U4D1-24 - Compare and Contrast the Major Job Classifcation Methodologies...see all details attached.

CHAPTER 5 - Defining and Organizing Work

The ways in which work is defined and organized tend to separate those responsible for public HRM into two camps—HR specialists and everybody else. In that respect, these functions generate responses like those that accompany topics such as rotating your car’s tires or flossing your teeth. Experts consider them essential, but many of us do not spend enough time on them, and certainly do not want to spend more time talking about them.

For HR specialists, writing a job description—a position’s duties and the minimum qualifications required to perform them—is the key to position management. And position management (classifying positions by job type and level of responsibility, and limiting total agency payroll to sum of the salaries authorized for all classified positions) is the cornerstone of personnel management from which all other activities derive. Others do not see it that way. Legislators and elected officials may concede that budget management and program evaluation are legislative oversight tools designed to limit the number of employees and the operating budget of agencies within budget guidelines, but the actual process of writing job descriptions and classifying positions is an administrative detail they are not concerned with. Managers and supervisors tend to consider job descriptions and position management undesirable and unnecessary restrictions on their ability to manage human resources flexibly and autonomously. Understandably, their main objective is to be able to freely shift employees from one job to another as circumstances dictate, without reference to formal job descriptions. And position management puts an additional type of restriction on a manager’s budget autonomy—and therefore on their ability to meet program goals flexibly by preventing them from hiring additional employees or paying them more, even if they have money in their budget to cover these expenses.

Therefore, this chapter starts with that dilemma. How do we reconcile these competing perspectives on job analysis and classification within the context of contemporary public HRM? As indicated in Chapter 3 , the objectives of public HRM have changed over time with the competition among traditional and alternative systems and values. Moreover, the focus of job analysis and classification is shifting from management of positions to management of work or of careers. This chapter will explore how these changes affect the way public agencies define work today.

By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:

1. Tell why different groups responsible for public agency HRM have different views of job analysis; and relate the historical development of the field to the conflict and interaction among underlying values and objectives: patronage jobs for elected officials, merit systems for civil service reformers, position management for HR directors and specialists, work management for managers and supervisors, and career management for employees and applicants.

2. Summarize why traditional job descriptions (those oriented toward position management) may not be suitable for supporting public personnel management as its focus has changed to work management and employee management.

3. Analyze work using a performance-oriented description, which incorporates work management and career management into the traditional job description.

4. Understand why job descriptions are important for jobs filled through other systems besides civil service, including the alternative mechanisms and flexible employment relationships that characterize nongovernmental personnel systems.

JOB DESCRIPTIONS: DIFFERENT GROUPS HAVE DIFFERENT OBJECTIVES

A job description is a brief statement that describes a job by listing major duties and specifying the minimum qualifications needed to do it. Exactly how job descriptions are prepared and used is a complicated story that has its origins in the creation of civil service systems and merit system principles. Because different groups have been involved, and because these groups have different perspectives, it is not surprising that attitudes toward job descriptions differ. Fundamentally, each of the important groups involved in HRM policy or implementation has a different perspective on job descriptions and position management based on the historical evolution of the field and their respective roles in it.

•Elected and appointed officials have three contradictory attitudes toward job descriptions. If they are in charge of an agency, they may consider job descriptions and position management an intrusion on patronage (their ability to hire who they want for policy making or other positions where personal or political loyalty are the most important selection criteria). Nowhere was this view of job descriptions more apparent than in the summer of 2008 when political appointees in the U.S. Department of Justice were caught dismissing job applicants for their political affiliation when the descriptions of the jobs they were applying for clearly stated that they were nonpolitical. 1 If they are more interested in oversight, they may consider position management essential to control the size and direction of agency staff as an important aspect of budget management and program evaluation. Finally, most elected officials may consider job descriptions and classification systems to be simply irrelevant unless their primary focus is budget cutting.

•Merit system reformers consider analyzing and classifying positions as the key to a successful transition from the evils of the spoils system to the greater effectiveness and equity of a civil service system as the basis for responsive and professional public administration.

•Public HRM specialists consider job descriptions and classification systems as the key to effective position management, which includes compliance with legislatively mandated controls over the number of positions and salary levels as part of the total budget

•management process. In addition, they are the key to other functions like recruitment, selection, pay equity, and performance evaluation.

•Managers and supervisors have an ambivalent viewpoint on job descriptions. They may consider them a necessary first step to recruitment, performance evaluation, setting equitable pay, or disciplinary action. At other times, they may be an unwelcome intrusion on work management—their ability to creatively and flexibly use human resources to achieve program objectives.

•Employees may view job descriptions ambivalently. A current and accurate position description (PD) may clarify what they need to do to succeed on their job. On the other hand, criteria established in a job description (like specific types of experience or education) may seem unfair and artificial barriers to career management—personal mobility and advancement based on competencies. In some cases, job descriptions are also used as the basis for formal complaints in those instances where employees are asked to perform duties outside of their job descriptions but are not compensated accordingly.

Elected and Appointed Officials Focus on Politically Appointed (Patronage) Positions

Jobs are not defined, analyzed, or classified at all under political patronage systems. Employees simply are awarded a job and the salary that goes with it because they supported a successful candidate for elected office. Indeed, originally the justification for patronage jobs was that “no public job should be so complicated that any citizen could not complete it.” Therefore, many advocates of the spoils system felt that any individual could perform any public job, without the necessity of setting minimum qualifications. Not only were minimum qualifications considered unnecessary, they also tended to interfere with elected officials’ freedom to allocate jobs to their supporters. While some minimally acceptable level of performance might be required to avoid political embarrassment for the elected official, in some cases employees did not even have to show up to get paid. Moreover, today two changes in the nature of work—the proliferation of independent contractors and electronic communication—make political patronage even easier. For example, at the time of this writing, there were sixty one investigations being conducted into contracting associated with waging the war in Iraq. Independent contractors can be hired to temporary or part-time positions not subject to classification; and the reality of remote (“virtual”) offices allow political appointees to work with little direct oversight.

