10 FAQs about the Job Canvas

You asked and we delivered!

There have been tons of questions surrounding the Job Canvas. Particularly at our Job Canvas launch, where people were very curious.

So we thought we would answer the top 10 questions we have received about the Job Canvas in this blog.

The Job Canvas is a digital upgrade to the job description. Developed to support modern, flexible working practises. The Job Canvas helps teams work with confidence and clarity and get the best out of themselves, their people and their jobs. You can find out more here.

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1. What is the Job Canvas?

The Job Canvas makes describing and mapping out your role incredibly simple.

With a few clicks, you can capture precisely what your role entails, the value that you add to others, the people you support and the resources you need to work at your best.

Once done, you can simply export the Canvas into a PDF.

The Job Canvas is a great starting point for high quality conversations about your job, your career and your development.

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2. What does the Job Canvas do?

The Job Canvas maps out your role using 9 essential elements, capturing key activities, stakeholders and customers.

On one page it provides a structured and clear way of presenting jobs which is easy to understand, customise, develop and review.

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3. Who is the Job Canvas for?

Anyone can use the Job Canvas. It’s designed to be used by employees to reflect on the way they current do their jobs and to identify what is working well and what could be improved.

The Canvas is a great tool for team leaders to be able to understand and explore how their colleagues view their jobs and have positive performance and development conversations with them.

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4. How long does it take to complete the Job Canvas?

In workshop we typically give people 2 minutes a section to complete. So this means that a draft job canvas can be completed in 18 minutes.

Typically it takes people around 30 minute to full and final job canvas.

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5. Why do organisations currently use the Job Canvas?

Early adopters of the Job Canvas have wanted to use the Job Canvas to enable:

• putting purpose, meaning and value at the heart of how people do their work

• encouraging clearer coaching-focused conversations between leaders and their teams

• enabling a personalised approach to working.

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6. How can the Job Canvas benefit my team or organisation?

There are many (many) ways the Canvas can support your team or wider organisation.

Here are a top 3 for you:

• Exceptional employee experience

  The Job Canvas enables people to reflect upon their roles, identify the areas and ways that they add value, and ways that they can grow, adapt and craft their roles to suit their strengths.
  

• Thriving Teams

  When the Job Canvas is part of regular operations, it will highlight a team’s key processes, resources, and colleagues. By having access to this data, team leaders can effectively succession and contingency plan should key colleagues move on elsewhere or systems fail.

• Organisational insights

  The Job Canvas offers direct and real-time feedback about how people perform their work and the value they provide to the people they serve and support.

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7. Can I see and analyse the data from the different Job Canvases people complete within my organisation?

Data from each individual Job Canvas can be collated and downloaded in various formats (e.g. a CSV file). This can then be viewed, searched and analysed using software such as Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel or integrated with other applications (e.g. Microsoft Power BI) to provide wider people analytics.

This can create insights about the job roles across a team or organisation (e.g. who are the key customers of certain individuals or teams and what resources do they need to be successful).

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8. Can the Job Canvas support Goal / OKR setting, appraisals and performance check-ins?

The Job Canvas is a great tool to use as part of any conversations focussed around how people currently do their jobs and how they might personally develop themselves and their work in the future.

It is therefore a perfect compliment to goal / OKR setting, appraisals and performance check-ins.

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9. Is the Job Canvas free to use?

The standard Job Canvas is free to use by individuals, teams and organisations. We want people to use it, share it and build upon it.

There is an investment cost for organisations who want to customise the Job Canvas (see question below) and use it commercially.

The standard Job Canvas is released under an Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike license. Users are free to use, copy and build upon the existing Job Canvas, but must give full identification and credit to Tailored Thinking.

The Job Canvas cannot be use for commercial purposes without consent from Tailored Thinking (just get in touch with us if you want to do this at [email protected]).

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10. I want to produce a customised Canvas for my organisation - what is the investment cost and price?

