A thorough understanding of a job is required to design appropriate selection, training and development systems.

All areas of human resources, from selection through to performance management are dependent on the quality of the job analysis.

Job analysis is an unbiased and thorough process that identifies the tasks, responsibilities and requirements of a job and their relative importance.

This information results in a job description or position specification, which forms the basis of HR functions, such as:

• Recruitment and selection: job duties, responsibilities, reporting relationships, skill level, education requirements, work environment (e.g. hazards, physical effort), interview questions, assessment tests, reference checking questions, orientation materials.
• Compensation: remuneration, reward, recognition.
• Training: determine training needs, develop training content, evaluation of training effectiveness.
• Performance review: creation of key performance indicators, performance evaluation criteria, performance expectations and benchmarks, performance management, coaching, performance appraisal.
• HR strategy: career progression, organisational structure, reporting lines, restructure.

A thorough job analysis should adopt a multi-method, multi-source triangulation approach. This requires looking at the job from various angles using multiple tools, techniques and sources of information.

The outcome is a job description of position specification, which details:

• Job duties and tasks
• Responsibilities
• Equipment and tools
• Relationships
• Work environment
• Knowledge, skills, abilities and personality characteristics