Introduction
Before heading towards the job analysis, it is eminent to understand the meaning of job itself. The job is the set of tasks, responsibilities, and duties which need to be performed to attain the overall organizational objectives. In an organization, every job is different from the other jobs, for instance, clerk, manager, electricians, etc. A job contains different positions; these positions are described as the set of duties and responsibilities that are assigned to the individual on a regular basis. The failure of effective job design leads to heavy financial losses to the company (Steward & Brown, 2011). The same is the case with ABC Retail Company, where management finds it difficult to meet the increasing sales demand due to a shortage of customer service representative for the past few months. Through job analysis, it is expected that this issue will be eradicated, and the company will be able to attract the quality human resources to fill the position.
Discussion
Approaches and Methods of Job Analysis
The job analysis is the process of attaining the information regarding the specific job. The analysis enables the HR manager about how, why and what the workforce needs to do to achieve the overall organizational objectives. The final products of job analysis are the job description and job specification. The job description is the written form of the statement which comprises of all the work-related description of the job. this includes duties, responsibilities, working condition, equipment’s involved, organizational hierarchy, job title, etc. on the other hand, the job specification is pertinent to the person specification like attributes, qualities, and skills, etc.
The group interview is one of the effective methods for attaining information from the existing employees who are performing the tasks already. In the group interviews, the analyst can attain the information from a large number of employees at a time. Through this method, the analyst can attain that in-depth information which can be attained through written form. This is the easiest yet the quick method of data collection. However, there are certain limitations of this method; the responses can be intentionally distorted by the interviewer or interviewers can easily manipulate their responses. The limitation of the high cost of interviewing is associated with this method. The other method is position analysis questionnaire. The position analysis questionnaire is also the most used job analysis instrument. It is usually designed by the expert job analyst who then conduct interviews from job incumbents and supervisors. The purpose of designing this instrument is to analyze the job component validity of attributes which is presented in the aptitude tests. The relationship between skills required for performing the job at the best and test scores comprises of job component validity. The instrument consists of 195 behavioral statements which are categorized into six subsections. These subsections include mental processes, information input, job context, work output and other job-related characteristics (Nicole, 2013).
This method helps in attaining the general behavior of the employees that make up a job. For instance, the job element for the customer service representative position is the excellent communication and interpersonal skills. The benefit of using this method for the job analysis is that it provides excellent information, high reliability, minimizes the human error chances, effectively work for small and medium enterprises, and cost effective. The following are the disadvantages of using this method, readability problems and most suitable and effective for blue collar jobs. The third selected method is the critical incident method. In this approach, analyst identifies the critical elements that occur while performing the job. These elements are responsible for the success and failure of the job performed. The method is used for identifying the knowledge, skills, abilities as well as personality factors which help in avoiding future bad incidents.
For instance, in case CSR losses the temperament and mistreat the customers then it is essential to add up the conflict management skills in the job specification. This method is task focused, by using it, management would be able to focus on the employee's job and evaluate how well the job has been performed. A log is maintained of all the positive and negative events. This method requires keeping the record of the events up-to-date. The method is effective enough for ongoing performance communication. One of the drawbacks of this method is that through constant monitoring behavior, employees might feel mistrusted (DeCenzo & Robbins, 2005).
The most effective and highly recommended approach that must be used in ABC Company for job analysis of customer representative position is the critical incident approach. To minimize the drawbacks, it is suggestible that the incidents must be recorded in a descriptive rather than evaluative form. This method is more effectively attain the past incidents of the good and bad behavior of customer service representatives. The critical incident technique would allow to evaluate the past incidents of the employees and based on the provided information the HR manager would be able to make adjustments in the job description as well as job specification.
Job Design Approaches and Strategies
Job design is defined as the process through which the qualities and characteristics of a job have been created and determined. There are four approaches to job design. These approaches are as follows: the scientific approach, human approach, engineering approach and job characteristics approach. The selected approaches for ABC Company for conducting job analysis of customer service representatives included the human approach and the job characteristics approach. The human approach suggests designing the job around people, not the organizational processes. This approach suggests designing a job which is more rewarding. The more job is rewarding by nature; the more company enables to retain quality human resources. Under the humanistic approach, the job design must be designed in a way that provides growth, respect, and recognition. Job enrichment comes under this type of approach. The advantages of using this type of approach for job design are as follows: it allows an employee to get growth opportunities through which the needs can be satisfied; through enrichment job employees get less frustrated with the routine tasks; the employee morality and performance boost up; it helps in reducing the employee turnover rate. The human relations approach to job design emphasizes on the impact of psychological, social needs of the employees on productivity.
