Job Analysis Definition

Developing an organizational structure, results in jobs which have to be staffed. Job analysis is the procedure through which you determine the duties and nature of the jobs and the kinds of people (in terms of skills and experience) who should be hired for them.’ It provides you with data on job requirements, which are then used for developing job descriptions (what the job entails) and job specifications (what kind of people to hire for the job). Some of the definitions of job analysis ate given as follows, to understand the meaning of the term more clearly:

According to Michael L. Jucius, “Job analysis refers to the process of studying the operations, duties and organizational aspects of jobs in order to derive specifications or as they called by some, job descriptions.”

According to DeCenzo and P. Robbins, “A job analysis is a systematic exploration of the activities within a job. It is a basic technical procedure, one that is used to define the duties, responsibilities, and accountabilities of a job.”

 According to Herbert G Herman “A job is a collection of tasks that can be performed by a single employee to contribute to the production of some product or service provided by the organization. Each job has certain ability requirements (as well as certain rewards) associated with it. Job analysis process used to identify these requirements.”

Flippo has offered a more comprehensive definition of job analysis as, “Job analysis is the process of studying and collecting information relating to the operations and responsibilities of a specific job. The immediate products of the analysis are job descriptions and job specifications” Thus, job analysis involves the process of identifying the nature of a job (job description) and the qualities of the likely job holder (job specification).