A customised (e.g. reflect their brand colours), be able to view the Canvases that have been created within their organisation, and be able to analyse and download the content of the Job Canvas.

To discuss the costs of producing a customised Job Canvas then please contact us directly at [email protected]

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Want to know more?

We hope that has helped clarify some of your first questions about the Job Canvas. If not, please do not hesitate to ask! You can message us on social media or email us at [email protected].

Remember, there is no such thing as a stupid question.

The 9 elements of the Job Canvas

The world of work is changing and we want to get people to look at their jobs in three dimensions (3D).

The Job Canvas helps teams work with confidence and clarity and get the best out of themselves, their people and their jobs.

The Job Canvas has 9 distinct elements. We will explore each in turn below and the questions we encourage you to ask yourself when you are completing the Job Canvas.

1. Core Value

What core value, task or service do you deliver to others (internally or externally)?

What problems do you solve?

What benefits do you provide?

Why does your job exist ?

What are you doing that someone else is not doing?

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2. Key Activities

What are the critical activities of your job?

Which activities are key to creating and delivering value to others?

What activities and services do others require from you?

What things do you spend your time doing?

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3. Key Resources

What are the tools, documents and systems which are critical to the successful delivery of your role?

What resources and tools (systems, equipment, documents) do you need to exist in order for you to do your role?

What could you not survive without?

During the pandemic if you worked from home, what tools, systems and resources did you need access to?

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4. Key Partners

Which people and teams do you rely on to do your job?

Which individuals do you rely on?

Which teams support you to do your job?

Who are the key suppliers of services (internally and externally) which you need?

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5.Key Customers

Who are the people who benefit from your work?

Who are your key customers, clients and stakeholders?

Who do you create and provide value to?

Who depends on your work in order to get their own work done?

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6. Customer Relationships, Service & Delivery

How do you engage and deliver your services to others?

What kinds of relationships do people want?

What service level agreements or standards do you have in place (if any)?

What hours do you need to work?

Where do you need to deliver your work?

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7.Engagement & Communication

What ways do you connect with people (internally and externally)?

How do you communicate with others - email, Slack, meetings, writing reports etc?

What technology do you use?

What informal ways do you connect with colleagues?

What flexibility do you have in terms of delivery?

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8. Strengths, skills & competencies

What skills, strength and knowledge do you use in your job?

What knowledge and skills do you need to do your job?

What personal strengths are needed?

What qualifications are required?

What core competencies are needed?

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9. Key Deliverables

How do you identify and capture the value you provide to others?

What are your core deliverables?

What objectives do you have for the year in terms of delivery and output?

What objectives do you have as a team or organisation?

What Service Level Agreements and standards do you have to deliver?

And that’s a wrap! The 9 key elements to map out your job.

Providing you with a structured and clear way of presenting jobs which is easy to understand, customise, develop and review.

Click here for more information on the Job Canvas.

Please reach out to us if you have any further questions. We’d love to hear from you!

Are you a career adventurer?

It’s time to think of your career as an adventure.

Often when we think about careers we think about a climbing a ladder.

Yet the reality for many of us is that a safe and sturdy ladder doesn’t exist. Consequently, the next step on our career path is often uncertain or unclear.

At Tailored Thinking we find it useful to think of your at a career as an adventure, or set of adventures . An adventure is exciting, bold and sometimes scary. There are opportunities to take risks and to learn and develop.

Rather than having an expectation that your career should be neatly defined, thinking about your career as an adventure encourages you to grow, learn and develop.

The (fabulous) team at Amazing If, encourages to consider our careers as squiggly. Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis talk about why people should embrace squiggly careers.

Firstly, they believe that a career is personal to the individual, there is no one size fits all career. Secondly, having a squiggly career enables and encourages people to develop in different directions. Sarah and Helen explain this further in their TEDx talk.

Thinking differently about your career

Here are 2 exercises to get you started to think about different career options, pathways and adventures.

