COM 230 Module 3 Job Analysis and Workforce Planning Example

From Teller to Universal Banker: Analyzing a New Role and Planning Three Years of Staffing

Student Name

Business Administration Program, Aspen University

COM 230: Human Resource Management

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

From Teller to Universal Banker: Analyzing a New Role and Planning Three Years of Staffing

Members of Blue Ridge Community Credit Union visit branches less than they used to. Teller transactions fell 31% in four years as members deposited checks by phone and paid bills online. Yet members still come in for help opening accounts, understanding loans and fixing problems with digital tools, and those visits take longer. Blue Ridge's leadership has decided to combine teller and member service work into a single role, the universal banker. HR director Denise Carter must analyze the new job and plan how to staff it over three years. This paper describes both.

Analyzing the New Role

Because the role is new, no one holds it yet. Denise combined four sources. She observed six tellers and member service representatives for two days each. She interviewed two universal bankers at a larger credit union that made the change three years ago. She analyzed a year of transaction and appointment data to see what members need and how long it takes. And she held a workshop with branch managers to describe the work they expect.

Guarding Against Error

Morgeson and Campion (1997) described sixteen potential sources of inaccuracy in job analysis, arising from social and cognitive processes. Social sources include conformity pressures in groups, self-presentation, in which incumbents inflate the importance of their tasks, and impression management. Cognitive sources include limited capacity to process information, overload when rating many tasks, and biases such as carelessness or inadequate knowledge of the job. These errors can make job analysis data less accurate even when respondents are honest.

Denise took steps against several. Branch managers in the workshop wrote their estimates independently before discussing them, reducing conformity. Transaction data checked interview claims about how much time tasks take, and the visit to the other credit union provided a view from people already doing the work. And she kept the task list short, at five main tasks, rather than asking for ratings of fifty.

From Job to Work

Sanchez and Levine (2012) reviewed how job analysis developed and argued that traditional, static descriptions of jobs fit poorly with modern work, which changes quickly and depends on teams and context. They proposed broader work analysis that captures the context of work, how people collaborate and how roles evolve, and that serves purposes beyond writing job descriptions, such as designing training and planning careers.

The universal banker role will keep changing as digital tools change. Denise will therefore review the task analysis each year and describe the role in terms of the capabilities members need, such as teaching digital tools, rather than a fixed list of duties.

Projecting Needs

Branch traffic is projected to fall a further 15% to 30% over three years, depending on how fast members adopt digital tools. Blue Ridge now has 120 tellers and member service representatives. With universal bankers able to handle a wider range of visits, the plan projects a need for 90 to 102, with 96 as the working figure.

Making and Buying Talent

Cappelli (2008) argued that companies face uncertain talent needs and should manage them like a supply chain. He proposed four principles: make and buy, developing some talent internally and hiring some, to balance risk; adapt to the uncertainty in demand, for example by forecasting in ranges and developing talent in shorter, modular steps; improve the return on development, such as by having employees share costs; and preserve the investment by balancing employees' and employers' interests in internal moves.

Following that approach, Blue Ridge will train 70 current employees as universal bankers through a twelve-week program and hire the remainder from outside, mainly people with lending or customer service experience. Annual turnover of about 25%, even after the improvements planned in Module 1, means the reduction from 120 can happen through attrition without layoffs.

The Training Program

The twelve-week program for current employees is built from the task table. Tellers learn account opening and lending basics; member service representatives refresh cash procedures; everyone practices teaching the mobile app to members of different ages and comfort levels. Training is modular, as Cappelli suggested, so an employee can complete the cash and digital modules first and work part of the role while finishing the lending module. Employees who complete it receive a raise to the universal banker rate, which shares the gains of the new skills with the people who learned them.

People Whose Jobs Are Changing

Not every teller will want the new role. Some prefer cash handling and dislike selling or explaining loans. Denise will meet every teller and member service representative individually before training begins, explain the change and ask about their interest. Those who decline will keep their current roles while attrition reduces the need, and some may move to the credit union's growing contact center, which needs people who know members' accounts. Treating the transition as a choice rather than an order protects the trust Module 1 set out to build.

Risks in the Forecast

The projection could be wrong in either direction. If members move to digital banking faster than expected, Blue Ridge will need fewer universal bankers and should slow outside hiring first, since it is easier to hire less than to remove people already trained. If adoption is slower, branches will need more staff for longer, and the training program can be extended. Reviewing the forecast each year against actual branch traffic keeps the plan honest.

Conclusion

Morgeson and Campion show how to make the analysis more accurate, Sanchez and Levine show why the role must be treated as changing and Cappelli shows how to plan under uncertainty. The result is a defined role and a three-year plan that develops current employees and hires for skills they lack.

References

Cappelli, P. (2008). Talent management for the twenty-first century. Harvard Business Review, 86(3), 74-81.

Morgeson, F. P., & Campion, M. A. (1997). Social and cognitive sources of potential inaccuracy in job analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82(5), 627-655. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.82.5.627

Sanchez, J. I., & Levine, E. L. (2012). The rise and fall of job analysis and the future of work analysis. Annual Review of Psychology, 63, 397-425. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-120710-100401