nn, a 44-year-old, worked as an order-filler in a Pennsylvania warehouse. The job that required her to lift as much as 80 pounds, until a back injury took her off work temporarily. Covered by workers’ compensation, she received physical therapy for several weeks and then returned to her job. After a short time, however, she re-injured her back, and was off work again to receive physical therapy and treatment. Ann returned to work a second time, only to have the same injury flare up again.

    A hard worker and a valued employee, Ann was frustrated by the back injury that kept her off the job. In addition, her employer was paying thousands of dollars in disability-related costs because of Ann’s injury, and the company lost the benefit of having her at work. It was time for a new strategy.

    The company turned Ann’s case over to a disability-management firm, which searched for the underlying reason for her injury. Each time she returned to work, her doctor had pronounced her fit for duty. What then was the problem?

    The answer was discovered in a complete job analysis conducted by the disability-management firm. The analysis broke down the tasks and components of the job, as well as the aptitudes, skills, physical environment, and work schedule. This revealed that the amount of weight that Ann had to lift was only part of the problem. The compounding factor was that her job required mandatory overtime, which proved to be too much, too soon, for Ann as she returned to work.

    Without a thorough job analysis, Ann could have continued the cycle of injuries, perhaps until she was no longer able to perform her job. In the end, it was the job analysis that uncovered the problem and provided the solution.

More than a checklist
    More than just a checklist of requirements (such as the ability to type a certain number of words per minute) or physical demands (for example, lifting 50 pounds or standing for a certain number of hours), a true job analysis breaks down and catalogs the movements, motions, and aptitudes of the tasks that make up a job. Everything from the purpose of the job to the physical environment is noted. With complete information and understanding of what a job entails, employers have a powerful tool for assisting and placing workers.

    At the warehouse where Ann worked, employees were also videotaped as they performed their duties, which yielded a wealth of detail about the kinds of tasks, the physical postures, and other demands of their jobs. In Ann’s case, the job analysis became the basis of a plan for her return to work, once the problem of the mandatory overtime had been identified.

    With input from her physician, transitional duties were assigned to Ann, who performed her regular job for the first few hours of the day and then worked as an inventory clerk. A job analysis showed that the skills-set of the inventory clerk matched many of the functions that Ann performed as an order-filler. The inventory-clerk job, however, was far less physically demanding.

    Over the course of several weeks, Ann’s strength and stamina were built up, enabling her eventually to work her regular job for eight hours and then later the mandatory overtime as well. Further, using a job analysis to design transitional duties also reaped a large savings for the employer. Having a disability-management firm oversee her case cost the employer about $2,000 over the course of eight months; all the while, Ann was able to contribute to company productivity.

A benchmarking tool
    Ann’s case is a clear-cut example of the value of job analyses, particularly to determine if ill or injured employees can return to their jobs and to assign temporary, modified tasks to them. But that only scratches the surface of usage for in-depth job analyses. Job analyses are important documentation for interviewing, selecting, and training employees, as well as promoting them. In this instance, the job analysis serves as a kind of benchmark to measure and quantify employee performance, and to determine if an employee has the qualifications to move into a new position.

    Further job analyses can be used for safety and prevention to identify and address potential hazards and stress factors before they become a problem. For example, is it possible to reconfigure workstations to reduce the amount of bending and lifting? Can a foot pedal be moved? Can an adjustable worktable -- to allow workers to sit or stand -- be used?

Who is performing the job analysis?
    To be the most effective, the job analysis must be performed by a professional who understands how to identify and categorize essential functions (the tasks and components of the job), determine the aptitudes and skills, and observe the total job environment. Too often, a job analysis is performed by someone with no specific training who fills out a kind of "checklist" of specific tasks. Or, if an injury occurred last month, a medical department staff member might be assigned to observe someone else performing the injured employee’s job.

    It takes someone who is trained in job analysis -- and preferably with a specialty in disability management or vocational rehabilitation -- to break down a job to specific tasks, which are then analyzed. Further, it’s important to capture not only the "essential functions" of a job -- those tasks that are mandatory and routinely performed -- but the nonessential ones as well.

    For example, the main task performed by an employee at an automotive service department was to drive customers as a courtesy from the shop to nearby destinations. A more thorough job analysis revealed that when he wasn’t driving customers around, the employee cleaned cars, which required a lot of bending, stooping, and twisting, which posed a problem when he was injured. This example shows that a mere checklist of duties usually does not capture all the tasks that employees perform.

    Job analyses must also capture the understanding and aptitudes of employees in their current jobs and help to determine what kinds of translatable skills they have for another assignment. For example, does a worker who performs manual labor have the skills and temperament to work in an office, where he must answer the phone? Such was the case for longshoremen, whose physically demanding jobs are highly specialized, with few transferable skills outside the docks where they work.

    Job analyses also should look at other kinds of physical demands of work, such as when an employee is sedentary. For example, desktop publishing requires workers to sit for long periods, which can cause neck and spinal problems. In this instance, a job analysis should take into account how low the employee sits, the position she sits in, and whether she takes regular breaks to stretch and move around.

Adaptive equipment
    Using the job analysis as a guide, employers can investigate whether adaptive equipment might address a problem -- or prevent a problem from arising -- for a stationary worker. For example, an inexpensive computer cart would allow a computer keyboard to be raised and lowered so that the employee could stand and work to take a break from sitting.

    Further, a job analysis might also look at how workers in similar jobs or in comparable settings perform their tasks, which could offer some insight into possible accommodations to allow the employee to keep working. Let’s take an example of a pharmacist who had a knee problem that prevented him from working. He couldn’t stand for long periods, nor could he lift stock to refill the pharmacy shelves. An analysis of similar jobs at other sites -- a hospital pharmacy, a small retail pharmacy, and a large chain pharmacy -- examined how pharmacists worked in these locations, which provided ideas and potential options for the injured pharmacist.

    Further, job analyses not only assist in the placement of ill or injured workers. They also serve as a kind of protection for companies to avoid potential litigation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Under ADA, a person is considered to be qualified for a job if he or she can perform essential functions. If the company determines that it does not have a suitable assignment, then having a thorough "catalog" of job analyses to back up that claim can help prevent litigation.

    While this documentation proves essential in placing an employee in a temporary assignment or modifying a worker’s duties, if the illness or injury happens, it’s already "too late" to be the most effective. Job analyses should be conducted for all jobs and kept up-to-date as the demands of the workplace change. This will allow observations of the employees performing their jobs and associated tasks before an injury ever shows up on the radar screen.

Workforce Online, June 2002 -- Register Now!