Merit-Based Employment Decision Making Based on Job Analysis Data

Making robust merit-based employment decisions requires employers to have a firm understanding of their jobs.  To the extent that personnel decisions are job-related and consistent with business necessity, employers can feel confident that their decisions are merit-based and therefore, defensible.

This all seems straightforward until one considers the challenge of clearly defining a job. With the increased use of technology in HR, many hiring managers use AI to assist in drafting a job description[1] then edit that until it “sounds right.”  But will that job description stand up to scrutiny?  When pressed, how will the hiring manager demonstrate that the job description accurately captures the actual duties and tasks of the job?

Industrial and Organizational (“IO”) psychologists are experts at job analysis, which systematically itemizes the duties and tasks of a job and the knowledge, skills, and abilities (“KSA”) necessary to perform them.  Job analysis data are foundational to merit-based employment decision making.  A job description based on job analysis data can better weather scrutiny, because a company can say that the job was carefully studied by an independent expert. 

To be clear, the importance of job analysis for employment and personnel decision making goes beyond job descriptions and hiring.  Personnel decisions can include, for example, promotion, compensation, training, and performance appraisal.  Thus, quality job analysis data is useful for ensuring merit-based decision making across the entire employee lifecycle. 

In practice, job analysis can take on many forms and the quality of job analyses vary.  From the experience of Resolution Economics’ expert IOs who have defended employers both large and small, a job analysis performed per the Uniform Guidelines (“Guidelines”)[2] standards provides the most robust data.  A proper Guidelines-oriented job analysis can allow employers to apply a content validity defense if their employment decision making method is questioned. 

Contact us to learn more about how one of our expert IO psychologists can help with your job analysis.