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Designing Jobs and Preparing Job Descriptions

Assessing the need for a job, the way the job is designed and the relevancy and currency of the job description are crucial components of an effective recruitment process. Too often this is neglected or, at best, given only cursory attention due to workload constraints, the urgency to fill a vacant position and what has developed as ‘accepted practice’.

It is often easier to reorganise working arrangements when a position is vacant. It could be a good opportunity to implement aspects of your Workforce Plan and steer the
organisation toward its business and recruitment goals.
Consider recent trends in job design in both the private and public sectors, including:

• Project or assignment based approach to work and jobs, semi autonomous project
clusters;

• Multiple reporting for different aspects of work or assignments with less emphasis on
traditional hierarchies;

• Cross-functional teams and efforts to break down departmental silos;

• Attention to job results and outcomes, not just processes;

• More jobs that are location independent – work can be done anywhere;

• More employees in integrating and coordinating roles working with consultants, contractors and agency workers (contingent workforce);

• Job design to facilitate more flexible use of resources – broader job roles and job categories, with wider areas of responsibility, more generic job titles and less numbers of individual jobs; and

• Innovative job design to attract employees, facilitate development, enable internal mobility and provide employee job satisfaction.

Potential applicants will use the job description to decide if they will apply for a position.

To this extent it is a marketing document that promotes the job and the organisation.

Poorly drafted job descriptions can cost the organisation if they lead to a lost recruitment opportunity or the choice of an applicant with the wrong skills set.

The job description needs to be prepared in a style and format that will attract the applicants with the skills and characteristics that you are looking for. The job description
should also convey a realistic impression of the work involved. Often there is too much internal jargon or it is written to achieve a particular level of classification.
For example,

the use of acronyms such as OSH and EEO or ‘buzz’ words such as ‘strategic alliances’ and a ‘synergistic approach’ often confuse and can deter potential applicants.

Things you can do


List all the different job titles and see if they can be rationalised to provide more flexibility and eliminate confusion.


Identify similar jobs that could have one job description, e.g., team leaders.


Use broader job descriptions supplemented with an attachment that is specific to the role and easily updated. Explain where the job fits in the organisation and why it is
important.


Emphasise the results to be achieved in the job rather than work processes and tasks – this encourages a fresh approach to the way the job is performed.


Remember, the term ‘selection criteria’ may not be familiar to many applicants from outside the Public Sector.


Develop examples of common responsibilities and work-related requirements that can be used to prepare job descriptions at all levels. Encourage common content
and flexibility.


Write the job description in a user-friendly format that is suitable for the target audience. Make sure it is free of jargon and easy to understand.

In your opinion, what are the most common mistakes made during meetings and why?

1. Mr. Subramnyam was an HR Manager of Niccom communication Mr. Atul Nigam was a supervisor of the production department. The management of Niccom communication decided to conduct training for the employees on improving productivity\. Mr. Subramanyam was a good friend of Mr. Atul and thus asks him to get his friends for the Training to be organized. Mr. Atul gets five of 10 of his close friends from then department for the training. Is there any wrong in the whole scenario? Identify the ideal process for the organization to make effective training.

Thank You M.. Sabita

Its ok Ameena... u r always welcome..

As an HR Manager, what will you do to improve the interpersonal relationship in your organization.

Ten Ways to Improve Your Communication Skills

We all have people with whom we have to work to get things done. Our ability to communicate with clients, customers, subordinates, peers, and superiors can enhance our effectiveness or sabotage us. Many times, our verbal skills make the difference. Here are 10 ways to increase your verbal efficacy at work:


Develop your voice – A high whiney voice is not perceived to be one of authority. In fact, a high soft voice can make you sound like prey to an aggressive co-worker who is out to make his/her career at the expense of anyone else. Begin doing exercises to lower the pitch of your voice. Here is one to start:

Sing — but do it an octave lower on all your favorite songs. Practice this and, after a period of time, your voice will begin to lower.

Slow down – People will perceive you as nervous and unsure of yourself if you talk fast. However, be careful not to slow down to the point where people begin to finish your sentences just to help you finish.

Animate your voice – Avoid a monotone. Use dynamics. Your pitch should raise and lower. Your volume should be soft and loud. Listen to your local TV news anchor; take notes.

Enunciate your words – Speak clearly. Don’t mumble. If people are always saying, “huh,” to you, you are mumbling.

