Introduction
Conducting a job analysis for a job is an important task for any business entity. Job analysis helps an individual or an organization understand the needs, skills or the expected outcome of any job. It also guides an organization into correctly matching the required duties of a job with the most competent personnel (Brannick and Levine, 2002). Besides that, they help organizations in evaluating the performance of workers and determining the ideal remuneration package for employees. There are various methods of conducting a job analysis, some of them include; interviews, observations, questionnaires and checklist. This paper will conduct a job analysis for a restaurant managerial position. The paper will also assess the reliability of the restaurant managerial position. Besides that, the paper will discuss various performance appraisal methods which organizations can utilize to evaluate restaurant managers. Finally, the paper will evaluate the pros and cons of each performance appraisal method used for the restaurant manager.
A restaurant manager is a person who interacts with clients and staff on regular basis. Therefore, this position requires a person who not only has competent leadership skills but also, a social person can relate well with any person and still deliver good results. An ideal job analysis method for evaluating this kind of a job is the questionnaire. This is because a questionnaire can gather more data/information and its administration is less expensive. In evaluating a restaurant manager job, a human resource person can develop structured questions and ask the restaurant managers and workers to complete. These questions may cover on salaries, duties and working environment. For instance, the questionnaire may contain questions asking the respondents, if they are satisfied with their income, working hours, relationship with employees. Data collected from these questionnaires is then compiled and analyzed to determine if the managers are effectively executing their duties. Since the questionnaires are administered to many people in the restaurant facility, the probability of getting falsified data is minimized. This is because, the respondents hold different opinions to the questions asked in the questionnaires. This implies that accuracy is improved in the data collected.
In an organizational setting, this job analysis can be conducted by another human resource consultancy firm. This means that an organization may have to procure the services of a professional human resource consultancy firm. This is important because the hired firm will administer the questionnaires in a professional manner thereby minimizing chances of biasness in the job analysis.
Outsourcing the job analysis to a human resource firm ensures that reliability and validity of data. This is because, the firm analyses the opinion of the respondents and then provides an unbiased findings of the analysis. This helps the organization in determining if the duties of the restaurant managers are relevant to the organizational missions or objectives. Use of questionnaires offers an effective way of gathering data from a large organization in the shortest time. The only challenge is creating a questionnaire that addresses all the details of the job analysis. Consultancy firm can help an organization gather enough information of the restaurant manager job.
A performance appraisal is another important task for any organization. It enables an organization evaluate the performance of employees and help in restructuring the organization’s policies to optimize resources. There are several performance appraisal methods that an organization can use to evaluate the performance of restaurant managers. Some of them include; forced-choice rating, field review, essay appraisal, management by objectives, assessment centers and graphic rating scale. All this methods are ideal in evaluating the performance of restaurant managers.
This part of the paper will carefully discuss each of the performance appraisal methods and evaluate the pros and cons of each method in the evaluation of restaurant managers. First, forced-choice rating is an effective method of minimizing biasness in the assessments because; it establishes effective goals limits by comparing two people (participants). It involves raters selecting the best fit and least fit statements from a group. Then the statements are calculated, the people with highest scores are considered the best employees while those with low scores are poor performers. In this method, the rater does not have information of the scoring weights and this minimizes biasness. The only disadvantage with this method is that, it irritates the raters especially those who think they are not trusted in the organization.
Secondly, the field review is applied when some rater are s suspect to be utilizing higher standards than others. It involves a member of a senior position of the organization meeting with small units of raters from each supervisory unit. The senior member then approaches each employee to identify areas of disagreement, assist the group to make a decision and finally determine that each rater delivers the same standards. This method is fair and more authentic than individual rating (Runion and Brittain, 2006). However, this process is time consuming and thus cannot be useful if an organization requires data urgently. Although the employees are consulted, the management of the organizations makes the final standards and imposes the objectives for the workers.
The third method is essay appraisal. It is one of the simplest performance appraisal methods because it only requires a rater to identify a person’s strengths, weakness and many others personal qualification (Runion and Brittain, 2006). This method assumes the respondent gives an honest statement. The only challenge is its variability in length and information. Moreover, there is difficulty in comparing different people’s performances because the essays cover on various aspects of a person’s personal information.
The fourth method is management by objective. This method is widely used by organizations in evaluating their managers. It requires the managers to set realistic performance objectives. However, most employees do not like this method because it makes them become autonomous or self-directing.
The fifth appraisal method is the assessment centers. This method focuses on evaluating the future performance or the potentials of the employees. It is normally used when an organization wishes to consider promotions or salary increments of its staff. This method brings together members of different department within the organizations and assigns assignments which are similar to the ones they will perform if promoted. After this, judges arrange the order of merit for the participants. This method is effective in matching employees with departments which they perform best.
Graphic rating scale is the last method of performance appraisal. This method offers reliable and consistent results because it employs graphical techniques in reviewing the performance of workers. It evaluates people’s quality and quantity of their work or input to the organizations. It may also involve an assessment of communication skills of the participants (Runion and Brittain, 2006). The graphic rating scale offers an effective way of evaluating restaurant managers because it generates data that shows their input to the organization. The only challenge is getting an expert who may analyze and explain the data of the graph. This means that, an organization has to procure the services of an expert and hence increasing costs for the organization.
References
Brannick, M. T., & Levine, E. L. (2002). Job analysis: Methods, research, and applications for human resource management in the new millennium. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications.
Runion, M., & Brittain, J. (2006). How to say it performance reviews: Phrases and strategies for painless and productive performance reviews. New York: Prentice Hall Press/Penguin Group.
