Dual Career Group

Flexi Work and Flexi Time

Developing the Role

Vini Vineeta 09 MBA 08

Zoya Siddique 09 MBA 29
 DUAL CAREER GROUPS
Dual career group is defined as, ―Two professional people in a marital relationship in
which both partners pursue a career characterized by strong commitment, personal
growth and increasing level of responsibility.‖

In other words, dual career group is a pair of young professionals in which there‘s an
arrangement whereby both the spouses have their own career and are also
committed to it. Here, both husband and wife seek a steady advancement and
psychological and financial satisfaction.

The term ―dual career couple‖ was originally coined by a husband-and-wife team of
sociologists, Rona and Robert Ropoport. This term is an off-shoot of the phrase ―dual
earner couple.‖ In the dual career couple, wives are more career-oriented rather than
simply holding jobs, as in many cases of dual-earner couples. In dual career couples,
there is higher commitment, higher level of training and accumulated experience in
their careers.

GROWTH OF DUAL CAREER GROUPS

The growth of employment among higher educated women has implied a growth in
dual career couples. There has been a tremendous increase in the number of female
employees in all types of organizations due to: -

 Increased career orientation among women in recent years.

 Creation of variety of jobs.
 higher level commitment
 Better performance.
 Less demanding & agitate oriented.
 Economic Freedom.
 Better Social Status.
 Aspirations for quality of work life.

Since opportunities for women increase, employers are faced with new challenges
when it comes to working with employees married to individuals who have their own
careers to consider. So the companies follow certain strategies to cope up with this
condition. These strategies are:
1) Hire the couple

Because many educated, professional men are choosing to marry educated,

professional women instead of traditional housewives, companies are faced with the
prospect of losing qualified employees when a spouse gets a new job in another city
or is transferred. One way to avoid dealing with a spouse's unpredictable employment
situation is to employ the couple. This strategy is particularly popular in universities and
laboratories in which both spouses are chemists or both are professors. Some
companies are even able to employ couples in different careers, for example, one in
an accounting department and one in a legal department. By employing the couple,
companies can control the risk of losing an employee due to a spouse's changing
situation.

2) Treat both members as individuals

Earlier some companies used to shy away from hiring dual-career couples because of
concern over the couple's performance. Some companies do not want to get stuck
employing one "weak" employee just to hold on to the "stronger" partner. Companies
may also fear complaints from other employees regarding special treatment for
spouses who are unqualified for their positions. The company can avoid this by
assuring dual-career couples that they will be treated as individuals at the workplace.
Each partner will be held entirely accountable for his or her performance and one
partner will not be allowed to negotiate for a better position or higher salary for the
other partner. Likewise, one partner will not be held accountable for the other partner's
mistakes.

3) Offer benefits without regards to gender

Although traditionally women are held responsible for childcare and household affairs
whether they work or not, this is not fair to either men or women in the workforce. So
some companies offer benefits such as paid leave, flexible hours and child care
services without regard to gender. Only offering child care leave to women places the
burden of child care exclusively on women employees and prevents male employees
from participating in child care in their own homes. This causes stress to employees
and families and can result in women being discriminated against.

For dual career couples, the balance between work and family is more complicated
by:

 A greater commitment to high demand jobs.

  Higher cost of interruption during child bearing years.
 More difficult coordination of longer work schedules.
 Difficult coordination of job locations.

For companies, the main reasons to support dual career groups are:

 The possibilities of attracting and recruiting.

 Developing the skills of the employees.

 Difficulty in replacing high skilled professionals.

 Concern for future labor shortage of skilled labor.

Certain concerns of dual career groups are:

 Role conflict

 Difficulties with travel

 Child care

 Household task

 Job transfers

 Relocation

 Trouble determining priority for their various roles and responsibility

IMPLICATIONS FOR HRD

 Flexible work scheduling

Employers have been adopting a number of flexible work arrangements. These
include flexitime, job sharing, part-time work, compressed work weeks,
temporary work and work from home. These programs enable employees to
address their work and family concerns and reduce their potential stress or
conflict between their various life roles.