Merit System Reformers Focus on Civil Service Systems

For merit system reformers fighting to increase government effectiveness in the face of patronage politics, job analysis epitomizes the principles of scientific management and budget transparency that enable them to control the spoils system. Founded on the Classification Act of 1923, which formalized job analysis and classification in the federal government, merit system reformers support job analysis because it is the essential first step to ensure that employees are hired and promoted based on ability and performance, and that jobs of equivalent difficulty are paid the same salaries. Without this, it is simply not possible to hire or pay employees to support the values of individual rights or administrative efficiency. Again, anyone who assumes that objective and fair pay systems are inevitable, or that they are easy to achieve, has only to look at the chronic and interrelated economic, political, and social problems that plague governments in developing countries—corruption, incompetence, and “brain drain.”

Operationally, creating a civil service system means identifying how many employees work for each agency by job type, geographic location, and salary. This enables personnel specialists to develop a staffing (manning) table, a roster of all authorized positions in an agency. Hopefully, as personnel actions result in employees being hired, transferred, or discharged, the position management information system will keep this information current. While the need to develop an adequate position management information system may seem self-evident, and the steps involved in doing so may seem childishly simple to complete, the political culture of patronage politics can make it difficult to achieve this basic administrative reform. The important thing to realize here is that merit systems do not simply arise out of general societal pressures for modernization. Instead, they develop because reformers first win political approval for specific administrative reforms designed to make it more difficult for patronage systems to operate openly or secretly. Once these reforms are enacted as law, they must still become routinized administrative procedures.2 Under patronage systems, it is actually quite difficult to determine how many employees actually work for an agency because there are three possible answers, all different: (1) all persons on the payroll (whether or not they are expected to show up for work), (2) all persons who actually show up for work on a regular basis, and (3) the authorized positions in an agency (whether or not they are filled and whether or not those individuals actually show up for work).

Each of these answers is the result of different pressures on patronage systems. The first option, a payroll “padded” with persons who get paid but never show up for work, results from allowing elected officials to place nonemployees on the public payroll as a reward for political or personal loyalty (and perhaps to pocket a percentage of salary as a “kickback” from the nonworking “employee”). The second option, a valid payroll matching the number of actual employees, is the objective of civil service reformers. The third option, a payroll inflated by showing as filled positions those that are actually vacant, allows senior managers to pocket the salaries of “ghost” employees as a reward for their own political loyalty. It is widely accepted that the first and third options are corrupt and wasteful. But given that the primary function of public employment under a patronage system is to buy political support, this waste and corruption are irrelevant, or at least less important than maintaining a leader or party in power. This tension between patronage and merit systems is by no means limited to the past or to underdeveloped countries. Occasionally, local governments in the United States will cut civil service positions to save money at the same time they are adding political employees to the payroll. These may be legitimate excepted appointments (outside the merit system), or they may simply be positions created because a powerful elected official wants a friend to have a job and happens to control the budget of the agency in which the new job is to be created.

HR Specialists and Position Management

Once a transition from patronage to civil service has taken place, merit system reformers have sought to restrict patronage by entrusting HR directors and specialists implementing civil service through position management. This means ensuring that public agencies limit pressure by elected officials to create patronage positions by limiting the number of employees an agency can hire and requiring agencies to account for these positions by identifying which ones are filled or vacant, what the salary attached to each position is, and (therefore) what is the total agency payroll. As part of public administration, position management supports rational budgeting by limiting the total amount that can be spent on salaries and benefits. In addition, it fosters rational policy making and implementation by making the staffing of agencies consistent with the intent of the law and the objectives of public programs.

The underlying assumption of position management is that public agencies, left unprotected, will be unable to resist pressure from elected officials to add patronage positions or to fill vacant civil service positions with patronage employees. The way personnel specialists seek to protect the merit system is by working inside the agency to implement legislatively imposed personnel ceilings—These are budget limits on the agency payroll and position management limits on the number and type of personnel they can employ. Frequently, position and budgetary controls are combined through the imposition of average grade-level restrictions, which limit the number of positions that can be created and filled at each level of the agency hierarchy. A low average grade level means that most positions are low-level positions.

Theoretically, at least, these position management techniques are analogous to line-item budgets in that they focus on inputs to the governmental process (number and type of employees). Together, line-item budgeting and position management have historically been successful at forcing compliance and accountability because the first controls the budget and policies of the executive branch, and the second controls the allocation of personnel and money to implement programs in executive agencies.

HR specialists (personnel directors and technicians) have long considered job analysis the heart of personnel management because for them the ability to specify a job’s duties and the minimum qualifications (“quals”) needed to perform them satisfactorily (in terms of the type, level, and length of education and experience) is an essential prerequisite to other personnel functions like recruitment, selection, training, performance evaluation, and workforce planning. They regard setting minimum qualifications as essential to establishing an equitable pay range for the position and encouraging career development by creating career ladders (vertically linked positions within the same occupational field) by which employees could advance to positions of increasing responsibility as they met the minimum quals (minimum qualifications) for the next higher position on the ladder.

So, historically during the period of transition from patronage to merit, and even today among specialists, the ability to conduct a job analysis and write a good job description is considered an essential HRM competency. Two of the authors began their careers as management interns in the federal civil service agency (the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, formerly the U.S. Civil Service Commission). This program involved one to two years of rotational assignments, with the authors assisting such memorable accomplishments as a nationwide computerized testing and score reporting system for all entry-level jobs and drafting what later became the law implementing technical assistance programs among federal, state, and local personnel agencies. Nevertheless, many disgruntled HR specialists had worked their way up “through the ranks” rather than through an internship program that offered what they considered an unfair promotional advantage to recent college graduates who were not nearly as smart as they thought they were. For these specialists, the success of the entire internship boiled down to the answer the graduate of the internship program could give to a single question: “Can you write a good job description?” Other skills and experiences might be useful, but unless an HR trainee had learned this, he or she could not be considered qualified as a technician or a professional in the field.

