Resource Planning, Job Design and Recruitment Job analysis

Job analysis is defined as the process of identifying and determining in complete detail the specific job requirements and duties and the proportional importance of the duties to the job (Sanchez & Levine, 2012). Job analysis is conducted on the job and not the person. The data collected from a job analysis describes or specifies the job, not the person to fill the position. Some of the approaches for conducting a job analysis are interviews, questionnaires, observations, and specialized analysis methods. Depending on the organization and situation, a combination of the methods can be used to conduct the job analysis.

Using the interview method to gather information would require the HR manager to visit the job site and talk with some of the employees doing each job. The manager would use a standardized form to record the information collected. For the HR manager to get a complete understanding of the job, it is vital to interview the employee and employee's supervisor. This would ensure that the information collected is not one sided, and the job analysis would not be compromised in any way. For the position of customer service representatives, the manager would have to conduct some group interviews involving the supervisors and experienced job incumbents. Using group interviews would reduce the amount of time taken to carry out the interviews and would offer the HR manager some insights regarding the working relationship. Since the company has not managed to attract applicants for the position, interviewing some experienced job incumbents would allow the manager to uncover the reason for not attracting job applicants or finding the right candidate for the position. The cons of using the interview method are that it is time-consuming especially if the manager has to talk with individual employees. The pros for using interviews is that it is best suited for particular difficult to define jobs.

When gathering data on jobs, the questionnaire is a method that is widely used. A survey is developed and it is issued to the employees and managers to complete. The questionnaire offers the employees and managers a simpler method for providing feedback regarding a particular position (Doverspike & Arthur Jr., 2012), which relatively takes a short time. The answers provided in a questionnaire are mostly checklists, which ensures the employees would select the most appropriate answer to the questions. However, some of the questions might require the employees to offer more details. Questionnaires are limited in that they assume the employees can accurately communicate and analyze information regarding their jobs. Questionnaires allow for the collection of information regarding various jobs inexpensively and within a short period.

The observation method requires the manager to observe the individuals performing the job and take notes describing the duties and tasks been performed. Observation can be either based on intermittent sampling or continuous. The manager using the observation method would be limited because the customer representative position does not have easily observable duties. Using observation, the manager would have to observe other employees perform their duties and determine the requirements for the customer service representative. Work sampling is an observation method that does not require attention to each detail throughout the work cycle.

The best approach for analyzing the Customer Service Representative position would be the interview method. Using this method, the manager would manage to talk to some of the supervisors and other employees in order to determine why the company has not managed to fill the position. The requirements for the position would also be easily identified and described in detail by the supervisors. The interview sessions would allow the manager to seek clarification on some of the answers provided.

Job design

Job design is carried out after job analysis. According to Holman et al. (2012) job design aims at organizing and outlining tasks, responsibilities, and duties into one work unit in order to achieve specific objectives. The methods and relationships essential for succeeding in a certain job are outlined by job design. The two approaches vital for the Customer Service Representative Position are job enlargement and job enrichment. Jon enlargement involves the combining of additional task activities into a job through expansion thus making it larger in scope. The increasing of tasks is referred to as horizontal loading, which focuses on enlarging a job by increasing responsibilities and tasks. Job enlargement makes a position more fulfilling and interesting by expanding or increasing the number of tasks the employee has to complete. The duties added are at the same level...

Small companies that do not have many opportunities for promotions mostly adopt job enlargement. The companies will make use of job enlargement to motivate the employees.
Specialization would be contradicted, and division of labor would be affected by job enlargement. All work should be divided into small units with each unit being done repetitively by a single employee. The challenge of job enlargement is that there will be no specialization because the employees would be performing multiple duties. The lack of specialization might be discouraging to some employees who prefer to work or perform specific duties related to their career. The continuous increment of responsibilities and duties can result to an unmanageable workload. The employee would have too many duties to perform and too little time to perform all the duties. This would result in failure and might be demotivating to the employee. A good example for job enlargement is a university Professor being assigned the task of looking after the activities of NSS in addition to him/her teaching his/her University Department. The advantages of job enlargement are it improves the earning capacity of the employee because the person would learn a variety of new activities, and when they apply for jobs in other companies, they have the bargaining power for a higher salary. The company benefits by increasing and improving the employee skills. Having a single employee perform multiple activities, the company can reduce its workforce and in turn reduce its wage bill. Employee workload is increased, and since not all companies would provide incentives or salary increases, the employee might become demotivated. Employee frustration would be increased especially if there will not be a salary increase.

Job enrichment is a concept that redesigns jobs to make them more challenging and reduce repetitive work (Grant, Fried, & Juillerat, 2011). Job enlargement is considered a vertical restructuring model. This concept increases an employee's authority, control, and autonomy regarding the way they accomplish their job. The main principle of job enrichment is to expand the scope of work with more variety of tasks that are mostly vertical in nature. When this approach is applied within an organization, the employee's responsibility would be increased within the organization. Some of the challenges that would be faced with trying to enrich a job are implementing participative management, and redistributing power and authority. Implementing participative management allows the team members to take part in the decision making and be involved in strategic planning. This is a nice way to motivate employees, but it can lead to discrimination of ideas. Some employees might feel their ideas or inputs are not valued. It is also challenging to have most of the team members participating within strategy meetings because it can result in a meeting taking longer than expected. Redistributing power and authority grant employees the capability to make job-related decisions. This can be referred to as delegation of duties and authority. While it might be a good motivator, it can lead to wrong decision-making on the part of the employee. Without proper training, an employee can make a wrong decision based on their work that can lead to huge losses for the company.

Strategies to attract and select applicants

For the company to attract and select the best candidates for the position, the HR manager should implement the Fleishman Job Analysis Survey (F-JAS). This survey would employ a taxonomy of abilities with 52 physical, cognitive, sensory, and psychomotor abilities that explain and define the functioning level condition for a job. The F-JAS system would link the tasks with the required individual characteristics, and survey the required capabilities for performing the tasks efficiently. Using this method, the HR manager would be able to determine the requirements for the position and who would be the best applicant for the position. Discovering the attributes and capabilities required for the position would assist the company to narrow down the potential candidates and attract only those they feel match the required skills. There are other tests that the company can employ in order to attract the right candidate for the position. These are the Task-Based Assessment and the KSA-Based Assessments. The Task-Based Assessments would administer the situation judgment test, physical ability test, assessment center, and work sample test to the potential candidate, which would assist the company in selecting the candidate for the position. The KSA-Based Assessments will administer the job knowledge tests, cognitive ability test, integrity test, biographical data, personality test, structured interviews,…