 Family leave policies

Such types of leaves allow employees to have some periods away from work so
as to take care of their family matters. This also allows them to spend some
 quality time with their families and as a result they are more actively involved in
the work when they are back to their work.

 Child care assistance

Some child care facilities such as referral services, on-site or off-site day care
centers are provided for the kids of such employees.

 Counseling
Younger dual career couples increasingly seek assistance from counselors in
negotiating stress that arise from dual career lifestyles. Some companies provide
counselors for these couples. An interactive counseling perspective includes
approaches from career counseling, development psychology, couple and
marriage counseling and gender psychology.

 Sensitivity training
There are a few companies which have full time work family managers to help
employees with these issues.

 Addressing relocation problems

Generally, the dual career couple express less willingness to accept relocation
offers from their employers. Since spouse willingness to relocate is one of the
important related to employee willingness to relocate, some organizations have
started offering relcation assistance to the spouses of their employees.

ADVANTAGES OF DAUL CAREER GROUPS

 Individuals get more of support in the workplace too.

 Individuals are more comfortable with working with their spouse than with others.

 There‘s more of understanding and compatibility between such employees.

 Organization gets a better workforce.

DISADVANTAGES OF DUAL CAREER GROUPS

 Inability to perform well by one partner will affect the others performance too.

 Conflicts at family front have an adverse affect on workplace.

  Many a times some ego problems also arise between the partners.

CONCLUSIONS

From the findings of all studies conducted on this ground, it is understood that dual
career groups is not a short term phenomenon but have become almost a norm. By
practicing dual career couple friendly policies, companies can attract and retain
skilled and qualified workforce.
 FLEXI WORK
Flexibility and Flexible Work are terms used to describe a wide range of work styles and
employment practices. Broadly speaking, they are used to describe all kinds of
employment which differ from the traditional 9-5 full time job with a permanent
contract.

The "flexible" aspect of these types of jobs can in different instances relate more to the
employees, or to the employer, or to both. That is, from the employee‘s point of view,
flexible work may allow more freedom to organize their employment to fit in with other
parts of their life. For an employer, the flexibility may come with the ability to organize
labor resources more in line with the varying needs of customers, or with peaks and
troughs of demand.

EMERGENCE IN INDIA

There are several reasons for the emergence of flexi work schedules in India. Since
2005, Indian companies have started facing the brunt of attrition. Attrition was actually
turning out to be the big spoil-sport at India‘s big economic outing. This lead to some
aggressive lateral thinking by organizations in not only relooking at their employee
value proposition, but also identifying alternative pools of talent which could deliver
productivity and engagement. One such talent pool is that of women who have taken
a break in career or are only keen on work-life integrated jobs. This was the spark that
helped create India‘s first career service for women who sought work-life integrated
careers.

Corporate readiness for flexi work

A large number of organizations had matured into considering this talent pool seriously.
The word ‗matured‘ is deliberately used because it takes a certain amount of evolution
for the organization to actually convert into a culture which not only allows flexible
working, but also has a system and process to assess, develop and grow women
managers who work flexibly. More importantly, flexibility is fast ceasing to be a woman-
only affair and is converting into a gender-neutral requirement.
Today, there is definitely a sizeable number of companies which offer flexi-working
hours to their employees. Companies are also hiring employees purely on flexi-working
basis for project-based assignments and on contingency requirement.