1) An exercise for crafting your career adventure

This exercise involves peering into the future and considering what you might be doing from a career perspective in 5 , 10 or even 25 years’ time.  We recommend sketching out 2 or 3 different career scenarios or adventures you might have. Questions to consider are:

• In 2 – 25 years’ time what would be your dream job be internal and/or external to your current organisation?

• What will you be doing – what would a typical day or week look like? (what will you be doing, who will you be engaging with, what knowledge and skills will be using)

• What skills and experiences will you need to develop further to be able to fulfil this career adventure?

Having a clear image of a future work self can enable and encourage us to create, find and seize opportunities to do things in our current jobs that we might not otherwise have had the courage or conviction to try.

2) Craft your career with job crafting

The secret of many people with fulfilling and engaging jobs isn’t that they have waited to find the perfect job, instead they have created, or crafted that role themselves. You can read about job crafting in more detail here.

One way to take positive control of your job and career is through a concept called “job crafting”. Job crafting enables us to find opportunities for growth and innovation from within the jobs we already have.

Some questions that might get you started with job crafting:

• What skills or knowledge are you most interesting in developing further? Why is this? (skill crafting)

• What are your strongest relationships at work? (relationship crafting)

• What relationships would you like to build further? (relationship crafting)

• What gives you the greatest sense of accomplishment in your work? Why do you think this is? (purpose crafting)

• What changes could be made to your job to improve your health and wellbeing? (wellbeing crafting)

If you approach job crafting with a combination of curiosity and commitment you start to shift your work in a positive direction that will make it more enjoyable and stimulating in the present and ultimately more rewarding in the future.

Careers are things that you build rather than things that you are given. Whether linear, up, down, small, big or simply squiggly we wish you all the best with your career. Happy adventures.

To learn more about job crafting and how it is linked to career growth and progression you can download our free job crafting guide here.

Do we practice Job Crafting subconsciously?

In this guest blog Manahil Syed, Recruitment and HR Officer and MBA student shares her insights and recent findings from her study on job crafting.

This was a fascinating research project sponsored by Tailored Thinking and we were so impressed with it that we convinced Manahil to write a blog on it!

Job crafting sounds self-explanatory, to some extent. Like a sculptor carves a stone, inch by inch, in the same way, we can carve or modify various aspects of our job. But the size of the chisel is limited by our job description defined in HR’s books.

If we closely look at job crafting, we all practice at least some aspects of it. For example, we all have had that one annoying repetitive task at our jobs that we just want to get done with as soon as we can. Our pursuit of streamlining such tasks would fall under the ambit of job crafting.

Job crafting is generally divided into three types of activities, task, relational, and cognitive.

Task Crafting:

We can practice task crafting subconsciously by adjusting our routine tasks to our preferences in order to make them enjoyable. Moreover, a significant portion of task crafting is based on new tasks that you partake in or new approaches for routine tasks.

For example, your task is to arrange quotations from suppliers for required material. You must present all these quotations in a comparable form to the decision-making body, after removing all ifs and buts from quotations. Instead of manually doing all this, you decide to change the process and develop a standardised form which each vendor has to complete as part of their quotation. Needless to say, this is being done with the consultation of your supervisor. 

Relational Crafting:

Once done, you visit a colleague that you are on friendly terms within the IT department and ask him to provide consultation regarding uploading this form on the company’s portal so that you can download it in the desired format. Your colleague/friend does not directly deal with such stuff and he invites you for a cup of tea at the company’s cafeteria so that he can introduce the relevant person to you. All three of you discuss the feasibility, in terms of cost, time, and resources, of doing this exercise. Somehow, you manage to execute your plan and the new portal is up and running. Now you simply have to download the worksheet from the portal and review it for any bugs and present it to the decision-making body.

Cognitive Crafting:

After a successful presentation, you feel relaxed and elevated as you have brought in a structural change to your job description. You imagine positive word-of-mouth about your contribution to the company and how other departments will try to follow the lead of digitization.