Managers and Supervisors Focus on Work Management

As might be expected, however, the control over program inputs that is achieved by line-item budgets and position management is less critical for managers and supervisors whose primary objective is managerial effectiveness, not legislative compliance. This is because budgets and personnel ceilings function well to control the size and direction of inputs to an agency; they are quite ineffective at making the agencies more productive, as measured by program outputs. Public managers have policy objectives to accomplish and limited resources with which to do so. For the work to be done with the most efficient use of human resources, the agency must hire the right number of people, with the right qualifications, for the right jobs, in the right locations. It must pay people enough money to be competitive with other employers, but not more. This is true regardless of which type of public personnel system predominates, especially for agencies that focus on mission and consider themselves bound to definite performance standards and clear paths of political accountability. Under these conditions, managers need to be rewarded for flexible and responsible stewardship of personnel and financial resources. As such, they are likely to resent job descriptions and classification systems, commonly viewed as legislative “micromanagement,” because it restricts their flexibility and autonomy. Alternatively, they may be unable or unwilling to function as managers because they have for too long been accustomed to citing legislative controls as the reason for not managing resources creatively or effectively. Overall, some of the primary reasons public managers dislike job descriptions and position classification include the narrow divisions created between positions, the limited ability of descriptions and classifications to adapt to changing technologies, and the associated demand for standardization.3

Employees Focus on Career Management

Employees have a different perspective than either managers or elected and appointed officials. They want to be treated as individuals, through a continual process of supervision, feedback, and reward. They want to know what their job duties are and how performance will be measured. They want to be paid fairly, based on their contributions to productivity and compared with the salaries of other employees. They want their individual skills and abilities to be fully utilized in ways that contribute to a productive agency and to their own personal career development.

Today, the current emphasis on flexible employment relationships makes us forget that civil service systems were originally created to prevent elected and appointed officials from hiring and firing public employees at will. This stability was designed to make government more efficient and to increase public confidence in the quality of public service. Moreover, today, the widely accepted notion that civil service systems provide a safe haven for lazy and incompetent employees makes us forget that civil service systems were originally created to protect employee rights by establishing clear criteria and procedures for selection, reassignment, promotion, or discharge. This is based on the assumption that people work most productively when they have adequate skills, clear objectives, adequate resources and organizational conditions to do their jobs, and clear feedback and consequences. They work not only as individuals but also as members of groups that collectively shape the culture of the agency and the ways in which employees work together to meet objectives.

In summary, these five different perspectives on job analysis frequently come into conflict because they embody different values and objectives about public HRM. Elected and appointed officials emphasize either the internal discretion to make political appointments or the external authority to control agency activities by controlling personnel inputs. Merit system reformers view job analysis as the key to effective and transparent budget management and personnel management. HR directors and specialists have traditionally allied themselves with civil service reformers to emphasize external control over patronage through position management. Managers and supervisors consider job descriptions increasingly irrelevant to flexible use of human resources, and employees are more concerned with how minimum qualifications and classification systems impede their personal career development. Much of the trend toward professional (rather than technical) personnel management is connected to the movement toward seeing HRM in strategic terms and can be seen as the transition of public personnel managers from a policing role (control over employees and managers through position management) to an enabling role (facilitation of employee productivity and satisfaction, or of managerial autonomy and responsibility) through more enlightened job analysis techniques. Moreover, this change in roles affects the way all personnel functions are performed.

JOB ANALYSIS AND JOB DESCRIPTIONS: MOVING TOWARD A BETTER MODEL

So where does all this lead us? It means that any discussion of how to define and organize work depends on the context and the participants. Job descriptions began with civil service reformers and HR directors and specialists. They evolved toward greater emphasis on managerial effectiveness (work management) and employee aspirations (career management). In addition, they now incorporate the flexibility and focus on efficiency appropriate to market-based values and systems.

Traditional Job Analysis is a Tool for Position Management

Job analysis is the process of recording information about each employee’s job. It is done by watching the employee work, talking with the employee about the job, and corroborating this information by checking it with other employees and the supervisor. It results in a product. The product could be a set of job specifications that are general to a set of positions (e.g., Admin Assistant I) and that job descriptions themselves grow out of or it could be the job description itself—a written statement of the employee’s responsibilities, duties, and qualifications. It may also include a qualifications standard (“qual standard”) that specifies the minimum competencies and qualifications (education, experience, or others) an employee needs to perform the position’s duties at a satisfactory level.

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Traditionally, job descriptions have been used as the “building blocks” of position management. By requiring that a legislatively authorized position be identified before an employee could be hired or promoted into it, job descriptions controlled the size of the bureaucracy and its occupational diversity. They have functioned well in this capacity because they specify the job title, occupation classification, level of responsibility, salary, and location of the job in the organizational hierarchy. Similar jobs (positions) can be classified into an occupational series, along with other jobs involving similar job duties. Jobs in different occupations but of comparable difficulty (requiring similar skill, effort, or responsibility, and performed under similar working conditions) can be classified into a common grade level. Each position can be identified by an occupational and grade-level code, much as a point on a graph can be located by measuring its distance from the vertical and horizontal axes.

Because each job (position) can be classified into a common occupational series as one of a number of identical positions in the agency, its grade level served to fix salary and relationship to other positions above and below it in the agency’s bureaucratic hierarchy. This has had the additional benefit of identifying, in a manner similar to military rank, the power of the individual in the organization. To emphasize the power of classification systems, consider that federal government employees in Washington, DC, have long been accustomed to identifying themselves and evaluating others based on classification system shorthand. A federal employee might describe a coworker by saying, “She’s an 11 at Agriculture, a program analyst.” Both of them would immediately understand that the employee in question was a GS-343–11: that is, a classified civil service employee, pay grade 11, in the occupational specialty of program analyst. She would outrank a GS-343–9, but be subordinate to a GS-343–12.