Industries that best leverage flexi workforce

For a flexi-workforce to be effective and leveraged there has to be a flexi-culture and
a flexi-system in place. In other words, flexi-careers have to be an accepted form of
career management. Any industry which has at least 15 per cent women in its
workforce, will find the need to eventually adopt a flexible culture. For a country such
as ours where women constitute about 28 per cent of the workforce, a number which
is steadily growing at about 2-3 per cent pa, flexibility becomes essential if we want
reasonable return on the investment made in women‘s development. In the IT sector,
there is workforce participation of women to the extent of about 34 per cent. Hence it
is imperative that flexibility is not frowned upon and is seen as a critical method to
manage the careers of women, to begin with, and then for all employees.
Almost all industries can use a flexi-work force. Obviously, certain industries are more
tuned for flexible working because of the work environment and nature of business. The
services industry, creative industry and consulting business can leverage it the most. IT,
BPO, banking, financial services and insurance are the industries where flexible working
is used extensively depending on the nature of work. It is normally thought that flexible
working is not possible in a manufacturing environment, but even here functions like
finance, auditing, quality assurance and HR can be done flexibly. There are more than
10 different types of flexi-working options. A systematic job analysis will help in
identifying which kind of flexible working best suits the jobs in a particular industry.

Companies engaging flexi work schedules need to adopt the following steps
cautiously:
 They need to convince the top management to buy in to the idea of flexi work
arrangements, as support from top management is essential to integrating flexi
work schedules.
 Identify jobs that can be done flexibly and the type of flexi working that will suit
the job and the organization.
 Integrate flexi working jobs and flexi working employees effectively into existing
working arrangements.
 Companies should be out put driven rather than input driven. Face time is still
one of the performance evaluation criteria in Indian companies.
 Clear deliverables need to be defined for flexi jobs.

Types of flexi work are:

 Phased and partial retirement:
Phased: Provides for gradual retirement through reduction of full-time work in
phases (over a number of years).
Partial: Senior employees are given part-time employment; retirement income
and salary may be combined. Eg. *
Polaroid Corp: "Tapering-Off" program allows older employees to reduce work
hours gradually - on daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
 Part-time Work or Job Sharing:
Employees work fewer hours, or two employees share the same position, splitting
the responsibility for the work between them.
 Voluntary reduced work time (v-time):
Either ad-hoc or part of a formal program whereby employees are given the
option of reducing hours (from 2%-50%) and compensation for a specified
period of time (6 or 12 months, for example). At end of agreement they can
either return to full-time work or renegotiate V-Time.
 Leave time:
An authorized absence from work that may or may not be paid but does not risk
loss of employment rights. There are varying policies about the continuation of
benefits during the leave period, reasons for which range from family or
education to need for personal or leisure time.
 Work-sharing – STC (short-time compensation):
In order to avoid layoffs, most or all of an organization's workforce will agree to a
reduction in hours and pay. Eg. STC
and V-Time widespread in Europe as alternative to layoffs. 17 states have
passed laws, based on California model allowing partial payment of
unemployment.
 Flexiplace/Flexible Location:
Applies to any number of arrangements where the employee works off-site,
either at home or in a satellite office, commonly known as telecommuting. Also
known as "virtual office"; staff are supplied with all necessary equipment. Rapidly
expanding option in both private and public sector.
Satellite offices: Remote office locations placed within a large concentration of
employee residences, allowing employees to telecommute.
Variously described as location independent working, teleworking,
telecommuting, home working, remote working, anywhere/anytime working.
and many more.
Eg. JC Penney: Employs a telemarketting staff of around 10,000. Customer
service reps work "on- line" from their homes with company equipment.
LIC has recently opened a satellite office in Coimbatore.
 Flexible contract:
Contractual arrangements can include any of the above, but in particular
usually refers to:
o Outsourcing: contracting with another company or person to do a
particular function
o Use of agency workers: An agency worker is a person who has an
agreement with an agency to work for another person. For example, a
 secretary may have an agreement with a secretarial agency to do work
for an office while one of their employees is on leave.
o Temporary/fixed term contracts
o Casual labour
 Staggered hours:
Staggered hours means employees can all have different start, finish and break
times. This allows employers to cover longer opening hours. It also offers
employees more flexibility.
 Shift swapping:
Shift swapping lets staff negotiate their working times and shifts amongst
themselves, whilst keeping the needs of the business or service in mind.
 Self-rostering:
It involves working out the number of staff needed each day, then letting
employees put forward the time they would like to work. Shift patterns are then
compiled, matching staff preferences to the agreed staffing levels. It is used in
some hospitals and care services.
 Flexi-years:
A work arrangement under which employees can choose (at six-month intervals)
the number of hours they want to work each month over the next year with
maximum and minimum limits defined.
 Time accounts:
Time accounts are a formalization of the age-old process of taking time off to
compensate for extra time worked, and vice versa. One can build up time
credits in one's account and take them off later at one‘s convenience.
 Term-time working:
Term-time working makes it possible for permanent employees to take unpaid
leave during school holidays.