This hyper-simplified example was presented to highlight aspects of job crafting. The whole thing starts with your overt motivation to improve your work and save yourself some extra time. A gap was identified, which even left unattended would not have affected your performance, when looked at from the supervisor’s point of view. The mere act of kicking off this project would come under the umbrella of task crafting, whereas approaching your supervisor and other colleagues for executing it comes under relational crafting. When the project is completed, your accomplishment-based gloating stems from your contribution to the company. Anything, that is out of the scope of your pre-defined work might come under job crafting. It is unlikely that anyone would make such a claim, that he/she does not work over and beyond the pre-defined scope.

If this is the case, then why do we need to know about job crafting?

My research at the University of Sheffield, in collaboration with Tailored Thinking, suggests people who knowingly practice job crafting have a greater level of workplace well-being as compared to people who obliviously practice it. This is related to the dynamics of awareness, cognition, and perception. A person using a smartphone of a prestigious and renowned brand is likely to have a better experience as compared to a person who uses a smartphone of an unknown brand. 

At the end of the day, we are all trying to do our best at balancing various aspects of our lives; get comfortable with whatever we have. Job crafting helps us by activating various primitive motivators to get the job done. Its benefits have the potential to go beyond one’s workspace.

Task crafting stimulates your creative problem-solving skills, relational crafting can help you develop relations that become long-term, even when you leave the job. Cognitive crafting helps in picturing yourself as an integral cog in the wider system.

It is better to practice job crafting knowingly as its benefits are much greater than the meagre cost of simply equipping yourself with its rudimentary knowledge.

If you want to find out more you can download our job crafting guide here.

Also, you can connect with Manahil on LinkedIn here.

Why it's time to ditch the Job Description

Over my career I’ve written, reviewed, edited and formally evaluated (high) hundreds of job descriptions and role profiles. And do you know what? I don’t think I’ve ever met a job description that I have really liked.

For many years, like many people professionals, I’ve tolerated job descriptions as a necessarily evil, something that was just a (frustrating) part of normal organisational and HR life.

More recently, as I’ve been more actively exploring the psychology, practices and processes of what makes people healthy, happy and highly productive at work, I’ve realised how destructive and damaging our reliance on job descriptions can be.

We’ve developed a form of “learned helplessness” when it comes to job descriptions – widely recognising their limitations, but using them as the only approach to capturing how and what people should do in their jobs. 

You could think of them like a blister on the foot of organisations caused by ill fitting footwear, yet despite wincing, we’ve never thought to change the shoes we are wearing.

Why Job Descriptions don’t deliver

The first job descriptions were developed over a hundred years ago to bring order and rigour to organisational structures, yet we have not developed this tool to keep pace with modern working practices.

The job description has failed to keep pace with changes in how we think about, describe and do work. Consequently, there are a number of ways in which they can bring more harm than help to organisations.

Here are 7 key reasons why I think job descriptions don’t deliver:

1. They are static documents which box people in - they don’t encourage innovation or personalisation

2. They are out of date as soon as they are written

3. They are often works of fiction - they don’t describe how a job is actually done

4. They take time to complete and are not easy to update

5. They don’t capture the true value or purpose of a role

6. They get lost across the organisation

7. They don’t provide organisational or people insight

1) They are fixed and box people in

One big barrier that stops people from being fully engaged and energised by their work is that they feel restricted and constrained in how they are able to perform their jobs.

Many of us are familiar with the concept of glass ceilings as an invisible (and corrosive) barrier that stops people – particularly women and people from ethnic minorities – from progressing within organisations.

I believe that traditional job descriptions can have the unfortunate impact of creating glass walls. These are invisible barriers on people which stop them from adapting, improving and shaping themselves and their jobs.

The consequence:

The hidden cost of rigid and homogenous job descriptions is huge. They can limit a sense of personalisation, development and growth which are the very things that makes people come and feel alive at work [1].

