Week 2 - Job Analysis and Performance Flashcards
(30 cards)
What is job analysis?
Tasks identified and broken down according to operational areas.
Analyses value of job to organisation.
Outcomes - description, minimum skills, pay
Uses - selection, compensation, training, job families, job design, motivation, legal compliance, performance.
Job analysis approaches
Task-oriented - what the job tasks are
Worker-oriented - attributes of the worker
KSAOs
Characteristics required for job.
Knowledge - job information, teachable.
Skills - proficiencies to perform tasks using tools.
Abilities - enduring and innate
Other attributes - personal or dispositional qualities
KSAO identification
Interview subject matter experts (incumbent, supervisor, job analysts)
Criteria - is it necessary, is it practical to expect, what if it’s missing, can it distinguish superior or average
Content analysis
Documentation such as training manuals, performance reviews, job descriptions
Strengths - quick access, not intrusive, good starting point
Weaknesses - out of date, obsolete info
Interview
Employee describes job
Strengths - flexible, quick and direct
Weaknesses - time cost, memory based, distorted info
Critical incident technique
Rates behaviours in job-specific ‘critical’ situations
Strengths - focuses on key aspects, can evaluate performance, guides development
Weaknesses - time/money cost, entirely dependent on SME info, need to verify examples
Work observation
Quant. and qual. observation of employee doing work
Strengths - rich information, reduced distortion
Weaknesses - intrusive, time-consuming, Hawthorne effect, difficult for mental jobs
Work diaries
Incumbent notes tasks throughout day
Strengths - simple, lots of info
Weaknesses - intrusive, time-intensive, motivation-dependent, distorted info, memory limited
Position analysis questionnaire
Structured interview with many job characteristics
Strengths - lots of quant. data
Weaknesses - long, could be done more directly
What is job performance?
Helping an organisation reach goals, not outcome but action.
Types - task performance (core), contextual performance (OCBs, CWBs, adaptive performance)
Counterproductive work behaviours
Interpersonal deviance (harassment, gossip), organisational deviance (property, production)
Types of performance (Griffin Model)
Proficiency (completing tasks), adaptivity (adaptive performance), proactivity (proactive behaviour)
Determinants of job performance (Campbell)
Three direct determinants (declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge/skills, motivation)
DK x PKS x M influence:
- job task proficiency, personal discipline, effort (common)
- facilitating team performance, non-job task proficiency, communication, leadership, management
Predictors of performance (Blumberg & Pringle)
Capacity, willingness, opportunity (relative importance dependent on performance criterion)
Measuring performance - the Criterion
Standard against which job performance is assessed
Criterion problem - performance cannot be measured perfectly (must be inferred from outcomes or observations)
Criterion relevance, deficiency and contamination
Relevance - if measure captures ‘ideal’
Deficiency - parts of ‘ideal’ missed
Contamination - information captured outside of ‘ideal’
Increasing criterion relevance
Simple jobs (few relevant criteria), complex jobs (multiple relevant criteria)
Using a model like Campbell’s protects against deficiency
Contamination often occurs when only focusing on output
Improving job performance
Development (training, feedback)
Individual differences (selection, role allocation)
Motivation (incentives, encouragement)
Environment - (communication, role clarity)
Performance appraisal
Independent - metrics, personnel data, competency tests, work samples
Subjective - ratings, 360 feedback
Rating errors and biases
Distribution - leniency, severity, central tendency
Interpretation - halo, FAE, context
Memory
Policy variance
Calculation error - converting many sources into overall score
Politics of ratings
Negativity - bad behaviour stands out
How to avoid - train raters, use multiple sources
Employee comparisons
Purpose - face valid, reflects relative contribution, minimise distribution bias
Can be paired comparisons or forced distribution
Limitations - unidimensional, prone to bias (memory, context), no detailed feedback
Graphic rating scales
Purpose - multiple criteria using separate scale for each aspect, simple and easy to use
Limitations - difficult to interpret numbers, prone to bias (distribution), requires memory
Behaviourally Anchored Rating Scales (BARS)
Purpose - ratings for multiple performance behaviours, anchors make ratings concrete
Creating BARS - use job analysis and SMEs to generate examples of performance
Benefits - less attribution, distribution bias (behaviour focus, not outcomes, if done regularly then less memory bias, good for feedback
Limitations - hard for mental jobs, not completely consistent with independent measures