While not all classification systems are as complex as that used by the federal government, all traditional job descriptions contain common elements, as shown in Figure 5-1 : an occupational code and/or title, a pay grade, an organizational locator, a position in the hierarchy, job duties, and required minimum qualifications.

Traditional Job Descriptions Do Not Help Supervisors Manage Work

The traditional job description is designed to limit patronage appointments by classifying positions by job type, skill level, and agency and to promote efficiency and employee rights by ensuring that employees are qualified to perform their jobs and paid equitably based on their qualifications. It minimizes patronage by facilitating external control over patronage hiring. The use of standardized job descriptions for a range of positions, with each one identified by a different position number and organizational location, is useful for reducing paperwork and providing position management (external control over the total number of positions and their salary level).

 

	Job Title: Secretary Position No: 827301-2   Pay Grade: GS-322-4
Responsibilities	Works under the direction of the Supervisor, Operations Support Division
Duties	Performs a variety of clerical functions in support of the Supervisor and the mission of the Division:
	types correspondence and reports
	compiles reports
	maintains inventory of supplies arranges meetings and conferences
	answers the phone
	handles routine correspondence
	performs other duties as assigned
Qualifications	High school degree or equivalent
	Typing speed of 40 wpm
	At least six months experience as a Secretary at grade GS-322-3, or equivalent

FIGURE 5-1 Traditional Job Description

 

However, the characteristics that make the traditional job description effective against patronage also work against its usefulness as a work management tool for managers and supervisors. Conceptually, traditional job descriptions promote an artificially static view of work and organizations. Jobs change over time as an organization’s goals shift; and if the goal of the personnel system is to promote rational management of work or employees, it does not make sense to “freeze” a job or an organization at one point in time. Nor does it make sense to unduly restrict the ability of the organization to move people from one job to another, as work needs change. In addition, with increasing emphasis on working in teams, the whole concept of an individual job may be questioned.

The traditional job description promotes a hierarchical and control-oriented relationship between the organization and its employees that works against employee involvement and “ownership” of the organization or its mission. The job description in Figure 5-1 lists the general duties performed by any number of administrative assistants. Because it applies to a range of positions, it is necessarily vague concerning the nature of the tasks (job elements) involved. The employee may be working in a foundry, a personnel office, or a chemical supply house. In each case, specific duties will differ. The entry “other duties as assigned” leaves the job description open to any additions the supervisor may assign but does not leave room for changes in the work caused by the employee’s particular skills or abilities. Thus, this traditional job description is flexible, but only unilaterally, and in a way that assumes hierarchical and downward control over work performance by the agency.

Traditional job descriptions are ill suited to work management because they assume that work can be divided into individual units called jobs and that these jobs can be differentiated by occupational type and arranged into hierarchies of increasing responsibility. This eventually impedes the rational allocation of employees to work or the flexible assignment of employees to jobs as the mission of the agency changes. As job analysis becomes more detailed, classification and pay systems become more complex to keep pace. After a while, this results in the creation of so many occupational categories and skill levels that people become frozen into a job. In addition, supervisors are frequently impeded from moving employees from one type of work to another, in that their tasks are “frozen” by their original job description.

Traditional job descriptions focus on the type of work to be done, not productivity or performance standards. They do discuss duties, but they do so for purposes of task analysis and job classification, not employee performance. From a manager’s perspective, traditional job descriptions are deficient because they do not spell out the performance expected of the employee. Nor do they specify the linking or enabling relationship among competencies, performance standards, and minimum qualifications that in reality both supervisors and employees need to work productively in an organization.

Employees and supervisors both know that a general statement of job duties must at some point be augmented by more specific information about the conditions under which the job is performed. For example, is the work done individually or in a team setting? That fact, in combination with the skills and motivation of a range of applicants, will make a real difference in how work is performed, and it calls into question the relevance of the concept of individual productivity. Is the filing system a database or a manual system using paper documents? What types of correspondence are considered “routine”? Do all duties occur continuously, or do some require more work at certain times? Are all duties equally important, or are some more important than others? What written guidelines or supervisory instructions are available to aid the employee? What conditions make task performance easier or harder?

Thus, the traditional job description does not contain enough useful information to orient applicants or employees. Therefore, the supervisor must use orientation or an initial on-the-job adjustment period to teach employees how the work they do really fits into the organization’s mission.

More critically, there are no standards for minimally acceptable employee performance of job duties. This omission causes basic problems for the supervisor, who is the person responsible for arranging the conditions of work to make the employee productive. How can this be done if the quantity, quality, or timeliness of service required is not specified? Moreover, it is hard to establish or evaluate performance standards unless these take into account fluctuating conditions. For example, it is easier for a salesperson to increase sales 10 percent annually in an industry growing by 20 percent annually than to achieve the same rate of increase in a declining market.

Moreover, traditional job descriptions specify a general set of minimum qualifications for each position. If jobs have been classified according to the type of skill required, these minimum qualifications may also be based on the competencies needed to perform duties. In general, however, traditional methods blur the following logical sequence of relationships among tasks, standards, competencies, and minimum qualifications:

1. Each task must be performed at a certain minimum standard for the organization to function well.

2. Certain competencies are required to perform each task up to standard.

3. Certain minimum qualifications ensure that the employee will have the requisite competencies.

Executives are handicapped because such traditional job descriptions describe only the personnel inputs into a job and not the resultant outputs in terms of organizational productivity. That is, they do not specify how many employees would be needed to produce outputs at a given level of quantity, quality, or timeliness. Because traditional job descriptions do not lend themselves to output analysis, they are not as useful a part of the human resource planning, management, or evaluation process.

Managers are responsible for carrying out most HR functions, even in traditional organizations. They, not the personnel director or personnel specialists, are the ones responsible for interviewing applicants, deciding whom to hire, orienting new employees, giving them feedback on performance, and evaluating their performance formally so as to provide either discipline or positive reinforcement depending on the outcomes.