2) They are out of date as soon as they are written

Job descriptions by their nature reflect a snapshot in time. The consequence of this is that they are out of date as soon as they are written and their value and usefulness diminishes once they have been created.

As Alex Killick, Director at Leading Kind, once put it to me:

“Job Descriptions are like a brand new car, as soon as they drive off the forecourt they lose their value.”

The consequence:

The fact that documents are out of date as soon as they are written means that people don’t regularly refer to them. They derive no value or benefit in doing so. And any relevance a descriptions might have diminishes the longer that someone has been in their role.

3) They are often works of fiction

When they are created job descriptions often describe a wish-list of all the task and responsibilities that we expect (or perhaps hope) someone will complete in their job.

The reality is that job descriptions and role profiles don’t accurate capture what people actually do in their day-to-day work.

In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who - if they have had a job description produced for them - feels that it wholly captures, or gets to the heart or true DNA, of what they do or why they do it.

The consequence:

The impact of this is that employees don’t feel a sense of connection to their job description - rather than being something to be actively reviewed and discussed, it becomes something that is hidden in case it highlights gaps between the realities of what someone does and what - according to their role profile - they are expected to do.

4) They take time to complete and are not easy to update

One of my personal prejudices about job descriptions is that they are a massive time suck. Most of the job descriptions I’ve worked with are cumbersome documents which are not easy to update or amend.

Many organisations use fixed templates requiring generic text to be found, pasted into word documents and then re-formatted.

Getting to a final document often requires different versions being pinged to various stakeholders across the organisation.

The consequence:

The consequence of this is that people often disengage and detach from the process of completing job descriptions in the first instance, resulting in half-hearted and limp documents they don’t fully inspire or work for anyone.

5) They don’t capture the true value or purpose of a role

Whilst job descriptions regularly spill onto multiple pages they often fail to define or detail a core element of a job.

The purpose, or value of a job - the very reason that the job exists - is often missing or absent.

Most of us want to feel a sense of meaning in the work we do, yet we seldom design job descriptions in a way that fosters this.

We often don’t highlight the impact of the role, the people an employee helps or serves in their job, or an employee’s connection to the wider purpose of the organisation.

The consequence:

The potential impact of this is that people fail to see - or perhaps more importantly feel - how their work helps other people. Not only does a sense of meaning fuel people’s motivation but it can boost wellbeing and buffer stress and even burnout [2].

6) They get lost across organisations

A frequent frustration working in HR was trying to track down up-to-date job descriptions.

The reality is that most people didn’t update their job descriptions, and if they did they weren’t saved or easy to access or track centrally.

The consequence:

A consequence of this is that job descriptions are often documents that are hidden away on a hard drive gaining digital dust only brought out for new appointments, disciplinaries, promotions or the dreaded annual review or appraisal.

7) They don’t provide organisational or people insight

Despite most people - in theory at least - having a job description they are not easily analysed at an organisational level to gain insights into the roles that people do and the skills they need.

If you wanted to collate data about key skill and strengths or reporting lines in a specific function area then you would need to find (good luck) and analyse individual job descriptions.

Consequently, there is not a way to explore and gain insights from the vast amount of data that is included into a job description.

The consequence:

At a time where organisations are striving for data-driven and evidence-based practice it feels criminal waste that the rich data that we include in job descriptions cannot be usefully analysed.

Why technology has not improved the job description

Whilst there have been new technological development in the creation of job descriptions, to date most of the focus has been on making them easier and faster to complete.

Many HR systems offer generic checkboxes of skills, tasks and responsibilities and standardised text to enable person specifications to be quickly created. Whilst potentially saving time for the recruiting manager, innovations of this kind have not been used to improve the way we describe or define the work itself.

With the focus on making the production of job description faster we’ve missed the opportunity to make these documents better.

What’s the alternative to a job description?

If job descriptions aren’t fit for purpose and don’t reflect our modern ways of working what’s the alternative?