Use appropriate volume – Use a volume that is appropriate for the setting. Speak more softly when you are alone and close. Speak louder when you are speaking to larger groups or across larger spaces.
Pronounce your words correctly – People will judge your competency through your vocabulary. If you aren’t sure how to say a word, don’t use it.

Use the right words – If you’re not sure of the meaning of a word, don’t use it. Start a program of learning a new word a day. Use it sometime in your conversations during the day.

Make eye contact – I know a person who is very competent in her job. However, when she speaks to individuals or groups, she does so with her eyes shut. When she opens them periodically, she stares off in a direction away from the listener. She is perceived as incompetent by those with whom she consults. One technique to help with this is to consciously look into one of the listener’s eyes and then move to the other. Going back and forth between the two (and I hope they only have two) makes your eyes appear to sparkle. Another trick is to imagine a letter “T” on the listener’s face with the cross bar being an imaginary line across the eye brows and the vertical line coming down the center of the nose. Keep your eyes scanning that “T” zone.

Use gestures – Make your whole body talk. Use smaller gestures for individuals and small groups. The gestures should get larger as the group that one is addressing increases in size.

Don’t send mixed messages – Make your words, gestures, facial expressions, tone, and message match. Disciplining an employee while smiling sends a mixed message and, therefore, is ineffective. If you have to deliver a negative message, make your words, facial expressions, and tone match the message.

Improving your communication skills will improve your productivity.

Effective communication is all about conveying your messages to other people clearly and unambiguously. It's also about receiving information that others are sending to you, with as little distortion as possible.

Doing this involves effort from both the sender of the message and the receiver. And it's a process that can be fraught with error, with messages muddled by the sender, or misinterpreted by the recipient. When this isn't detected, it can cause tremendous confusion, wasted effort and missed opportunity.

In fact, communication is only successful when both the sender and the receiver understand the same information as a result of the communication.

By successfully getting your message across, you convey your thoughts and ideas effectively. When not successful, the thoughts and ideas that you actually send do not necessarily reflect what you think, causing a communications breakdown and creating roadblocks that stand in the way of your goals – both personally and professionally.

In a recent survey of recruiters from companies with more than 50,000 employees, communication skills were cited as the single more important decisive factor in choosing managers. The survey, conducted by the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz Business School, points out that communication skills, including written and oral presentations, as well as an ability to work with others, are the main factor contributing to job success.

In spite of the increasing importance placed on communication skills, many individuals continue to struggle, unable to communicate their thoughts and ideas effectively – whether in verbal or written format. This inability makes it nearly impossible for them to compete effectively in the workplace, and stands in the way of career progression.

Being able to communicate effectively is therefore essential if you want to build a successful career. To do this, you must understand what your message is, what audience you are sending it to, and how it will be perceived. You must also weigh-in the circumstances surrounding your communications, such as situational and cultural context.

Communications Skills – The Importance of Removing Barriers
Problems with communication can pop-up at every stage of the communication process (which consists of the sender, encoding, the channel, decoding, the receiver, feedback and the context – see the diagram below). At each stage, there is the potential for misunderstanding and confusion.



To be an effective communicator and to get your point across without misunderstanding and confusion, your goal should be to lessen the frequency of problems at each stage of this process, with clear, concise, accurate, well-planned communications. We follow the process through below:

Source...
As the source of the message, you need to be clear about why you're communicating, and what you want to communicate. You also need to be confident that the information you're communicating is useful and accurate.

Message...
The message is the information that you want to communicate.

Encoding...
This is the process of transferring the information you want to communicate into a form that can be sent and correctly decoded at the other end. Your success in encoding depends partly on your ability to convey information clearly and simply, but also on your ability to anticipate and eliminate sources of confusion (for example, cultural issues, mistaken assumptions, and missing information.)

A key part of this is knowing your audience: Failure to understand who you are communicating with will result in delivering messages that are misunderstood.

Channel...
Messages are conveyed through channels, with verbal channels including face-to-face meetings, telephone and videoconferencing; and written channels including letters, emails, memos and reports.

Different channels have different strengths and weaknesses. For example, it's not particularly effective to give a long list of directions verbally, while you'll quickly cause problems if you give someone negative feedback using email.

