23-Ind-A2 Analysis and Design of Work · May 2017
Nivaar worked solution (AI-drafted; not reviewed by a licensed engineer)
National Exams — May 2017 — 98-Ind-A2 Analysis and Design of Work. Three-hour, closed-book exam (approved Casio/Sharp calculator only); any five of the seven questions constitute a complete paper and only the first five answered in the answer book are marked — all seven are solved below for completeness. The source prints Question 3's second and third sub-parts both labelled “(iii)”; they are answered here in the marking-scheme order (i)/(ii)/(iii), 8/6/6 marks.
Reference texts: Niebel & Freivalds, Niebel’s Methods, Standards, and Work Design (13th ed.) — operations analysis, workplace/tool design and motion economy, stopwatch time study, performance rating and allowances, predetermined time systems (MTM/MOST), work sampling, wage-incentive and job-evaluation systems.
Question text not reproduced: the examination questions are © Engineers and Geoscientists BC. Open the official past paper (linked at the top of this page) to read the question, then follow the worked solution below.
Job evaluation is the systematic process of determining the relative worth of different jobs within an organization — independent of the particular individual performing each job — so that a fair and internally consistent wage/salary structure can be built across the whole plant. Its purpose is to answer, on a defensible and repeatable basis, questions such as why a machinist is paid more than a material handler, or why two apparently different jobs should in fact receive comparable pay, rather than leaving those relationships to ad hoc negotiation or historical accident.
Job analysis is the fact-finding step that job evaluation depends on: a systematic study of a job's duties, responsibilities, required skill and effort, working conditions, and the equipment/materials used, typically documented through direct observation, interviews with the job holder and supervisor, and questionnaires. The output of job analysis is a job description (what the job entails, how it is performed, under what conditions) and a job specification (the qualifications — education, experience, skill, physical demand — required to perform it). Job evaluation then uses this factual record, rather than opinion about the job or the person in it, as the raw material for whichever evaluation method (part (iii)) is applied: without accurate job analysis, any evaluation method is only as reliable as the (potentially biased or incomplete) information fed into it.
A properly installed job evaluation plan provides: (1) an equitable, internally consistent wage structure that pays comparable jobs comparably and unlike jobs differently, in a way that can be explained and defended rather than justified by precedent alone; (2) a reduction in wage-related grievances and disputes, because pay differences trace back to a documented, applied set of factors rather than to individual negotiation or favoritism; (3) a rational basis for setting starting rates on new or changed jobs, since the same evaluation factors can be applied consistently to a job that did not previously exist; (4) support for recruitment, promotion and career-path planning, since the relative ranking of jobs clarifies advancement routes; (5) a foundation for wage negotiation with unions or employee representatives, providing an agreed, factual starting point rather than a purely adversarial one; and (6) valuable input to related HR functions — the job descriptions produced during job analysis (part (i)) also support training-needs identification, performance-appraisal criteria, and organizational (headcount and structure) planning, well beyond pay-setting alone.
The commonly used job evaluation methods fall into non-quantitative and quantitative categories: (a) Ranking method (non-quantitative) — the simplest approach, in which a committee ranks jobs from highest to lowest overall worth by holistic comparison, without breaking the judgement into separate factors; fast to apply but subjective and difficult to defend for a large number of jobs. (b) Job classification (grading) method (non-quantitative) — jobs are matched against a predefined series of grade descriptions (each grade characterized by a general level of responsibility, skill and complexity), and each job is slotted into the grade its overall content best matches; simple to administer but coarse, and can force genuinely different jobs into the same grade. (c) Point (point-factor) method (quantitative) — the most widely used method: a set of compensable factors (e.g. skill, effort, responsibility, working conditions) is defined, each factor is divided into degrees with an assigned point value, and every job is rated degree-by-degree on each factor; the summed points determine the job's relative worth and translate, via a points-to-pay conversion line, directly into a pay grade. (d) Factor comparison method (quantitative) — a small set of benchmark jobs with agreed, fair pay rates is ranked separately on each of several factors, and each factor's portion of the benchmark jobs' pay is allocated across the ranking; new jobs are then evaluated by comparing them, factor by factor, against the same benchmark scale, directly producing a monetary (not just a points) result. Of these, the point method is the most common in practice because it combines reasonable objectivity (factor-by-factor rating against defined degrees) with administrative practicality once the factor/degree scale has been built.