Rather than tethering someone to a fixed job description, proponents of more people-centred and self-managed approaches to working encourage us to trust people to take a different approach.

In Teal organisations jobs are defined by people rather than the organisation and in self managed structures such as Holocracy the job or more specifically role are defined by a collective team or circle rather than senior leaders.

The Corporate Rebels encourage us to forget fixed job descriptions and job titles, embrace job crafting and focus on Mastery and Talent instead.

At Tailored Thinking, we’ve been exploring and experimenting with a different approach we are calling the Job Canvas. This is digital tool designed to get to the value, purpose and DNA of a job and can be quickly and easily produced, updated and shared.

It’s time to take a different approach

I know at the end of these blogs I’m supposed to outline a clear call to action. I’m not expecting you to tear up or set fire to the job descriptions in your organisation or to dramatically delete them from your shared drive.

I know many organisations are reliant on job descriptions - particularly in the absence of a viable alternative. I therefore have humbler ambitions.

Next time you see, draft or review a job description ask yourself the following questions:

1) Is this adding value? - to the role holder, their colleagues or the organisation?

2) Does this create space for people to personalise or shape their roles?

3) Is this a realistic representation of the job?

And if the answer to any of these is no, then look to make a small change to make the document better.

If you have ideas to make job descriptions better then let us know. Perhaps you are a job description lover - I’d love to know why. And if there’s a different reason you have a distaste for descriptions please share.

Rob Baker

Rob Baker is the founder and Chief Positive Deviant of Tailored Thinking.

September 2021

Chloe's Tailored Thinking Journey Part 2

As I approach the end of my apprenticeship with the Juice Academy I thought now would be the perfect time to reflect on my last year at Tailored Thinking.

After graduating from Newcastle University in the summer of 2019, I really didn’t picture myself starting a new job in the spare room of my house and meeting my new manager (Rob) over video call. The past 12 months have been a whirlwind for everyone and I feel super grateful to have been in the position I am in.

The blog I wrote 9 months ago Chloe’s Tailored Thinking Journey Part 1 feels like a lifetime ago. I feel I have progressed and grown so much since then.

So what I have been up to?

If you read my previous blog, you’ll know that I finally ventured into the office after 7 months and met Rob in person! You can find out how it went here.

I also created a TikTok highlighting my time during the last 10 months you can watch it here.

What is my schedule like?

Tailored Thinking are a 4-day-week employer. We believe that this is a good way to bring and give energy to things that matter to us outside of work. So, I get Friday, Saturday and Sunday to recharge. Playing football, spending time with friends and family, walking the dogs are all ways I do this.

We’re currently testing out new ways of working. Rob is really flexible with when and where I want to work. Hybrid working; sometimes in the office, sometimes at home, is working well for us at the moment.

So, what do I get up to on a daily basis?

Day in the life of a content creator?

So, my day-to-day role would include:

• Scheduling content

• Creating graphics

• Emails

• Writing copy for blogs, guides, online etc

• Editing videos

• Workshops

• Meeting with clients

• Creating the newsletter

And lots more!

I also recently got an upgrade to Content and Communications. Communication is a strength of mine, so I was really happy with this.

Highs?

• Being fortunate enough to get an awesome job whilst learning a new trade during the pandemic.

• Having an awesome manager (Rob didn’t tell me to write that).

• Enjoying the work that I do and having the freedom to be as creative as I want.

Lows?

I always find it really hard to choose a negative. But I think it takes strength of character to do so.

• I enjoy working in a team, so sometimes during the pandemic I missed that human connection and collaboration.

• Catching covid.

Favourite day working for Tailored Thinking?

My first in person workshop at Gateshead College!

I’m a confident person, but walking in to this I felt nervous. After 5 minutes we all got chatting and I started to settle down and enjoy the experience. I loved talking to the employees about their experiences at work and how they wanted to improve.

I’m really looking forward to attending my next workshop and to continue to make work better for people.

I hope you enjoyed reading this. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn to follow my Tailored Thinking journey.

