Assignment 1-Maintaining Job Descriptions

Tamara Russell
Professor Gambuzza
BUS 335 Section 003016
January 30, 2011
1. Include a brief summary of the situation.

InAndOut, Inc., a warehouse and fulfillment services company has several employees whose jobs descriptions are old and even nonexistent. Marvin Olson, the general manager for InAndOut, Inc., is responsible for all the daily functions of the company. Mr. Olson needs to find out if the job descriptions can be revised to reflect new job tasks or if whole new job descriptions need to be created. Mr. Olson also needs a job description written and created for the marketing representative position.
Unfortunately, Mr. Olson is extremely busy and has little time to devote to this task. He has requested the services of a HR-intern, Ms. Russell to help assist with his responsibilities and prepare a proposal to the company owner, Ms. Alta Fossom. The proposal will outline detailed information and provide Ms. Fossom all the information she needs to make a final decision about the job description evaluations and changes.

2. Examine the reasons why it is important to update and write new job descriptions.

A job description is a very important tool for the employer, the employees and potential candidates. Ensuring accuracy is why it is important to update and write new job descriptions for a position. There are several other reasons why it is important to update and write new job descriptions. These reasons consist of 1) organizational changes 2) KSAOs and establishing hiring qualifications and 3) to comply with relevant laws and regulations.
Organizational changes have a great impact on job descriptions. Whether the organizations are restructuring to down size or for growth most job descriptions will be required to be updated or written to add, remove or update new roles and functions. Technology advancement also plays a key part in organizational changes.
KSAOs help to identify all necessary and required tasks in job descriptions that are necessary to perform that specific job function. These normally do not change often; however, structuring and advancement may require for these to be updated. KSAOs help to give everyone a better understanding of the job through specific items and determine exactly what the hiring qualifications are. Finally, complying with relevant laws and regulations are important and may help to avoid potential lawsuits arising from wrongful discharge later.
Overall, updating and writing new job descriptions are essential. Their accuracy help to supply potential candidate’s specific job information, give employers and employees a better understanding of job expectation through specific and required tasks for each job and help to avoid legal action. 3. Outline a process that will yield a set of thorough, current job descriptions.

The purpose of the job analysis is to create a final and thorough job description in which will be used to give applicants a feeling for what the job will be like. The overall job description usually will provide brief narratives with a job title, job summary, task statements and dimensions, importance indicators, job context indicators as well as the date the job analysis is conducted. In order to make sure that we have thorough current job descriptions a job analysis needs to be performed. The following 12 steps will help provide the best analysis of a particular job. They consist of “1)meet with manager of the job, discuss project 2) gather existing job information from O*NET, current job description, observation of incumbents, 3)Prepare tentative set of task statements, 4) review task statements with incumbents and managers; add, delete, rewrite statements 5) finalize task statements, get approval from incumbents and managers 6) formulate task dimensions, assign tasks to dimension, determine % time spent(importance) for each dimension 7)infer necessary KSAOs, develop tentative