Managers are handicapped because they cannot readily use such job descriptions for recruitment, orientation, goal setting, or performance evaluation. If new employees are recruited based on the brief description of duties and qualifications given in the traditional job description, extensive interviewing by managers may be needed to select the applicants most qualified for a particular job. Orientation will require clarification of the job description to fit the particular organizational context, but this may be incomplete because of other demands on the manager’s time. If the organization uses management by objectives (MBO) goal setting and evaluation procedures, these will be unrelated to the job descriptions used only by the personnel department for position management and recruitment. For these purposes, individual jobs should each have a separate job description, in recognition of the variability of tasks, conditions, standards, and competencies they require. They should help the manager and the employee by serving as links among personnel functions such as selection, orientation, training, and performance appraisal. These two problems—the lack of evident relationship among tasks, standards, competencies, and qualifications, and the lack of clear information about the nature of the job—reduce the usefulness of job descriptions for executives, managers, and employees.

Traditional Job Descriptions Do Not Help Employees Manage their Careers

Because traditional job descriptions give only a brief outline of duties, employees must wait to find out about working conditions and performance standards until after they have been hired. Yet this may be too late; unclear or inequitable psychological contracts are a cause of much unrest between employees and organizations. Evaluating employees without giving them clear performance standards is a sure way to increase anxiety and frustration. Traditional job descriptions generally do not help employees answer the most important questions they have about their jobs. Such questions include:

•Which job duties are most important, and why?

•What makes the job easy or hard to accomplish?

•What competencies (skills, knowledge, and abilities); are needed for the job, and why?

•What performance standards will be applied to judge their work? How will their job performance be measured and evaluated?

•What performance standards will they need to meet to keep their jobs?

•How will this job prepare them for other progressively more responsible positions?

Moreover, employees cannot use traditional job descriptions for career development because they do not specify how increases in minimum qualifications are related to increases in skills required for satisfactory task performance. It is easiest for employees to accept the qualifications for a position and to strive to meet them through upward mobility programs if these linkages are more apparent.

Traditional Job Descriptions Limit and Stereotype the HRM Profession

Personnel managers, and the HRM function itself, are most seriously affected by traditional job descriptions' focus on position management rather than on the primary concerns of managers or employees. Because traditional job descriptions are unsuitable to work management, managers and employees consider them a waste of time. Inevitably, job descriptions tend to be regarded in the same light as inventories of office equipment or the updating of workplace safety regulations—something that must be done yet does not add value or help the bottom line. Therefore, if personnel managers consider job descriptions to be one of the most important personnel tools, and if managers and employees know from their own experience that job descriptions are irrelevant to their needs, then the impression may be created that other personnel activities are equally unimportant. This logic is frequently used to belittle performance evaluation, job analysis, training needs, surveys, and other items from the personnel manager's stock in trade.

Consequently, the traditional job description's focus on position management makes it more difficult for contemporary HR managers to effectively establish their own professional credentials. The traditional job description has been largely responsible for the traditional view of personnel management as a series of low-level operational techniques used mainly for external control or system maintenance purposes. Position management and legislative compliance are historically respected roles for public personnel managers, but they are less important today, in a world of strategic planning, than many other objectives and values, including management efficiency and effectiveness, or employee rights.

How to Improve Traditional Job Descriptions

Job descriptions continue to be useful under a range of personnel systems, but their reputation has been tarnished. This is because, in their present form, they are more effective at position management than management of work or employees. What changes would make them more relevant to managers' and employees' needs?

Job descriptions would be more useful if they clarified the organization's expectations of employees and the links among tasks, standards, competencies, and minimum qualifications. These improved job descriptions would contain the following information:

1. Tasks. What work duties are important to the job?

2. Conditions. What things make the job easy (such as close supervision or written guidelines explaining how to do the work); or hard (such as angry clients or difficult physical conditions);?

3. Standards. What objective performance levels (related to organizational objectives); can reasonably be set for each task, measured in terms of objectives such as quantity, quality, or timeliness of service?

4. Competencies. What knowledge, skills, and abilities are required to perform each task at the minimum standard under the above conditions?

5. Qualifications. What education, experience, and other qualifications are needed to ensure that employees have the necessary competencies?

These changes are all related because they clarify the enabling relationship among tasks, conditions, standards, competencies, and qualifications. In other words, they specify the qualifications needed to demonstrate that an employee has the competencies required to perform essential job functions at acceptable performance standards under a given set of conditions. Taken together, these refinements emphasize the relationship of jobs to management of work and employees, rather than of positions. They do so by focusing on outputs (what is actually produced by a job); rather than inputs (which positions are allocated to the agency);.

Two examples of performance-oriented job descriptions are shown in Figures 5-2 and 5-3 . These examples show why performance-oriented job descriptionsare superior for management of work and employees. They provide clearer organizational expectations to employees. They encourage supervisors and employees to recognize that both standards and competencies can be contingent upon conditions. For example, an administrative support specialist can type neater copy more quickly with a word processor than with a manual typewriter, and the skills required are different. In the second example, an increase in each probation officer's caseload from 60 to 100 clients would inevitably affect the quantity, quality, or timeliness of visits with probationers. A probation officer preparing pre-sentence investigation reports for a new judge might be expected to have a lower level of accepted recommendations.

 

Adiministrative Assistant/Receptionist Operations Support Division Position No.: 827301-2 Pay Grade: GS-322-4
TASKS	CONDITIONS	STANDARDS
Type letters	Use PC, MS Office Suite, and agency style manual	Letter completed in 2 hours, error-free
Greet visitors	Use appointment log provided by supervisor about waiting, provided supervisor is on time	No complaints from scheduled visitors
Maintain files	Use Access database management software and instructions provided by supervisor	Update files weekly, with accuracy and completeness
REQUIRED COMPETENCIES
Able to type 40 wpm
Courtesy
Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Access);
MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS
High school degree or equivalent
Two years word processing, especially MS Word
One year database management, especially MS Excel

FIGURE 5-2 Performance-Oriented Job Descriptions

 

Thus, job descriptions can do more than just establish a link between tasks, conditions, and standards, which is useful to employees and supervisors. This link is the logical connection between duties and qualifications required for content validation of qualifications standards under affirmative action programs or civil service systems, and for employee productivity under personal service contracts and other alternative/flexible employment relationships.