Chloe.

Chloe Mark is Tailored Thinking’s resident content developer and formally employee number 2 of the business.

The history of the job description.

In the world of work most of us will have had to read, review or develop a job description or specification. They are ubiquitous across modern workplaces. And whilst they may differ slightly in style, most job descriptions follow a similar format and content. But where did this document come from?

This article will explore the early history and blueprints for modern-day job descriptions and examine why they haven’t changed or developed significantly in the last century despite the significant evolution in how we do our work.

What is a job description?

A Job Description or ‘JD’ is a written narrative that describes the general tasks, or other related duties, and responsibilities of a role at work.  A Job Description may include relationships with other people in the organisation: supervisory level, managerial requirements, and relationships with other colleagues. It may also include information about the grade or level of the role, working conditions, physical demands, health and safety requirements and other competencies for the job role, which in this regard, it is sometimes known as the ‘Role Description’.

Where do Job Descriptions Come from?

The very first job descriptions can be traced back over a 100 years. Created to bring order and rigour to organisational structures, a job description is a written narrative that describes the general tasks and responsibilities of a role at work.

The story of the humble job description has its roots in ‘Scientific Management’ or more commonly known as Taylorism and the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor (1911). Although scientific management as a distinct theory or school of thought has arguably been in decline since the 1930s, many of its themes have been indelibly inked into our thinking and practice within workplaces today.

It all started with Job Analysis

Unlike today, the earliest job descriptions were seldom developed independently or in isolation. They were originally produced as the end result of a process called job analysis.

Job analysis was a formal endeavour to identify the content of a job in terms of the activities it involves in addition to the attributes or requirements necessary to perform those activities. It considered the areas of knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics (KSAO) needed to perform the job.

The formal document capturing these details could be thought of as the first formal job descriptions. When they were first developed job descriptions were sometimes accompanied by a separate document (the personnel specification) which detailed the skills, abilities and knowledge of the job.

Job analysis can be traced to two of the founders of industrial-organisational (I-O) Psychology, Frederick Winslow Taylor and Lillian Moller Gilbreth in the early 20th century.

Taylor established standard times for specific jobs and tasks through time studies.

Through motion studies the Gilbreth’s identified techniques and technical definitions for describing the mechanical and physical elements of a job and its individual elements.

Time and Motion Study in action

The two techniques of time and motion became integrated and refined into a widely accepted and popular method of time and motion studies, applicable to the improvement and upgrading of work systems.

Time and motion studies led to the creation of the role of the Time and Motion Officer (the predecessor of a modern-day Personnel Officer).

One of the first I-0 psychologists to introduce job analysis was Morris Viteles (1922) where he used job analysis to select employees for a trolley company car. Viteles’ techniques could then be applied to any other area of employment using the same process.

Industrial Psychology - a seminal text by Morris Viteles

Evolutions of job analysis

Since Viteles’ first efforts work designers and theorists have developed many different systems approaches to accomplish job analysis.  Many forms of systems are no longer in use, but those that still exist have become increasingly detailed over the decades with a greater concentration on tasks and less concentration on human attributes. 

Moving beyond traditional job analysis

Formal job analysis and time and motion studies have now fallen out of favour in many organisations.

Part of the reason for this is that job analysis techniques makes the implicit assumption that core elements of jobs are fixed, static and repetitive.

The reality of many modern jobs is that they are made up of many elements, each of which are subject to change and evolution. Capturing all these components in a time and motion study is complicated and time consuming. And ultimately the data collected is quickly out of date as the job evolves and changes.

Whilst the limitations of job analysis to meaningfully capture modern working practices has led to a reduction in its use, this has not stopped organisations continuing to rely on job descriptions to define and specify the work people do in their jobs.

Whilst the job description used to be the end-product of a formalised and rigorous process, it is now relied upon and used as a product itself.

