Seven Steps to a Solid Job Task Analysis

Although Job Task Analysis (JTA) was created to help management make hiring, promotion, wage, and salary decisions, it serves a much bigger purpose. JTA is a data-driven approach that is designed to identify the work requirements of specific jobs by providing a detailed overview of the knowledge, tasks and responsibilities that must be performed by workers in a given occupational area to successfully perform the job. Before going any further, an important point to remember when conducting a JTA is that it’s an evaluation of the job, not the person doing the job.

Important thoughts, wouldn’t you agree? In this article, we will address those and more, including the significance of JTAs and the steps to conducting an accurate one.

Anyone – regardless of industry – who is in the process of updating outdated job descriptions, identifying skill gaps, or developing any type of new training plan needs to know how to conduct an accurate JTA. This is because they serve as the foundation of the above referenced materials. Inaccurate or poor quality JTAs have a catastrophic and cascading effect. This ultimately produces poor quality job descriptions and training. And no one wants that!

JTA is an underutilized approach when it comes to effectively managing your talent. Whether it’s developing accurate job descriptions, identifying training needs, or conducting strategic workforce planning, it represents the basis of a solid talent management strategy. It’s critical to have accurate job task analyses – they help you understand what tasks your employees need to complete in order to get the job done!

How to do it well.

Conducting job task analyses is also a skill in and of itself, which has been gaining newfound attention in these times of war (for talent). So where do you start? What information do you need? Determining which tasks employees perform is not easy. As depicted below, it takes many different methods and tools to gather all the relevant data.

According to a 2014 SHRM survey, the leading methods to conduct a job task analysis were

interview (50 percent), observation (33 percent) and structured questionnaire (27 percent).

1) Identify Subject Matter Experts (SME)

This is your “go to” employee, the person who is the most knowledgeable in the role. Collecting information directly from the most qualified incumbents will produce the most effective results. Here are some tips to Identify a SME:

• Look for SMEs who have a documented history of working in the area for which they are an expert.
• Make sure SMEs have actually done the work. They need to understand your challenges and the details surrounding those challenges. They’ve analyzed requirements, measured data, documented business processes, managed critical projects, etc.
• SMEs need to understand industry best practices and can communicate those insights to help you improve your business model.

3) Define tasks and responsibilities

A responsibility is a broad category that will be broken down into more specific tasks. Responsibility statements are written using an “ing” verb applied to a system or large sub-system. In general, broad action verbs such as “maintaining”, “servicing”, “using”, “performing”, or “interpreting” are appropriate for responsibility statements. If a responsibility has a large number of tasks (20 or more) and is too broad, break the single responsibility into two or more responsibilities, and be sure to note which task goes with each new responsibility.

A task is a unit of work which has a definite beginning and ending point and results in the completion of a product or process. Task statements are meant to be very clear and concise. Task statements consist of:

• Action verb (present tense; identifies what is being done)
• Words such as: “update,” “inspect,” “verify,” “diagnose,” “repair,” etc.
• Object (element that is acted upon) and/or
• Qualifier (used to make tasks more specific)
• Interview accident victim

Examples:

Responsibility: Fulfilling customer orders

• Print out order information for label
• Package orders for shipment

Responsibility: Conducting safety investigations

• Interview accident victim
• Complete incident report

5) Verify Job Responsibilities and Tasks Performed

Confirming and refining the JTA with SMEs and supervisors is the next step in the process.

As you organize your notes and information, you may find it necessary to interview more than one person – for accuracy purposes – because people may perform tasks differently. This may produce slightly different JTAs.

If you find discrepancies, record both and verify data later with supervisors. For best results, interview 2-3 people, then ask both a supervisor and someone in the position to review the material. This step also helps with successful adoption of new processes, because studies show that when people offer their input, they feel more ownership in the process and acclimate better to impending changes.

7) Finalize JTA

A comprehensive JTA is one major element of a more comprehensive knowledge management strategy that helps both your employees and your organization reach their full potentials … think of it as your road map to determining:

• training needs
• skills gaps
• accurate job descriptions
• appropriate employee hiring

You’ll know you’ve conducted a successful job task analysis if the following components have been captured:

• A comprehensive list of main job responsibilities
• A list of tasks associated with each responsibility written in a concise format and approved by multiple SMEs
• List of competencies needed to perform the job