Managing Hospitality Human Resources

Chapter 2: Job Analysis and Job Design

Competencies

1. Explain the importance of job analysis and how to analyze jobs in

the hospitality industry.
2. Describe how the results of job analysis are used in job
descriptions and job specifications.
3. Explain the function of job design, describe how managers apply
techniques of job design, and discuss legal issues related to job
analysis and design.
 Managing Hospitality Human Resources
Chapter 2: Job Analysis and Job Design

Job Analysis

• Job analysis is the process of determining what will be done in a

job.
• The process of job analysis requires managers to do the following:
• Select jobs for analysis
• Determine what information to collect
• Determine how to collect the information
• Determine who collects the information
• Process the information
• Write job descriptions and specifications

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 Managing Hospitality Human Resources
Chapter 2: Job Analysis and Job Design

Select Jobs for Analysis

• How often a job is analyzed depends primarily on the degree of
change associated with the position.
• Internal factors that affect the frequency of job analysis include:
• Assigning new duties to a job or individual.
• New technology in the workplace.
• Hiring new employees.
• External factors that affect the frequency of job analysis include:
• Increases/decreases in customer demand.
• Seasonality.
• New competition.

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 Managing Hospitality Human Resources
Chapter 2: Job Analysis and Job Design

Determine What Information to Collect

Breaking a job down to understand what goes on and how it can

be improved requires the following information:
• Actual work activities
• Tools, equipment, and other
necessary work aids
• Job context
• Personal characteristics
• Behavior requirements
• Performance standards

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 Managing Hospitality Human Resources
Chapter 2: Job Analysis and Job Design

Determine How to Collect the

Information
• The observation method is the simplest and cheapest, but may not
work because employees typically know they are being watched,
which can result in the Hawthorne Effect.
• Performing the job allows the analyst to better understand the skills
needed to be successful at it.
• Interviewing employees who do the job is a popular method, but most
people tend to overstate the importance of their work/skills and are
susceptible to the Heisenberg Effect.
• Questionnaires such as the position analysis questionnaire (PAQ) are
often used to evaluate jobs and their relationships to each other.

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 Managing Hospitality Human Resources
Chapter 2: Job Analysis and Job Design

Process the Information

• The goal of information processing is to identify data that will be most

useful in defining and describing the work and how to do the job.
• The process of identifying topics and arranging information found in
collected data is one of the most effective methods of processing data.

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 Managing Hospitality Human Resources
Chapter 2: Job Analysis and Job Design

Write Job Descriptions and Specifications

• Job descriptions summarize the duties, responsibilities, working

conditions, activities of a specific job, and qualifications of the
prospective employee, and are generally used for the following:
• Recruiting • Training
• Selection • Employee evaluations
• Orientation • Promotions and transfers
• Job description content usually includes job identification data, job
summary, job duties, job environment, job specifications, minimum
qualifications, and the date the job description was last revised.

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 Managing Hospitality Human Resources
Chapter 2: Job Analysis and Job Design

Job Design

Poorly designed jobs can lead to unnecessary stress and low job
satisfaction. Five techniques are commonly used in job redesign:
1. Job simplification
2. Job enlargement
3. Job enrichment
4. Job rotation
5. Team building

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 Managing Hospitality Human Resources
Chapter 2: Job Analysis and Job Design

Job Simplification

• Sometimes called time and motion analysis.

• Involves breaking down jobs into their smallest components and
assessing how work is done in each.
• Useful when the skills required to perform the tasks are not
extensive and/or do not require a great deal of managerial
involvement.

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 Managing Hospitality Human Resources
Chapter 2: Job Analysis and Job Design

Job Enlargement

• Sometimes called horizontal job expansion.

• Is the process of broadening jobs by adding tasks involving
similar skills and abilities together.
• Can help to motivate employees who perceive increased
responsibility as a step toward advancing their careers.

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 Managing Hospitality Human Resources
Chapter 2: Job Analysis and Job Design

Job Enrichment

• Sometimes called vertical job expansion.

• Involves responsibilities being added to an employee’s job that
are not extremely similar to the tasks the employee performs.
• Differs from job enlargement in that it does not typically give
the employee additional levels of responsibility, but just
requires him or her to perform additional tasks.

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 Managing Hospitality Human Resources
Chapter 2: Job Analysis and Job Design

Job Rotation

• Often used to alleviate some of the boredom employees face

when performing the same job repeatedly.
• Occurs when an employee responsible for certain tasks performs
them only for a specific period before being rotated to another
position with different job responsibilities.
• Requires that employees be cross-trained in several different jobs.

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 Managing Hospitality Human Resources
Chapter 2: Job Analysis and Job Design

Team Building

• Directs goals and rewards toward team efforts rather than toward
individual efforts.
• Views employees as members of work groups rather than as
individuals.
• Encourages employees to work well together and to assist one
another.
• Often requires several training sessions to get started and can
sometimes lead to counterproductive competition among groups.