THE ROLE OF JOB DESCRIPTIONS IN ALTERNATE PUBLIC PERSONNEL SYSTEMS

All personnel systems are responsible for accomplishing common functions (PADS);. Because work must be defined before employees or independent contractors can be selected, job descriptions are important under affirmative action, collective bargaining, and alternative mechanisms and flexible employment relationships.

 

Juvenile Probation Officer State Department of Corrections
TASKS	CONDITIONS	STANDARDS
Meet clients to record their behavior	Caseload of not more than 60; supervisor will help with hard cases; use departmental rules and regulations	See each probationer weekly; keep accurate and complete records per DOC rules and regulations
Report criminal activity to supervisor
Prepare pre-sentence investigation reports	Average of five per week; supervisor will review cases per court instructions;	Reports complete and accurate per judge; judge will accept recommendation in 75 percent of cases
REQUIRED COMPETENCIES
Knowledge of the factors contributing to criminal behavior
Ability to counsel probationers
Ability to write clear and concise probation reports
Knowledge of different judges' sentencing preferences for particular types of offenders and offenses
Knowledge of law and DOC regulations concerning pre-sentencing investigations and probation
MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS
High school degree or equivalent plus four years of experience working with juvenile offenders, or a BS degree in criminal justice, psychology, or counseling
Possess a valid driver's license

FIGURE 5-3 Performance-Oriented Job Descriptions

Affirmative Action

By specifying the minimum qualifications for a position and by logically relating minimum quals to job tasks, job descriptions are the most critical element of equitable personnel practice. That is, they act affirmatively to ensure that applicants and employees are not discriminated against based on nonmerit factors. Moreover, they reduce the impact of favoritism by requiring that vacancies be identified and posted, that all qualified applicants have the opportunity to apply, and that applicants not hired be informed as to the reason for their nonselection. Of course, there are widespread abuses in recruitment and selection procedures, and the folklore of public personnel management is filled with fables confirming every suspicion: highly qualified white male applicants who were not hired because they were the “wrong gender” or the “wrong color” and highly qualified minority or female applicants who were included in the interview pool only to demonstrate a “good-faith effort” at recruiting a diverse workforce, yet who never had a real chance of being fairly considered for the position. Nevertheless, job analysis and job descriptions are at the heart of test validation, affirmative action compliance, and reasonable accommodation of persons with handicaps under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Collective Bargaining

Job analysis and classification are also central to collective bargaining. First, collective bargaining starts with the identification of an appropriate bargaining unit, either occupation based or agency based. In either case, the number and identity of positions eligible for inclusion in the bargaining unit presumes that all positions, those included as well as those excluded, have been analyzed and classified in advance.

Once a union has been selected as a bargaining agent, it begins to negotiate with management. Frequently, contract negotiators justify requested pay and benefits by comparing pay and benefit levels with similar jobs in other jurisdictions. Contracts stipulate pay, benefits, and working conditions applicable to covered employees or to employees in specified occupations. Contracts may prohibit management from assigning employees work outside their classification or above their grade level. They will certainly specify that disciplinary action can only be taken against employees who do not perform their jobs satisfactorily, for tasks assigned in their job descriptions, as measured against previously defined performance standards.

Third-Party Service Delivery Mechanisms

In one sense, job descriptions hinder productivity because they tie up resources without adding value. That is, they require work to write and review, without directly contributing to the outputs by which the effectiveness of the organization is measured. However, in another sense, they create value by specifying the nature of the work to be done, and the rewards the organization is prepared to pay to have it done. For those public administrators contemplating the use of alternative means of service delivery, it takes but a moment's reflection to realize that clarity with respect to performance expectations and rewards is at the heart of establishing most third-party mechanisms for delivering public services without the use of government agencies, employees, or appropriated funds.

If a public agency decides to outsource a public service or use a private sector contractor or a volunteer-based organization to deliver a public service, no meaningful contract can be written or enforced unless outputs or outcomes are specified; nor can the performance of public agencies, private contractors, and volunteers be compared unless the performance standards and pay and benefits are clearly specified. For example, a City considering contracting out security services at public housing or transit facilities will have to define what level of service, and what level of employee qualifications, will be needed to do the job—whether it is eventually done in-house or contracted out.

Nonstandard Work Arrangements (NSWA);

Flexible employment relationships make it easier for management to hire, fire, and reassign workers. They also tend to remove agencies somewhat from legislative controls based on position management. However, job descriptions are more important than ever under these alternative and flexible employment systems because their objective is work management and their function is to define jobs. Consider that management needs some criteria to separate “core” and “contingent” positions. These criteria can include occupation, level of difficulty, or geographic location. Nevertheless, whatever criteria are used, jobs need to be defined and classified based on the nature of the work. Moreover, consider employment of workers on short-term performance contracts. These need to clearly specify the terms and conditions of employment, lest the rewards offered are not proportionate to the skills and responsibilities.

Summary

Many current controversies in public personnel management center around the appropriateness of a focus on positions, work, or employees. Traditional job analysis defines the position as the unit of analysis and develops classification systems based on the type of work and its level of responsibility in the organizational hierarchy. More contemporary approaches focus on work management—flexible use of human resources to accomplish the mission of the agency. In addition, employees have yet a third perspective—career development. Performance-oriented job descriptions offer a way of bridging between traditional and contemporary HRM and, therefore, of linking the professional status of HR to the organizational productivity and career development that are considered more important to mature civil service systems than using position management to control patronage and enforce legislative priorities. There is no doubt that job analysis will continue to be an important personnel activity, because it is required not only for civil services systems but also for alternatives to them. One of the key points of conflict within public personnel management is the extent to which the system should be driven by market models or by broader concerns of social equity and individual rights.

