to all questionnaires for all the uses, the analysis will concern routine data only, whether infrequent or regular. Some information obtainedthrough the use of questionnaires includes opinions of applicants’ issues or managements, general information of human resource director job and human resource practices (Brannick & Levine, 2012). A questionnaire requires respondents to fill the questions themselves and therefore itrequires high levels of literacy. In cases where multiple languages are common, questionnairesare prepared using the major languages of the targetgroups. People constructing questionnaires need to initiate special care to endure that they provide accurate questions and translations. Inorder to maximize the return rates of questionnaires, the designer should make it clear and simple as possible with targeted questions and sections. Note that, questionnaires are supposed to be as short as possible. If questionnaires are administered to a sample population, then it is preferable for one to prepare several smaller and more targeted questionnaires with each one of them provided to a sub-sample. In cases where questionnaires are to be used for complete enumeration, there one needs to take special care to avoid overburdening the respondent. For instance, if several individuals require the same data, attempts should then be made to coordinate its collection to evade duplication (Brannick & Levine, 2012). Questionnaires in analyzing the human resource director job involved issuing out forms and entering data in a structured format. I ensured that they were machine readable before distributing. The questionnaires had structured questions to be filled in, open-ended questions whereby respondents had to reply lengthy and choose their own focus to some extend and also had multiple choice questions(Prien, 2009). I also ensured that filing the questionnaire was reduced to minimum that is tick boxes rather limited to numerals. The first part of the questionnaire where one had to fill their names, department and current work schedule was mainly to provide a brief description of the jobs primary contribution or purpose to the organization. The other part of the questionnaire required the manager to fill out his essential duties and responsibilities. The questionnaire also required one to fill out the independence of their actions whereby they had to describe who assigns duties to them, who establishes deadlines and priorities and the kind of deadlines one is required to meet. I also used this method to know the supervisory duties and responsibilities and how much physical demand the job had. The respondent was required to indicate if the job required the exertion of force to accomplish it and the tools and equipment of operations. I ensured that included questions on the work environment as I needed to know how much exposure environmental conditions had on the job and the amount typical for the kind of job. The questionnaire also required the respondents to describe the kind of working relationship they preferred and the job-related contacts they have both outside and within their departments and how it affected their work. Lastly the questionnaire required the respondent to fill in question on the educational qualifications, knowledge, skills, and abilities and experiences the position required(Prien, 2009). Questionnaires enabled me to seek out a complete job analysis of human resource director and I was able to comprehend what the job required and how it was done. The use of questionnaires in job analysis is advantageousin that; they are relatively less expensive, data is usually standardized, it takes little time to conduct, it can reach more workers and it does not necessarily require a trained interview. The questionnaire level of reliability is quite high. However, questionnaire are disadvantageous in that, they are difficult to construct, some responses given by applicants maybe incomplete, they have low response rates and some of those responses may not be easy to interpret especially in cases where questions are open-ended. Interviews on the other hand are methods used to collect a variety of information from incumbents by asking them to describe the duties and tasks that they performed. In interviews, the required information is acquired through inquiry and recorded by enumerators. Interviewers tend to use two methods, the unstructured and structured. Structured interviews are carried out using survey forms whereby unstructured or open interviews are notes that interviewers take while talking with respondents. Notes are consequently interpreted for further analysis. Unstructured interviews, which require being analyzed and interpreted even during the interviewing process, have to be carried out by well-trained enumerators or observers. In preparing questionnaires for interviews, it is very vital to pilot test forms, which are designed for the interviews. Though structure interviews can be used in acquiring almost any information, information is based on personal opinion. Data acquired on variables such as effort or catch are possibly subject to large errors due to undefined estimates or deliberate errors of subtle information (Brannick & Levine, 2012). In carrying out an interview for the job analysis, I opted to first use unstructured interviews as I thought the predetermined line of investigation was better. This would have enabled me to particularly focus on the outcome of this interview and its purpose. I used a questioning strategy to explore the work that the director performed. This involved listening and taking notes as I administered the questions to him. That enabled me to follow up the questions I intended to pose to him. With the responses and the questions, I was able to control the whole interview process. One positive thing about the conversation was that, it took on a structure with all areas being explored, related to each other, considered, and revisited to ensure that the information depth was achieved in the job analysis. I also found out that I did not require to use rigid questionnaires in administering the interview as they were less effective for this type of job analysis especially where the more affective aspects of work are concerned(Ahmed, 2014). The use of this open-ended interview enabled me to acquire free flowing information but at some point I felt it was turning to a structured interview in the sense that I had a purpose and the needs skill to ensure the information I received was understood and received well. I had to establish a relationship and I was obliged to asking well-structured questions in order to produce a conversational flow in which the respondent offered opinion, factual, objective and subjective about the aspects of the job. Although structured interview may assume a definite format like unstructured, it was important to also consider charting a directors sequence of activities in performance of his job (Brannick & Levine, 2012). This method was flexible and enabled me to acquire appropriate feedback. I was able to get a descriptive data and also the director was able to interpret his activities. The job holder was also able to give an overview of his job and offered his feelings and perceptions about the job environment and the job. Interviews are advantageous in that the incumbents are able to describe work, it works well for long cycle jobs and can yield data about psychomotor and cognitive processes which seem difficult to achieve. Another advantage is that it is easy to achieve qualitative data.Interviews in job analysis are also advantageous in that, a small-scale prior test to the actual interview ensures that there is better data collection and avoid wasting money and time. Interviews have disadvantages which include, subjectivity of data gathered, difficulty in combining data from disparate interviews, they may elicit extraneous data and it requires a well -designed questionnaire and an experienced interviewer. Interviews are sometimes hard to bring together, it may stress one area and neglect others, and sometimes certain areas of the work may fail to be picked up. It is also clear that when carrying out an interview, there is a potential for interviewer bias and that there are problems in analysis and interpretation with the possibility of distorted impressions. Carrying out interviews is the sole method of conducting a job analysis in any specific project and has other disadvantages. They are time consuming and training is required. Co-counseling in interviews may remove the specialist and allow jobholders to deliberate work between themselves. Inexperienced interviewers may however, miss items. There is also a natural problem of individual not maintaining and establishing a connection with each other during an interview(Prien, 2009). References Ahmed E., (2014). Managing Human Resources (4th Ed. )Upper Saddle River, N.J: Prentice Hall. Brannick, M. T., & Levine, E. L. (2012). Job analysis: Methods, research, and applications for human resource management in the new millennium. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications. Prien, E. P. (2009). A practical guide to job analysis. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer Read More