Functional job analysis (FJA) is a qualitative analysis method developed by the US Department of Labor to understand job roles. It breaks jobs down into 7 areas of worker actions and analyzes employee behavior within these areas. FJA provides benefits like a better understanding of employee and job roles, but can be harder to standardize across organizations than quantitative methods.

1. Functional Job Analysis definition
• Functional job analysis, developed by the Employment and Training
Administration of the United States Department of Labor.
• It is concerned with qualitative analysis of a Job role and worker that gives
information based on the employee’s behaviour and actions.
• FJA breaks down job roles into seven areas:
• Things
• Data
• Worker instructions
• Reasoning
• People
• Maths and
• Language
• Analysis of worker actions within these areas plays a key part of the Functional Job
Analysis process.
• Better understanding of the employee and the role are positive benefits of FJA, but
it can be harder to standardize the analysis across an organization due to the
emphasis on qualitative rather than quantitative methods

2. Common Metric Question:
• The Common Metric Questionnaire (CMQ) is
targeted toward both exempt and nonexempt
jobs. It has five sections: (1) Background, (2)
Contacts with People, (3) Decision Making, (4)
Physical and Mechanical Activities, and (5) Work
Setting. The Background section asks 41 general
questions about work requirements such as
travel, seasonality, and licensure requirements.
The Contacts with People section asks 62
questions targeting level of supervision, degree of
internal and external contacts, and meeting
requirements.

3. • The 80 Decision Making items in the CMQ focus on
relevant occupational knowledge and skill, language
and sensory requirements, and managerial and
business decision making. The Physical and Mechanical
Activities section contains 53 items about physical
activities and equipment, machinery, and tools. Work
Setting contains 47 items that focus on environmental
conditions and other JOB characteristics. The CMQ is a
relatively new instrument. It has been field tested on
4,552 positions representing over 900 occupations in
the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT), and
yielded reasonably high reliabilities. (Harvey, 1993)

4. Position Analysis Questionnaire
• It is a structured job analysis instrument to
measure job characteristics and relate them to
human characteristics
• It consists of 195 job elements that represent in a
comprehensive manner the domain of human
behavior involved in work activities. The items
that fall into five categories:
1) Information input (where and how the worker
gets information),
2) Mental processes (reasoning and other processes
that workers use),

5. 3) Work output (physical activities and tools used
on the job),
4) Relationships with other persons, and
5) Job context (the physical and social contexts of
work).
• Over the course of many studies, PAQ researchers
have aggregated PAQ data for hundreds of jobs;
that database is maintained by Purdue University.
A wealth of research exists on the PAQ; it has
yielded reasonably good reliability estimates and
has been linked to several assessment tools

6. MPDC
• Management Position Description Questionnaire (PDQ) is
the basic document used for position classification and the
selection process. It is a written description of the duties,
responsibilities, critical competencies, essential functions,
organizational relationships, and applicable selectives and
special requirements assigned to a position. It is a
description which, if properly prepared, will allow
identification of the kind and level of work being
performed. When the kind and level of work are known, a
determination can be made on the proper JOB class for the
position. As the primary source of JOB information, the
PDQ is critical to the position classification system. It also
serves as a resource for developing vacancy
announcements, screening tools and interview questions

7. Guidelines Oriented Job Analysis
(GOJA)
• The GOJA booklet was designed to address requirements for JOB analysis in the Uniform
Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures issued by the federal government in 1978 to prohibit
discrimination in employment practices.
• It was essential to the development of a comprehensive job classification system that provides
legally defensible criteria for employee selection, position classification, and performance
evaluation. The GOJA gathers the following information:
• 1. The important and critical work behaviors required for successful job performance
2. A criticality rating for each job duty
3. A listing of work products obtained from the performance of these duties
4. A description of the level of supervision under which the employee works
5. A description of the amount of supervisory authority delegated to the employee
6. A description of the physical characteristics, terms, and conditions necessary to perform the
job
7. A description of the level of knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to perform the job
8. A description of how each knowledge, skill, and ability contributes to the performance of the
job
• This information is necessary in the identification of an appropriate JOB title and pay range for
each job. It also assists in the development of job specifications listed on the HR web page, and
provides guidance in the development of minimum job qualifications used in employment postings