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The work Or The Job:
A job may comprise a few or many responsibilities and activities or tasks. For the homemaker, the sum of her responsibilities is her job; the job comprises many tasks, such as dishwashing, meal preparation, bathing children, marketing, or shopping. Tasks, course, can be further divided into smaller units, and psychologically each unit may constitute a task. Grocery shopping may logically be the task as well as selecting the meat, fresh vegetables, or other items. The size of the task is variable.
The job or the work has to be described analysed, and evaluated. A job description provides the basis for job analysis and job evaluation. Ryan and Smith (1954:35) point out that description for selection an placement should include "what the worker does and how often, how his work is initiated, the degree and closeness of the supervision he receives, the extent to which his work is checked by others, the nature and consequences of errors, the place of the job in the organizational structure of the company, and numerous other observations, ratings, and data. . . ."
A job analysis of household work by Smith (1962) provides an example of another purpose that of providing a basis for house arrangement. Smith obtained a description of the person or persons performing the activity in the home, the time and location involved, the equipment and furnishings used, the frequency with which the activity was performed and the specific components of the activity.
Comprehensive analyses of homemaking work permit us to identify common requirements among the tasks as well as the variables. Job evaluation determines the relative order of importance of a series of jobs, based on the duties, responsibilities, and requirements for performance, by analysis, description, and evaluation of those factors in an orderly and systematic way."
The occupation of homemaking entails a variety of tasks, duties, and responsibilities. Most homemakers are both managers and workers. They are responsible for both mental and physical activity. They plan and carry out the plans, facilitating and evaluating them as action progresses. In many respects, the homemaker's managerial situation is similar to that of small farms and other small businesses. The variable work conditions, materials, and standards for the outcome contribute to the amount of mental work.
- The goal of accomplishing household work is primarily a means to other ends, one of which is the development and socialization of the children. Work in homes is a child’s first acquaintance with work-how satisfying or dissatisfying it is, how difficult or easy, how essential to his existence, how important to accept responsibility and to control and time events. Homemaking work can be vehicle for his experimentation with task accomplishment. Failure may be less costly when they occur within the shelter of the individuals own family.
- Effective work methods, well learned, become standing rules that can be used to advantage to decrease attention during task planning and performance; standing rules also decrease the amount of planning that is needed. A routine sequence of steps, set in motion after a quick check for appropriateness to the present situation, permits a smooth flow of work that only a skilled person can achieve.
- Purpose of studying work: The first purpose of studying work is to identify the demands made on the person. Household tasks are necessarily part of the problem of studying the use of the human resources in accomplishing work, for tasks are an output- the result of using the human resource in conjunction with other resources. The nature of the action is one determinant of the various human costs.
- The second purpose is to identify the requirements needed in the workplace for the task and the person. Identification pf such requirements is a prerequisite to functional design. Such knowledge will permit the manufacture, builder and the work specialist to build into the design of equipment and workplaces those characteristics that will automatically minimize worker input. Equipment and work places, as well as the work , are part of the problem of studying the use of the human resource for work since they help or hinder the implementation of the action.
- The third purpose is to obtain the background to guide the functional placement and arrangement of workplaces. The placement of the objects used in work as well as their design and quality, determined the human costs of using them. Knowledge of work provides an important basis for determining guides for placement and arrangement of workplaces.
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