Decoding...
Just as successful encoding is a skill, so is successful decoding (involving, for example, taking the time to read a message carefully, or listen actively to it.) Just as confusion can arise from errors in encoding, it can also arise from decoding errors. This is particularly the case if the decoder doesn't have enough knowledge to understand the message.

Receiver...
Your message is delivered to individual members of your audience. No doubt, you have in mind the actions or reactions you hope your message will get from this audience. Keep in mind, though, that each of these individuals enters into the communication process with ideas and feelings that will undoubtedly influence their understanding of your message, and their response. To be a successful communicator, you should consider these before delivering your message, and act appropriately.

Feedback...
Your audience will provide you with feedback, as verbal and nonverbal reactions to your communicated message. Pay close attention to this feedback, as it is the only thing that can give you confidence that your audience has understood your message. If you find that there has been a misunderstanding, at least you have the opportunity to send the message a second time.

Context...
The situation in which your message is delivered is the context. This may include the surrounding environment or broader culture (corporate culture, international cultures, and so on).

Removing Barriers at All These Stages
To deliver your messages effectively, you must commit to breaking down the barriers that exist within each of these stages of the communication process.

Let’s begin with the message itself. If your message is too lengthy, disorganized, or contains errors, you can expect the message to be misunderstood and misinterpreted. Use of poor verbal and body language can also confuse the message.

Barriers in context tend to stem from senders offering too much information too fast. When in doubt here, less is oftentimes more. It is best to be mindful of the demands on other people’s time, especially in today’s ultra-busy society

SITUATION
CIMB Berhad is a fully integrated investment bank and is recognized as a market leader in the Malaysian capital markets. The only listed investment bank on the Bursa Malaysia, CIMB is a subsidiary of Commerce Asset-Holding Berhad, Malaysia’s second largest financial services provider.

It offers the full range of services in the debt markets, equity markets and corporate advisory. It also provides services in lending, private banking, private equity, Islamic capital markets as well as research capability in economics, equity and debt markets. CIMB also has strong market presence in the secondary bond and equity markets as well as derivative markets.

CIMB managed RM51.38 billion in bonds between 1991 and 2004, equivalent to a 48.2 per cent market share. Since 1991, it has raised over RM13 billion in initial public offerings on behalf of 139 client companies. In 2003, CIMB was ranked number one in bonds having raised RM9.3 billion.

CIMB Berhad Group comprises five major subsidiaries: Commerce International Merchant Bankers Berhad, CIMB Discount House Berhad, CIMB Securities Sdn Bhd, CIMB Futures Sdn Bhd and CIMB (L) Limited. The Group’s total staff strength currently stands at 822.
The company has also made its mark in the area of human resources, with CIMB winning the National Human Resource Excellence Award in 2002. A year earlier, the group decided to consolidate its internal operations by centralizing the human resources functions instead of having individual HR departments in the group’s subsidiaries.

With an expanded, centralized HR Department, there was a pressing need to tap on technological innovation to improve business processes and operational efficiencies. This prompted CIMB to deploy eHR, an electronic human resources workflow solution developed on the Microsoft platform by Microsoft Gold Certified partner, Mesiniaga Bhd.

Up till then, the processes in the HR Department were basically manually driven. Other key challenges which CIMB faced then were difficulty in tracking the status of staff requests and applications; lack of integration between various departments resulting in duplication of effort and data-entry errors; missing forms and ever increasing storage space required for hardcopy forms.

Before the introduction of eHR, the HR Department had to service about 600 users on a daily basis for various HR-related forms and requests. Because these forms and requests were handled manually and paper-based, it took a great deal of time to process. With manpower expected to increase in the coming years, the situation would only get more pressing.

As the information from the paper forms were not keyed into any electronic system, each time any staff information was required, it had to be physically retrieved from the files. For managers, this meant they had no efficient way to find out how many of their staff were on leave or who had gone for training.

“We spent a lot of time digging for information from the files, and then checking and verifying records with the users,” says Hamidah Naziadin, Director, Admin & Human Resource, Commerce International Merchant Bankers Bhd.

“Our mission at that time was also to change HR’s role from a very traditional administrative one to become more like a strategic partner. And how are we going to move ahead if we are going to be continually bogged down by all this?” Hamidah asks.

“We needed a system which could empower HR staff, making them a whole lot more efficient,” she says. Hamidah adds that empowerment comes from having “information at your fingertips” and being able to analyze the information to make better and faster decisions.