Relationships among KSAs (knowledge, skills, and abilities), job analysis, organizational strategy, and HR activities
An organization will have a strategy in place to achieve its desired goals. Most organizations have the desire to expand their businesses such as in the company INTEC a subsidiary of a construction and engineering company in the article Strategic Skills Analysis for Selection and Development (Summers & Summers, 1997). For this to be fulfilled, the company is required to have new employees in the delivery of heavy equipment and services to the parent company. The company required that the employees possess particular KSAs and in particular those that would accomplish the future tasks of the company.
To seek out these professionals the organization had to have particular requirements that they need to see in their potential employees. This is the area where the human resource department comes in and drafts the qualifications that the employees must possess. A job analysis will enable the HR department in determining the required qualifications and will also enable the organization in determining factors such as payment (Gatewood et al, 2007).
These three factors; organization strategy, job analysis, and human resource activities have a relationship with a potential employee’s KSAs. By involving human resource activities, an organization is able to determine and demand personnel with particular KSAs. Knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) are the qualifications and attributes that an individual needs to fulfill a job requirement (Gatewood et al, 2007). KSAs enable the organization to determine which candidate among the applicants for a particular job is best suited to fill the position. Knowledge refers to information that is directly applied for the performance of a particular task, skills are the measurable manual, verbal or mental manipulation of data (Gatewood et al, 2007) while abilities refer to the ability to perform an observable activity.
The KSAs needed by the firm to achieve the strategy and KSAs that are currently resident
The company required a new labor market that would be able to perform current and future tasks in the operation and maintenance of the equipment. Employees required possession of good customer relations and knowledge in new technological advances because the company was geared toward the future. The company also needed to find out what existing tasks, duties, future jobs and KSAs would be required for the company’s success. Those which were not essential were also considered for removal (Summers & Summers, 1997).
The firm’s growth in KSAs to meet the strategic challenge
The company applied the Behavioral Consistency Method in order to come up with the task and KSA inventories for the jobs to meet the training and selection objectives (Summers & Summers, 1997). To ensure that employees achieved the development objectives, the company set up a KSA inventory database program (Summers & Summers, 1997). The company also has a human resource information system that utilizes the information from the SSA plan. Data from the HRIS is then matched against data that represents the degree of possession of particular KSAs (Summers & Summers, 1997). This enables the company to come up with the individual most suited for a particular position.
Importance of managing pay equity (both internal and external) and the consequences for not doing so
It is important to ensure pay equity among employees and employers need to ensure that the employees are paid based on the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) that they bring to the organization or business. Today technology has allowed for information concerning a business’s salary plan to be accessible through the internet (Rubery, 2007). This coupled with bills such as the one recently signed by President Obama take liability with employers if they do not ensure equitable pay for the employees. Today an employer is not allowed to play the gender card were women despite possessing the same KSAs as their male counterparts still get paid less.
Not ensuring equitable internal pay for one’s employees will lead to the employer facing lawsuits which will not only be expensive but will also lead to a bad reputation for an organization. The employers involved in such cases will always lose especially if the employee can prove that they were getting paid less than their KSAs allow for. Employers also need to ensure pay equity internally is on the same level as that externally. It is important that employees try their best to ensure that a particular KSAs group’s salary is at the same level or higher than that of another company. This is because employees are bound to analyze the salaries of other companies with regard to a particular KSA and could provide information that would be used against the company in a lawsuit (Rubery, 2007).
Role of pay equity and employee job satisfaction and motivation from a strategic perspective
Pay is an important motivator in the workplace and if an employer desires their business to grow payment especially equitable pay is essential. Selling one’s business as one dedicated to paying equity on the basis of persons KSAs regardless of gender is one strategy for business growth. This strategy is one that will ensure employees work harder and are motivated because their jobs are satisfactory (Rubery, 2007). In return, the employer benefits because motivated and satisfied employees mean the growth of the business. The reason why pay equity ensures job satisfaction is because it allows for transparency within the organization and an employee feels that they are getting their efforts worth.
In addition to this, the employee is motivated because they feel respected for what they contribute. Pay equity is also another strategy for ensuring that an organization maintains its high performers and gives an organization the upper hand over other organizations or companies when it comes to hiring the best people out there (Rubery, 2007). The best people with the required KSAs will want to be employed in a company which recognizes their efforts by paying them accordingly.
References
Gatewood, R. Field, H. S. & Barrick, M. (2007). Human Resource Selection. Boston, MA. Cengage Learning.
Rubery, J. (2007). Performance Related Pay and the Prospects for Gender Equity. Journal of Management Studies.
Summers, T. P. & Suzanne, S. B. (1997). Strategic skills analysis for selection and development. Human Resource Planning.