ADVANTAGES OF FLEXI WORK

 Open time management can be done. One is free to plan out his/her day
accordingly.
 One can easily attend to one‘s personal obligations like picking up the kids form
school or a doctor‘s appointment.
 One can plan out a vacation by taking long off periods or just relax after putting
the required number of working hours.
 Reduces consumption of commuting time and fuel costs.
 Helps to avoid traffic and stress of commuting during rush hours.
  Allows people to work when they accomplish most, feel freshest and enjoy
working.
 It may help in decreasing external childcare hours and costs.
 Improved job satisfaction, morale, and productivity.
 Enhanced employee recruitment and retention.
 Increased energy and creativity.
 Reduced absenteeism.

DISADVANTAGES OF FLEXI WORK

 Flexi work schedules may result in potentially fewer working hours. It may be so
that when the companies need employees they may not free and vice versa,
leading to less output.
 At certain times, employees working as flexi workers are not given equal pay
and benefits. One must be very careful as to ensure the pay and benefit
considerations.
 Working less number of days in a week may result in working longer hours in a
single day which could be taxing and stressful.
 Failure to include employees in planning stage may result in them feeling left
out and their needs being misunderstood. This could lead to de-motivation and
incompatible flexi work schedules.
 It is important that the employees conducive to flexi work must be identified and
only then offered the option of flexi work.
 Informal policies that lead to inconsistencies and inequities must be avoided at
all costs. This leads to an environment of non-seriousness and non-commitment.
 There is decrease in communication between employees and supervisors
because of different log in times of the employees. This cam lead to
miscommunication or delayed communication.
 Managers are resistant to supervise employees with a range of log in times as
this burdens them by increasing their working hours and demanding more
vigilance of them.
 Sometimes legal cases have been found where employees have sued the
organizations for injuries that they have suffered while working from other
locations. Such aspects that decide what activities are permissible and what not
should be made clear at the time of the contract.
 Failure to monitor, asses and update flexible work arrangements leads to
employees getting bored by following the same patterns and them lagging
behind the industry norms.
  Lethargy in employees‘ attitude due to lack of supervision is seen.

Examples

1) The Tata group has taken to hiring comeback mothers in a big way with its
Second Career Initiative Programs.
2) Accenture India's Maternity Returners Program provides advance career
guidance to mothers on a maternity break. Along with flexible timing, they have
tied up with crèches to make life easier for mothers. They also have adoption
leave provision for parents who have adopted kids.
3) Godrej too has a back- to- work program called GROW ( Godrej Revival of
Opportunities for Women), which enables qualified women professionals to join
the workforce after a break, and even an in- house crèche.
4) The Flexi Work Option (FWO) experience at IBM India has shown that ‗flexi‘ is not
a gender-based choice. IBM ensures that employees choosing FWO do not
miss out on career development and promotion opportunities. In fact, IBM‘s
work/life programs are consistently rated as one of the top reasons employees
stay with the company. IBM in India also allows its employees to move to
locations of their choice. This option is particularly popular among women who
use the facility to shift along with their spouses. IBM has also developed a
Workplace Flexibility Toolkit — a collection of useful tips for teleworkers that
includes information on career management; setting work/life boundaries when
working from home; and staying connected with the team when working
remotely. 78% of IBM managers have teams with some remote workers
5) Eastman Kodak, an ―info-imaging‖ company has operations in over 30
countries and a workforce of 70,000 employees; the challenge was meeting
employee desires for work-life balance. Solution: Part-time work, job sharing,
compressed workweeks, flextime, and telecommuting/flex-place arrangements.
 FLEXITIME
Flexi time is one of the working schemes which operate under flexible working
arrangement. The flexible work practice is beneficial for both employee and employer
as these flexible work arrangements can help to improve recruitment and retention,
assist in managing workloads and in boosting employee satisfaction. The Department
of Trade and Industry (DTI), U.K. guidelines for employers and employees state that
flexible working opportunities benefit everyone: employers, employees and their
families. It is understood that it makes good business sense to provide flexible working
opportunities for staff.

