Job analysis is a crucial component of instructional system design that identifies essential skills and knowledge needed for a job, moving beyond inefficient shadowing methods. However, it's often poorly executed or skipped entirely. Effective analysis should focus on specific behaviors, consider environmental factors, and adapt to technological changes like automation.
Transcript
Welcome to the Operator Training Edition of Chemical Processing's Distilled Podcast. This podcast and its transcript, can be found at ChemicalProcessing.com. You can also download this podcast on your favorite player.
I'm Traci Purdum, editor-in-chief of CP. And joining me is Dave Strobhar, founder and principal human factors engineer for Beville Engineering. Dave is also the founder of the Center for Operator Performance. Thanks for once again joining me, Dave, how are you?
Dave: Good, good. It's always a pleasure, Traci.
Traci: You and I started a conversation in our last podcast on flaws. We kicked off the series to examine the flaws in industry training. That last podcast, we discussed instructional system design, a systematic training approach to improve efficiency and effectiveness in industrial training.
And today we're going to be talking about job analysis, so let's get it started.
What Does Job Analysis Aim to Answer?
Dave: Job analysis is one of the key components of the instructional system design or ISD if you want to say. And it came from the need for greater efficiency and quality in training. Let's take an example of learning how to drive a car. Well, one way to do that would be have somebody watch a person driving a car, sit in the car, that's what you do growing up. And then at some point I let them drive and the other person watches and critiques and provides input. And that's sort of the classic way people learn to drive a car. But it is very time-consuming, it's very inefficient and it depends a lot on the quality of the person that is either being watched or is providing the critique.
And that's the same thing that was happening in most industries. In other words, how did I train an operator in the sixties?
I said, "Well, here, follow this person around and watch what they do." And then at some point you do their job and they're going to watch you and they're going to critique it. Again, same thing, very dependent on the individual that's doing the training. It's timely, it's inefficient. And the military said we need to do better. And so as part of the instructional system design, they said, "Well, let's analyze the job and find out what is it you really need to learn. Let's spend our time on the skill and knowledge that's essential, you need to be able to do this job so we can focus the training effort on that skill and knowledge and not just do this sort of, well, I hope you encounter the problems I want you to encounter while you're doing this sort of shadowing that has been going on."
So, out of a job analysis should be that for this job, this is what you need to know, this is you need to learn.
Traci: You brought up the driver's ed portion of it and it brought me back to when I went through driver's ed training, what I learned from my instructor was drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes was paramount in driving, so you're right. There are folks out there that aren't the best teachers.
What’s Wrong With Job Analysis?
Let's talk a little bit why you consider this to be part of the series, flaws in industry training.
Dave: Well, it's a flaw because it's typically not being done or it's not being done well. And so what you really have is you've taken that driver ed driver and said, "Here, write down what you think this person should know." So a lot of the inefficiencies are being carried over because they aren't doing a good job analysis. It's just I'm going to take somebody who knows the job and, here, write down what you think should be taught. And like learning to drive a car, we all drive... Well, most of us drive cars and the skill and knowledge we need to do that we take for granted. How often do you analyze your driving ability and what's happening and what do I need to know? You don't think about it for the most part, you just do it.
And so the goal and that is to, well, let's actually look at it and understand which skill and knowledge is required.
And one of the key things is well say I train you on driving a four-door sedan and now you're going to drive a pickup truck. Well, do I need to start from scratch? Probably not because so much of it is transferable. So, since they aren't doing these sorts of analyses, what you're finding in the industry is a lot of duplication. If I'm a qualified operator on a particular job and I am going to now train on another job, I start from scratch, and all the skill and knowledge that I already have is assumed not to exist. So, what you have a lot of the problems in industry of the training takes too long, it's not particularly effective. It's because the job analysis wasn't done or it wasn't done correctly.
Steps For Better Job Analysis
Traci: So, what are some of the steps that can be taken to be better at job analysis?
Dave: Well, one of the key ones is behavior. This is obviously... The purpose of training is to create certain behaviors and safe and successful ones at that. So, what are the behaviors that are required for this particular job? And then focusing on those behaviors, what is it they need to know or they need to be able to do? One of the problems in a lot of the training right now is there's a large part of most training that I have seen that goes into describing the equipment and describing the process that's going to be going on. And that's just facts. If you then get into it, you say, "Well, do I really need to know that?"
Say with the car analogy, think that you're going to learn, Hey, I want to teach you how to drive a car and now I'm going to explain to you or I'm going to have you read, unfortunately, it's usually in some manual. I'm going to read to you how an internal combustion engine works and what all the components are and how they tie together.
And then the question is, do I really need that in order to be able to drive a car? The answer is no. That's not one of the behaviors. There's no behavior associated with that. And process plants do the same sort of thing; they like to spend a lot of time on describing the process and what it is and what kind of compressor this is. And particularly if I'm a field operator, a lot of it doesn't matter to me. There's no behavior expected of me relating to that knowledge that I'm spending a lot of time learning.