Rather than rely on formal processes to evaluate and assess jobs, many organisations now rely on line managers - with occasional input from HR professionals - to use their discretion to create job descriptions with the help of existing (often very detailed and specific) templates and pro-forma.

Without a viable alternative to a job description, organisations rely on this document for core processes including; recruitment, performance management, performance conversations and internal promotion cases.

Current Trends in Job Description Design

There has been a growing trend in recent years to broaden the responsibilities that people have in organisations and to encourage employees to have more autonomy and to look - and work - beyond what is simply stated on their job descriptions.

In part, this a response to an increased need for organisations to be more responsive and flexible. And this is something that became particularly pertinent during the Covid-19 pandemic where employees were challenged with doing their work in different ways - and for homeworkers particularly - often from different locations.

As HR professionals, we understand the need to continue to capture the core elements of peoples jobs. This is important for both legal (such as ensuring fair and equal pay) and performance (such as giving employees and their colleagues clarity on the focus of their work) reasons. But the reality is that many - arguably most - jobs aren’t static but are constantly evolving and could change daily. 

In this regard, there is a growing need to be more responsive to what employees do at an ‘individual’ level. Also, for the process of designing and defining jobs, and what we do to become more people centred rather than being fully defined by outdated management and HR practices.

What’s next? A personal job analysis.

At Tailored Thinking we’re exploring new ways of analysing our jobs and doing job descriptions.

We’ve created a multi-dimensional, adaptable and personalised job canvas. This is something that enables team leaders to support people to undertake their own personal job analysis - and get to the essence and details of the why and what of their work.

Trialled and tested by multiple organisations across various sectors, the job canvas is changing the way we work for the better by enabling employees to quickly, easily and digitally capture and define their job. And have better - coaching based - conversations with their line managers about the work they do.

Explore it yourself on our job canvas home page.

Thank you to Dean Horsman who kindly helped write and shape this blog bringing his knowledge and expertise alongside Rob Baker.

Dean is a Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management at Leeds Business School, Leeds Beckett University.

Rob is the Founder and Chief Positive Deviant of Tailored Thinking.

How to stimulate job crafting - an exercise for individuals and teams.

An exercise to stimulate job crafting.

Numerous people want to improve their work. A challenge for many is knowing where to start. This blog shares a simple exercise starting point. It is focused on encouraging you to identify the elements of your job that you want to change and improve.

We created this small, practical exercise to demonstrate how you can make small changes that can have a big impact.

Stage 1 - Identifying what you want to change.

We encourage people to consider 5 questions around 5 themes to identify opportunities and areas for change, personalisation and improvement (displayed on the image above).

• What do you want to grow / promote?

• What do you want to takeaway / reduce?

• What can you change / improve?

• What do you want to maintain / persist and keep doing?

• What do you want to pause / stop?

Stage 2 - Identifying the how.

Having identified the areas you want to change, the next step in the activity is to identify how you might do this.

To make the change sustainable and manageable we recommend you make one small change at a time. Approach any changes with curiosity and a mindset of experimentation.

The activity can be found here.

Why personalising work matters

Personalising your work around your personal strengths and preferences is called job crafting.

You can job craft by making small changes to your job to adapt and align your role with you as an individual.

Job crafting is a science backed concept. It helps you to thrive in your work, boosting engagement, wellbeing and overall happiness.

The idea is around boosting, growing and promoting the areas of your work that you enjoy and that give you energy.

For example, in Rob’s TED talk (5.45 - 6.48) he shared the example of a marketing director called Joanne. Having done this exercise, she identified that she wanted to grow and find more opportunities to informally connect with her colleagues. She did this (the How) by informally finding opportunities to connect with different members of her team each day.

Taking action

Three things you can do are:

• click this link to access the exercise

• identify what you want to change

• set a specific goal which captures the change you are going to make

Stay in touch

We’d love to hear about your experiences with this exercise so please connect with us and let us know.

If you found this exercise of value then you may also enjoy our ‘Love and Loathe’ exercise.