Key Terms

average grade-level restrictions 109

career development 109

career ladders 109

competencies 114

employee management 106

grade level 111

job analysis 111

job classification 113

job (position); description 105

minimum qualifications (“quals”); 109

payroll 109

performance standards 113

performance-oriented job descriptions 116

personnel ceilings 109

position 105

position description (PD); 107

position management 105

qualifications standard (“qual standard”); 111

staffing (manning); table 108

traditional job descriptions 106

work management 106

Discussion Questions

1. How does the historical development of job analysis relate to the differing objectives of elected and appointed officials, merit system reformers, HR directors and specialists, supervisors and managers, and employees? How are these reflected in the concepts of position management, human resource management, and career development?

2. Why are traditional job descriptions unsuitable for supporting personnel management as its focus has changed to human resource management and career management?

3. How do performance-oriented descriptions differ from traditional job descriptions? Why are they more effective from the supervisor's viewpoint? From the employee's viewpoint?

4. How can performance-oriented job descriptions be combined with traditional (position management-based); job analysis and classification systems?

Case Study: Who'S Most Qualified to be Minority Recruitment Director?

Background

You have recently been appointed Personnel Director of the state police. The organization consists of about 1,000 uniformed officers and 200 civilian employees. Its primary mission is to promote highway safety through enforcement of traffic laws and assistance to motorists. In recent years, the state police agency has come under increasing public criticism. The major complaint: too much attention is being paid to writing traffic tickets; a more appropriate focus would be on attacking the organized crime and drug trafficking that increasingly overwhelm urban police departments. In addition, many community activists believe that the state police routinely discriminate against African Americans and Hispanics in both employment and enforcement of traffic laws, and in antidrug and antigang operations.

Morale is low among younger officers, who see themselves as victims of societal conflicts. Turnover among recruits averages 25 percent during the first year after they complete a three-month training course required of all state-certified law enforcement officers. Reasons most often given for leaving the state police are working conditions, lack of immediate promotion opportunities, and the feeling the advancement is based on “whom you know, not what you know.” Many observers consider the state police to be a highly political organization because the governor appoints its top administrative positions. Some observers believe that, as a result, top management lacks experience in law enforcement or management, and that this reduces the organization's morale and effectiveness.

As Director of Personnel, your task is to select an assistant who will be responsible for developing, administering, and evaluating a minority recruitment program for the agency. An outside consulting firm has selected three candidates as being the most qualified of several hundred applicants who responded to nationwide advertising for the position. You and your panel have interviewed each applicant. Now it is time to pick the one most qualified for the position.

Process

Divide into discussion groups with four or five people in each group. The instructor should designate the groups as A, B, C, etc. Within twenty-five minutes, place all three candidates in rank order, based on their relative qualifications for the position. The résumés of the candidates are given in Figures 5-5, 5-6, and 5-7. Before you do so, be prepared to defend your selection by writing a brief performance-oriented job description for the position. This means you will need to answer each of the following questions:

1. What job duties are most important to the position?

2. What competencies will successful applicants need to perform these essential job duties?

3. What objective performance standards could you use to assess whether the minority recruitment director is doing a good job?

4. What conditions make the job particularly easy or hard to perform? (Hint: think of laws, resources, organizational conditions, etc.); How do these conditions affect the performance standards that should be established, or the competencies that should be required?

5. What minimum qualifications will successful applicants need to ensure that they have these competencies? Specify education (type, level, and length);, experience (type, level, and length);, and any other qualifications you consider essential

6. In what rank order should the three candidates be placed? In your group's column, write a “1,” “2,” or “3” opposite each candidate's name. (See Figure 5-4.);

FIGURE 5-4 Rank the Applicants

7. Why is the applicant you chose the most qualified for the job?

8. What selection criterion was most important in making the choice? Place a check beside it.

9. Which value (political responsiveness, efficiency, or social equity); is most enhanced by your selection decision and criteria?

10. How confident are you that your selection criteria are job related?

11. How would you validate the criteria if asked to do so by a federal court or by an affirmative action compliance agency?

12. What is the appropriate definition of merit in this situation?

13. Was your group ever tempted to pick the “best” candidate first, and then identify the desired competencies and minimum qualifications based on that candidate's resume (rather than identifying the desired competencies and qualifications first, and then ranking the candidates against them);? If so, what does this show about merit-based selection procedures?

Postscript

The State Police Agency hired John Lewis for the position of minority recruitment director. The selection panel comprised several senior state police officers and one of the book's authors as an outside observer. There were no women or racial minorities on the selection panel, but they were unanimously in favor of hiring Jones because his military background and demeanor led them to view him as the most likely candidate. Moreover, he was an African American, and recruitment of African American male police officers was considered a higher priority than recruitment of women or other minority groups.

For almost two years after his appointment, John Lewis gained nationwide attention for his ability to recruit African American state police officers. As the only one of the three candidates with first-hand recruitment experience, he did an excellent job recruiting through schools, community organizations, and minority newspapers and radio stations. State police agencies throughout the region studied his methods and results as the example they were trying to emulate in their own agencies.

Nevertheless, as strong and successful as his recruitment efforts were, within two years of his appointment it became evident that there were problems with his overall job performance. First, turnover among new recruits and trainees continued to be high. The personnel director concluded that it was because the John Lewis lacked experience with other key personnel functions (like orientation and training, performance evaluation, and career development); that related to retention. Once out of the academy, new recruits were still being assigned as trainee troopers with senior officers who were quite likely to be white males. Their view of the organization, and of the role of minorities in it, was not always consistent with the John Lewis' mission and vision for minority recruitment. Therefore, the state police personnel director ended up hiring someone with a background similar to Harold Murphy who could help John Lewis institutionalize his successful minority recruitment program by designing and evaluating similar changes in other functions. These included diversity training for all officers, development of mentoring programs for new minority recruits, and increased attention to racial harassment or informal discrimination in the agency. In addition, police supervisors received training in performance appraisal, promotional assessment, and other functions needed to advance minorities along a career trajectory once they had joined the state police.