Flexible working arrangements enable employers to:

 Retain skilled staff and reduce recruitment costs;

 Raise staff morale and decrease absenteeism; and
 React to changing market conditions more effectively.

For individuals, the opportunity to work flexibly can greatly improve the ability to
balance home and work responsibilities. The DTI guidelines provide examples of the
following flexible working schemes:

 Annualized hours describes working time organised on the basis of the number
of hours to be worked over a year rather than a week; usually to fit in with peaks
and troughs of work. Pay will depend on the hours worked each pay period.

 Compressed hours allow individuals to work their total number of agreed hours
over a shorter period. For example, employees might work their full weekly hours
over four, rather than five days. They would be paid for a full-time job but would
not receive overtime payments for any agreed extra hours worked during a day.

 Flexitime gives employees choice about their actual working hours, usually
outside certain agreed core times. Individuals are paid for the hours that they
work.

 Home-working doesn‘t have to be on a full-time basis and it may suit an

employee to divide their time between home and office. Individuals are paid
according to the hours that they work. Employers are required to carry out a risk
assessment of the activities undertaken by home-workers, identifying any
hazards and deciding whether enough steps have been taken to prevent harm
to them or anyone else who may be affected by the work.
  Job-sharing typically involves two people employed on a part-time basis while
working together to cover a full-time job. Both receive pay for the hours they
work.

 Shift working gives employers the scope to have their business open for longer
periods than an eight-hour day. Agreed flexible working arrangements may lead
to a shift premium payment not being required.

 Staggered hours allow employees to start and finish their day at different times.
Pay depends on hours worked in total rather than the time at which they were
worked.

Flextime (originally derived from the German word ―Gleitzeit‖ which literally means
'sliding time') is a variable work schedule, in contrast to traditional work arrangements.

Flexi-time is defined as, an arranged agreement between a Manager and staff

member in which they mutually agree to vary their staff member‘s commencing,
ceasing and meal break times while still maintaining the total number of hours worked
over a period.

There are certain benefits of Flexi time:

 Flexi-time enables the arrangement of working hours to suit personal or family

commitments, particularly staff with dependent children.

 Accumulating additional hours then having long stretches of time off work allows
employees to more effectively pursue broader career/personal/social and
community responsibilities and interests.

 Employees who are better able to manage their work-life balance more
effectively are more likely to have high staff morale, greater employee
satisfaction and work commitment resulting in a more enriched working
environment and a correspondingly more vibrant, creative and productive
workforce.