This approach focuses on the technical components of the job. This approach helps in facilitating workers’ social needs and gratification. The working style must be friendlier where employees must have the freedom to share their notions and opinions freely. For that purpose, non-authoritarian leadership style is used. Teamwork is being promoted in such approach. In designing the job for customer service representatives, there is the chance of failure of this approach because people might not want to create a strong relationship with their peers instead they want to focus on the daily tasks execution. One of the limitations of this approach is that, for performing the ideal job task, it is essential to give the training to the employees for enhancing their interpersonal skills because this is one of the core skills which need to be present to the employees.
The other approach to job design is job characteristic approach. This approach emphasizes the relationship between job satisfaction and rewards. The approach suggests that people are more satisfied with their jobs and retain longer if they find good monetary and non-monetary rewards. The approach suggests the employees would be more productive if they are being rewarded appropriately for their work. They must have five core competency to perform the customer service representative job. These competencies are as follows: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback. All these competencies help to design a job successfully. The ideal candidate possesses all these competencies. This approach suggests while designing any specific job; it is eminent to clearly mention all these required core competencies. There are few limitations to this approach that hinder in the way of designing job of customer service representative. However, ABC Company can confront few challenges in using this approach. Some of these are as follows: to implement the job characteristics approach for designing customer service representative job, some people do not want the frequent changes in the job tasks. They prefer to stick in one specific position without confronting frequent changes in the job. This type of approach may fail to attract those candidates who want routine predictability of the job (Bohlander & Snell, 2004).
In designing the job of CSR, it becomes quite challenging to formulate job description which less communicate the frequent changes in the work task. Since humanistic approach focuses on performing the tasks through more skills required. For that reason, to perform the specific job, candidates require having personal and technical skills. Organization is bound to pay more for the candidate as the compensation is design as per the personal specification and job-related tasks that need to be performed by the potential candidates. In customer services representatives’ job position, HR manager finds it difficult to enrich the jobs. Other strategies like job rotation etc. are not worth for all candidates since not everyone wants to rotate. It is not necessary that the employees give importance to the psychological states.
Job satisfaction varies from person to person. The job holders hold the perception of the job instead of getting motivated with the actual content of the job. After reviewing the job design approaches, it is suggestible that for customer representative job, ABC Company must develop a non-authorization style of leadership so that employees have enough leverage to perform the tasks by using maximum skills and abilities. The strategy is to provide the best remuneration package. Employees must be paid for every task they performed. The commission based job would help the employees in outperforming their tasks. The more they are earning from their jobs, the more they feel motivated and retained.
Performance Management and Information Attained
The three ways that the information obtained from a job analysis to measure the performance of Customer Service Representatives are as follows: quantity, quality and cost effectiveness. To measure the performance of customer service representatives, it is eminent to analyze standards, work requirements, determining customers’ needs and setting goals. All these elements are also present in the job analysis. Quantity: through this indicator, the number of customers assisted or unit sold can be measured. Quality: through this performance indicator, the quality is measured by the successful completion of the tasks. Cost effectiveness: The task is performed cost effectively only if the employee has some control over the work performed. The performance can be measured through the percentage of calls. Those CSRs who manage the highest calls will be provided with monetary and non-monetary rewards.
References
Bohlander & Snell. (2004). Job Analysis, Employee Involvement and Flexible Work Schedules 13. Edition. In Bohlander&Snell, Managing Human Resources. Mason, Ohio: Thomson, South-Western. (p. 94)
DeCenzo,D. & Robbins,S. (2005). Fundamentals of Human Resources Management 8th Edition, Chapter5 Human Resources Planning and Job Analysis. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Nicole, E. (2013). How to Solve 10 Common Customer Service Challenges.
Steward, G. & Brown, K. (2011). Human Resources Management, Linking Strategy to Practice. In G. &. Steward, 2.Edition, Chapter4. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (pp. 133,134)