Second, John Lewis was a good minority recruitment program director, well liked and respected by state police officers regardless of race. He communicated forcefully and effectively with recruits, state police officers, and the hierarchy of uniformed command. However, he was not a politically adept speaker who could be trusted to deal smoothly or comfortably with the media or with federal compliance agencies. He was not an accomplished report writer or program evaluator. Therefore, the state police personnel director and media relations representative needed to cover many of these aspects of the job.

In short, the ideal candidate would have had the composite competencies of all three finalists: John Lewis' minority recruitment experience, Harold Murphy's overall HRM expertise, and Norma Sikorsky's media relations, program evaluation, and political networking skills. In fact, the nature of the job, and the requisite competencies, did evolve over time. Initially, the critical need was to hire someone with John Lewis' background to plan and manage a successful minority recruitment effort. Next, to prevent minority recruitment problems from continuing as minority retention problems, the state police needed to hire someone with Harold Murphy's background. As the program matured, it needed continual positive communication with compliance agencies, the state legislature, and the Governor's office to maintain good political relations.

Questions

After reviewing the outcome of the case, please answer the following discussion questions.

1. How does the outcome show that jobs and organizations change over time?

2. How does the outcome show that definitions of “merit” change over time, even for the same job?

3. How would you recommend that job descriptions be revised to accommodate these changes? How would you “sell” these recommendations to managers and employees, given their varied concerns and priorities?

 

John Lewis 1327 W. Addison Street Minneapolis, MN
Job Objective:	A responsible professional position in minority recruitment, higher education administration, or personnel management.
Employment History:
2006–Present	Assistant Director of Admissions, Northern Minnesota State College. Responsible for minority recruitment, minority financial aid, and internship programs for a 25,000 student state university system institution. Since 2006, the percentage of minority students has increased from 7% to 11%, despite cuts in Federal loans and other financial aid programs.
2000–2006	1st Lieutenant to Captain, U.S. Army. Responsible for a variety of combat assignments in the United States and overseas. Rifle Platoon Leader responsible for the health, morale, welfare and safety of 43 men (2000–2004);. Company executive officer (2004–2005);. Battalion Air Operations Officer (2005–2006);.
Awards and Decorations:
2007:	“Who's Who” (Outstanding Young Men in America);
2000–2006:	Silver Star, Bronze Star Medal with “V” Device for Valor (Two Oak Leaf Clusters);, Air Medal, Army Commendation Medal with “V” Device for Valor, and Purple Heart (Two Oak Leaf Clusters);
1997–1998:	Medgar Evers Memorial Scholarship, Jackson State University
Education:
1999:	BA in Psychology, Jackson State University, Mississippi.

FIGURE 5-5 John Lewis' Résumé (African American Male);

 

Harold Murphy 3732 18th Street Arlington, VA
Job Objective:	A responsible professional job as a human resource manager.

Employment History:
2005–Present	Personnel Director, Northern Virginia Community College. Responsible for management of labor relations, recruitment and selection, training, and affirmative action compliance. Represents NVCC in negotiating session with staff union.
2001–2008:	Assistant Personnel Director, Manassas Crossroads Bank, Manassas, VA. Responsible for selection, payroll and benefits administration and staff development.

Education:
2005:	M.S. in Government (Personnel Management);, the George Washington University, Washington, D.C. Master's Thesis: “Minority Recruitment Problems in Virginia State Government.”
2001:	B.A. in Business Administration, George Mason University. Senior Honors thesis: “Politically Incorrect: Conflicts between Union Seniority Systems and Affirmative Action Compliance.”
Honors and Awards:
2001:	Phi Beta Kappa, Pi Sigma Alpha, cum laude.

Professional Activities:
	“Managing Privatization and Labor Relations Issues in State University Systems,” National Association of University Personnel Administrators Conference, New Orleans, 2008.

Personal Information:

married, good health

FIGURE 5-6 Harold Murphy’s Résumé (White Male)

Notes

1. U.S. Department of Justice (2008);. An investigation of allegations of politicized hiring in the Department of Justice Honors Program and Summer Law Intern Program. Report prepared by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General and the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility.

2. Klingner, D. E. (1996);. Public personnel management and democratization: A view from three Central American Republics. Public Administration Review, 56 (4);: 390–399.

3. Naff, K. C. (2003);. Why public managers hate position classification. In S. W. Hays and R. C. Kearney (eds.);, Public personnel administration: Problems and prospects (4th ed.);. New Jersey: Prentice Hall

 

Norma Sikorsky P.O. Box 6597 Salem, OR
Job Objective:	A responsible position in management, media relations, or affirmative action compliance.

Employment History:
2007–Present	Assistant to the Chief of Staff of the Governor of Oregon, responsible for the coordination of statewide affirmative action plans for state agencies. Made recommendations on affirmative action programs to state agency affirmative action program directors. Responsible for media relations and legislative relations between the Governor's office and affirmative action compliance agencies. Represented the state at numerous state and national affirmative action compliance conferences and news conferences.
2003–2007	Assistant Coordinator of Title IX Planning. Principal staff assistant to the Deputy Director of Education, State Board of Education. Responsible for advising the Deputy Director on design and implementation of statewide funding and curriculum changes required for compliance with federal funding guidelines for women's athletic programs under Title IX.

Education:
2007:	M.A., Education, University of Oregon
2002:	B.A., Education, University of Oregon
Honors and Awards:
2006:	“Golden Tongue Award,” Oregon Media Relations Association
2001:	NCAA Finalist, Track and Field, State of Oregon
References:
The Hon. Slade Gordon U.S. Senate Office Building Washington, D.C.
William Groves Director, Affirmative Action Programs State of Oregon

FIGURE 5-7 Norma Sikorsky's Résumé (White Female)

Klingner, Donald. Public Personnel Management, 6th Edition. Routledge, 20150717. VitalBook file.