
Meaning of Job Analysis
Job analysis is a procedure that is part of the administrative tasks of a company and consists of determining the responsibilities and obligations of job positions.
From this analysis, it is possible to decide what types of people should be hired to fill the positions according to their capacity and experience. The analysis of jobs, in short, is nothing more than the collection, organization and evaluation of information regarding a job.
The foundation of a company or organization, the creation of new job positions, the modification of a structure and the updating of remunerations are situations that lead to the development of job analysis.
On other occasions, the need to carry out a job analysis arises from statements by the workers themselves, when they are not clear on what specific tasks correspond to them or when conflicts of competence and authority arise between employees.
By conducting an accurate job analysis, management is able to improve its human resource management by being able to hire or appoint the appropriate workers for each job and set the compensation they deserve.
Among the data to be collected during job analysis are job activities and processes; the responsibilities; physical actions; the communication; the machines and tools used; the necessary knowledge; the rules; and the context.
The administrator of the job analysis program is in charge of designing the models to collect the data, verify the procedure and ensure compliance with the execution schedule. But this process cannot be carried out without the help of certain individuals with very specific knowledge, who are not part of the human resources staff, but who deeply understand the skills necessary to put into practice the tasks carried out in the company..
In a company dedicated to software development, for example, to define the necessary programmer profiles, it is ideal to consult with someone who has very advanced knowledge in this field, especially if they are part of the staff, since in that case they can provide relevant opinions to the personal level of the work groups, which also plays an important role when defining the profiles.
Along with the advances that have occurred and continue to take place at the technological level, the expected skills of each worker within a given industry have changed in recent decades. On the one hand, it is worth mentioning that until the mid-1990s, in certain areas it was very common for the same person to carry out a poorly defined series of tasks, for which many different skills were necessary.
This was true, for example, in the world of computer animation and continues to occur in the video game industry, although to a lesser extent than a few years ago. The lack of experience of the human being in fields of this nature forced the pioneers to take their first steps without knowing for sure in which direction they were moving. And it was thanks to the unconditional commitment of a few, who were willing to sacrifice nights of sleep and weekends of rest, that little by little the manuals were drafted on which the current workers are based.
When the needs of a market are not known, accurate job analysis is impossible, and lack of clarity in a company’s vision can be fatal. Only in some exceptional cases, the intuition and determination of the employees manage to compensate for the failures of an inadequate selection process.