One of the major companies, refining companies, they have actually taken to the point where for their new operators that are going to be working on units with distillation, they don't teach them distillation. And they said, if you eventually get to the point where you are running the console, then, yeah, you would probably need that. But if you are working out in the field, you don't need to understand what's going on inside that column at a very detailed level. There's other things you need to know. And so we're not going to waste your time teaching you those principles of distillation that you're likely going to forget because you're not going to use them and they're not going to be reinforced until you get around to becoming a console operator.
And so as part of doing better job analysis, it would be to focus on the behaviors and being very specific, and this is the behavior I want this individual to know and/or be able to do. And then also see where it's, hey, this is not true just of this job, but it's true of a whole range of jobs. So let's not for every job, teach them each time this common set of skill and knowledge, let's teach it once and then we'll give them credit for it when they go to the next piece.
How Has Job Analysis Evolved?
Traci: There are some instances where they do need to know a little bit more than what the straight up is. And so how has job analysis evolved to capture both operational skills and safety competencies, for example?
Dave: Well, and that's where... One of the key things is that over time and doing it right is basically defining those in advance so that everybody can agree that, yes, this is what they need to know. Not having it left up to an individual that you say, "Oh, this is my best operator, here, teach them everything they need to know." And then you find out there's major gaps.
So the job analysis has evolved from, well, let's just analyze the job to let's specify the skills and knowledge so that we can all look at it and agree or disagree that, yeah, that's what they need, or we're missing things that you might need to know these certain facts or you may be able to need to perform this particular action and let's make sure that person is trained.
So, the evolution in the job analysis really, like much of what we're doing, is to make it clear in objective as to what we want the individual to be able to do when they come out of training.
Physical and Environmental Considerations in Job Analysis
Traci: How detailed do they need to be? For example, we have a hazardous nature in many chemical processes. Does job analysis need to factor in physical requirements or environmental conditions?
Dave: Yes. So that would be part of the analysis is to say, "Okay, you're going to have to do this with certain personal protective equipment on and it's going to have this particular impact, or this is going to have to be done in a... You're going to have to be wearing a certain level of protective gear and this job is going to be done in Texas where there could be a heat index of 105. Hey, you need to know how long can you be exposed to that before, hey, you need to get out of that heat and get some hydration or whatever else."
So, the analyses need to look at not just the job itself, but where it's occurring and what is necessary that's going to be going along with it. So there's going to be slight variations across the country, depending upon the requirements, depending upon safety and environmental conditions that are going to be part of the job analysis and say, hey, they need to understand these factors about working in heat or working in cold.
Traci: At the beginning of our conversation here, you talked about training operators in the sixties and Bob Dylan said it best, the times are a-changin', and we're into increasing automation in chemical plants. How has job analysis helped identify changing skill requirements?
Job Analysis and Automation
Dave: Well, it is interesting that you bring that up, Traci, because I was just on a call trying, looking at doing a job analysis around the use of advanced process control. There is a real problem in the industry that for operators who are running a process that has advanced control or APC on it that they're losing both their basic skills in part because they don't know how to interact with the control system. And so part of job analysis, and one that is being undertaken now by the Center for Operator Performance, is understanding what is required of an individual using advanced process control. That's part of the job. And no one has really done a job analysis. It's shocking, APC has been around for decades, but nobody has really done a job analysis to say, well, what do I, as the operator, as the user of this system, what behaviors are expected of me and how do I... What are the cues that I need to be able to recognize to initiate those behaviors?
So, in some cases, our automation has been forefront of our learning and training and we see it all the time. So advanced process control is an area, safety instrumented systems is another area where individuals used to be... Again, let's take the sixties. If I had a fired heater and it trips, well, step number one would be to go block in the fuel gas, so I don't get an explosive atmosphere in the heater.
Today, that is often still step one for these operators, despite the fact that they have a safety instrumented system with double blocking bleed valves on that fuel gas that are going to isolate the fuel gas from the heater. So, what they were taught as terms of, well, what do I do when the heater trips? In the sixties, it was get out there real fast and block in that fuel gas. Today, it's simply, well, verify that those double blocking bleed valves went to the correct position, then move on, go about what you're going to be doing. Maybe sometime, hey, when you've got time, you may want to come back and hard block it, but it's unlikely that you're going to need to do that.
And it's probably common, but automation will change the nature of the job, and that should be recognized in the job analysis. But we're probably as an industry a little bit behind in making that happen.
Traci: Well, Dave, thanks for pointing out our flaws, but then helping us to fix them and, in this case, to better understand job analysis. I appreciate the thought in that.
Join us next time as we discuss another flaw in training learning objectives. Want to stay on top of operator training and performance? Subscribe to this free podcast via your favorite podcast platform to learn best practices and keen insights. You can also visit us at ChemicalProcessing.com for more tools and resources aimed at helping you achieve success.
On behalf of Dave, I'm Traci. And this is Chemical Processing's Distilled Podcast Operator Training Edition. Thanks for listening, and thanks again, Dave.
Dave: Thanks, Traci.
