Define job analysis, explain its importance in determining job performance

Define job analysis, explain its importance in determining job performance, and list the basic steps involved in job analysis.

Job analysis is a process used to identify task behaviors. It helps in deciding the most important parameters for measuring employee performance (Rogelberg, 2002). Although there are many different ways to conduct a job analysis, most boil down to three steps. First, a list of the activities involved in a job is generated. This list generally results from data from several sources, including observations, surveys, and interviews of employees. Second, each activity on this list is rated by “subject matter experts,” according to things like the importance and frequency of the activity.

Subject matter experts generally have experience performing the job or managing the job and therefore are in a position to judge the importance of specific activities to the organization (Rogelberg, 2002). Third, the activities that are rated highly in terms of their importance and frequency are retained and used to define task performance. Those retained behaviors then find their way into training programs as learning objectives and into performance evaluation systems as measures to evaluate task performance.