Flexi time has been classified into various types of which some are:

 Flexi tour:
You select the starting and stopping time for work independently and adhere to
these timings regularly.
  Flexi time:
You must be at work during specified core hours, but can make up the rest of
your hours as you wish.
 Gliding schedule:
You must meet the basic requirement of eight hours a day and 40/ 48 hours a
week. Within that, you can opt to change your arrival and departure time every
day.
 Variable day:
You must meet the basic requirement of 40 or 48 hours (depending on the
organization) a week but can vary the number of hours you work each day.
 Maxi flex:
You decide: This kind of flexible work schedule contains the least number of core
hours and offers maximum flexibility.
 Annualized hours:
It is a variant of flexi-time where employees are contracted to work a certain
number of hours per year. They may adjust their hours and their work time on
agreement with the employer.
 Zero hours contracts:
Zero hours arrangement is in effect, an "on call arrangement". There are no fixed
pre-decided hours and work varies according to requirement.
 Time accounts:
Time accounts are a formalization of the age-old process of taking time off to
compensate for extra time worked, and vice versa. One can build up time
credits in one's account and take them off later at one‘s convenience.
 Compressed time options:
An arrangement that allows employees, who want more free days, to work
voluntarily for four ten-hour days instead of the usual five eight-hour days.
Sometimes there may be still more flexibility regarding choice of days and time.

The various uses of flexi time are:

 To promote employee morale.

 To provide opportunities for employees to conduct personal business without
taking either paid or unpaid time off.
 To maximize employee productivity.
 To accommodate individuals for whom rigid work hours constitute a hardship or
even a barrier to employment.
 To minimize employee tardiness and short term absences.
 To allow greater employee participation in family and community activities.
  To increase flexibility in meeting irregular scheduling needs.

Flexi time is advantageous for both employees and employers.

 To Employees:

o Improves quality of work life for employees

o Gives more autonomy
o Demonstrates trust and invites self discipline
o Enables them to strike a balance between work and family life
o Brings out the best in them

 To Organizations:

o Improved staff retention/loyalty

o Improved motivation
o Enhanced innovation and creativity
o Reduce absenteeism
o Increase in benefits and profits
o Flexibility to deal with change and short term business needs

Although flexi time is quite advantageous, it too has certain disadvantages:

 Scheduling of meetings is quite difficult.

 To locate employees is also tough.
 Flexi-time arrangements may mean there are inadequate staff levels at some
times.
 Difficulty in administering tasks which are more interdependent.
 Staff is required to keep detailed records of flexi-time, which is resource intensive
and time-consuming.
 DEVELOPING THE ROLE

The role that a person plays in the organization is directly related to his job and position.
In order to understand the role, we must first understand the job and the position. Once
these concepts are clear we can proceed towards understanding the development of
the role.

Task
Task is the basic unit of the job, and is defined as a specific element in a particular job
or a specific activity bounded by time.

Job
A series of tasks may constitute a job. In a job there is a strong relationship between the
job performer and the product of that performance.

Position/Office
A specific point in the organization is the position or office. While the term job is
descriptive (activities to be done), position is evaluative (level, power, authority, etc.).

Role
Role is the position or office a person occupies as defined by expectations from
significant persons in the organization, including the person himself.

Developing the Role

Analyzing the role is very important for the development of the role. Generally, this
analysis is done in relation to a job. Job analysis includes arriving at the job description
and the job specifications. While job analysis is useful in giving some idea about the
contents of the job, it does not directly contribute to people‘s development. Analysis of
the job can only be used for role development if a conscious effort is made in using
the data for development purpose.
Three dimensions have been discussed below that are used for developing the role:
 Key Performance Areas (KPAs)
 Critical Attributes
 Role Analysis
KEY PERFORMANCE AREAS

Analysis of role in its KPAs is necessary for performance appraisal, training and
development of the people and the jobs. A person performing a job should clearly
know what are the main functions he should attend, and what are the functions he
should regard as key functions of the job. His development in his role will greatly
depend on the clarity about such priorities of his role. Training can greatly benefit from
such an analysis, so that it can focus on important functions. KPAs are important
because:

 KPAs are those functions of a role that require priority attention. They may pin
point functions of the present and the future role.
 KPAs are very specific and indicate what the role occupant‘s job contributes to
the organization. This prevents role erosion and role ambiguity.
 KPAs lead to delegation of functions to the next jobs. When a manager realizes
that his KPAs have to be qualitatively different, indicating higher responsibility,
from those of his subordinate, he is forced to think of delegating, and define his
own KPAs in terms of higher responsibility.
 Well defined KPAs focus the attention of the job holder on his critical functions
and on those that distinguish his functions and tasks from that of his boss,
subordinates and colleagues.
 KPAs may be useful for general development of people in the organization.