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 Managing Hospitality Human Resources
Chapter 2: Job Analysis and Job Design

Legal Issues
• To prevent intentional discrimination, managers should be aware of
the issues addressed in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
especially the concept of bona fide occupational qualifications (BFQQ).
• Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), people with disabilities
are considered qualified for a job if they can perform the essential
functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodations; this
requires firms to consider the essential functions of each job.
• The Occupational Safety and Health Act requires that job descriptions
explain any dangerous, unsatisfactory, or distasteful aspects of the job.
• The U.S. Department of Labor oversees wages, discrimination, and
working conditions, among other employment issues.

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Chapter 2: Job Analysis and Job Design

Classification of Employees

Various issues must be considered when deciding what type of

employee best fits the organization’s needs, including:
• What size is the organization?
• What is the corporate culture of the organization?
• What type of image does the organization wish to project?
• What is the labor market like?

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Permanent vs. Alternative Employees

• Permanent employees work at least 30–40 hours per week, are on

the regular company payroll, and often receive benefits.
• Alternative employees comprise:
• Temporary employees, who are not actually employed by the
organization but work only for a designated time period..
• Part-time employees, who generally work 20 hours or less per
week but do not receive benefits or work regular shifts.
• Outsourced employees, who work for a separate entity that the
company pays for the services the outsourced employees provide.

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Chapter 2: Job Analysis and Job Design

Staffing Guide Terminology

• Productivity: The amount of work output by an employee during a
specific period of time.
• Productivity standards: The criteria that define the acceptable
quantity of work to be completed by employees.
• Performance standards: The criteria that establish the required
levels of quality in the work performed.
• Labor forecasting: Any method used to anticipate the amount of
work required in a specified period of time.
• Fixed labor expenses: Costs associated with the minimum number
of employees required to operate a business.
• Variable labor expenses: Costs that vary according to business.

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Chapter 2: Job Analysis and Job Design

Staffing Guide Steps

• Staffing guides are scheduling and control tools that enable

management to determine the number of labor hours and
employees required to operate smoothly.
• The development of staffing guides involves the following steps:
• Set productivity standards
• Determine the total anticipated sales and guest count
• Determine the number of employees required
• Determine the total labor hours
• Estimate the labor expense

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Chapter 2: Job Analysis and Job Design

Set Productivity Standards

• If productivity standards have not yet been established, the

manager can do so by creating and evaluating a historical profile of
labor acquired over a period of time.
• The first step in determining these standards is to complete a
productivity needs assessment form.
• The manager should use the data from the productivity needs
assessment form to establish productivity standards for each
position in the operation.
• The final step is to compare the estimated needs to actual labor
hours worked.

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Determine the Total Anticipated Sales

and Guest Volume
• To make accurate labor use predictions, managers must anticipate
business volume for each day of an upcoming period using
previous sales data for similar periods.
• If a manager maintains records of the sales for each previous meal
period, he or she can determine the number of guests that the
restaurant will serve by dividing the sales volume by the average
per-person guest check.
• While this method is acceptable in many circumstances, more
complex forecasting methods can better predict business volume.

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Determine the Number of Employees

Required
• After forecasting potential sales, a manager must use productivity
standards to determine how many employees are required to
serve the estimated number of customers.
• Factors such as variation from hour to hour in demand, employee
availability, and labor laws can cause overlaps or gaps in the actual
number of employees scheduled compared to the desired number.

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Chapter 2: Job Analysis and Job Design

Determine the Total Labor Hours

Total labor hours can be determined by multiplying the number of

hours each server is scheduled by the number of servers scheduled.

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Estimate the Labor Expense

• Labor expense can be determined by multiplying the average wage

paid to each server by the total number of labor hours scheduled.
• Many computer programs can automatically calculate the
anticipated labor hours and labor costs with minimal use effort.

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Chapter 2: Job Analysis and Job Design

Forecasting Sales Volume

• Most hospitality organizations develop monthly, ten-day, and

three-day forecasts of business volume.
• Monthly forecasts are typically developed first, which are revised
for ten-day and three-day periods.

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Trend Line Forecasting

• Trend line forecasting involves graphing sales from similar periods

and fitting a line to the average sales projected for past periods.
• Fitting a line is similar to connecting dots, although the objective is
to establish a straight line through the dots rather than a jagged
one from dot to dot.
• Statistically, the “fitted line” is created by determining the
midpoint between jagged points.
• Trend line forecasting does not account for any unusual events
that may have taken place during a given period, but moving
average forecasting helps avoid this problem.

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 Managing Hospitality Human Resources
Chapter 2: Job Analysis and Job Design

Moving Average Forecasting

• Moving average forecasting “smooths out” the data collected from

a specific time period.
Activity in previous n periods
Moving average =
n
where n is the number of periods in the moving average.

• This method is known as a “moving” average since it involves

continually adding new results and dropping the oldest week off
the model.

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 Managing Hospitality Human Resources
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Seasonality

• Seasonality needs to be taken into consideration when forecasting

anticipated business.
• The simplest method of anticipating seasonal business variations is
to use historical data from similar seasonal periods.
• Seasonality forecasts can also be used to prepare weekly business
volume estimates.

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