KPAs can be identified by:

 Listing out all the activities that a role occupant is expected to carry out as part
of his role.
 Grouping these activities into categories that may be labeled as functions.
 Identifying those functions that are critical for his role.

Example

KPAs of a Sales Manager may be:

 Carrying out market surveys and preparing sales forecast

 Securing sales orders
 Executing sales orders
 Collection of payments
 Ensuring after sales service
KPAs for a job should not be too many and they should distinctly characterize the job.
KPAs can change from time to time over years, but once identified they should be
good for a few years.

CRITICAL ATTRIBUTES

They are the personal qualities and characteristics a role occupant should have in
order to be effective in the role. Critical attributes will include all kinds of qualities-
educational qualifications, experience, physical characteristics, emotional and
attitudinal characteristics etc.

Critical attributes have several uses:

 Used for improving recruitment policies.

 Ensuring better placement.
 Providing focused training.
 For better analysis of people up for promotions

Critical attributes can be identified by four methods:

 Observation: If people have enough time, they can observe the working of an
effective or ineffective role occupant over a long period. They can note down
qualities the effective role occupants show their roles, contrasted with those of
the less effective one. These comparisons can give a good idea of the critical
attributes for that role.
 Interview: Interviews can be conducted by dividing role occupants into known
effective and ineffective groups to find out what qualities they posses, or with
representatives of the role occupants and other role senders to find out from
their experiences what qualities they perceive as distinguishing between
effective and ineffective role occupants. Such interviews can be conducted
either with a structured or unstructured questionnaire. Data collected an be
used for finalization of CAs
 Critical incidents technique: this technique has been used exclusively for
identification of CAs. A request is sent to come role occupants and several
significant others to think of situations and actual examples in which a role
occupant was more effective, and describe the actual incident indicating
where he was effective. In describing the incident, they are asked to describe
the situation, who all were involved, what the problem was, how did the role
occupant solve it, what attributes helped in solving the problem or where did
they think the role occupant was ineffective. These are called as critical
incidents because they indicate the basic or critical difference between the
 effective and ineffective behavior of the role occupant. These attributes are
noted down and edited to give the critical attributes for the role.
 Check-list: It is the quickest way to gather data about CAs for a role. A long list
can be prepared by consulting various studies and books and can be used as
a check-list. This list is given to the employees to select those attributes which
they think are important for the role. This list can then be edited to give the CAs
for the role.

Examples

Critical attributes for a Copywriter are:

 Creativity
 Ability to meet deadlines
 Communication skills
 Flexibility/Adaptability

ROLE ANALYSIS

 Helps the role occupant to prepare his role description.

 Helps in eliminating role ambiguity and role erosion.
 Certain exercises (designed by Pareek, 1974) are carried out by the role –set
members in order to analyze the role. The role-set members are the people
associated with a particular role. The steps involved are:
 All the members complete a ‗Your Expectations‘ form.
 The role occupant collects all the completed forms and prepares a
summary of all the expectations in ‗Expectations Summary‘.
 The role occupant meets all the role-set members and discusses with
them expectations requiring clarification, conflicting expectations, and his
own reactions to the expectations.
 After the discussions, the role occupant finalizes the description of his role
and distributes copies to all the members.

Examples

 Indian Oil Corporation has conducted role development exercises ranging

over a period of 2 to 3 years and as a result have prepared role directories and
used them for development purposes.
 Crompton Greaves has used role analysis for performance appraisal and
potential appraisal.
 L & T have identified critical attributes needed for the various roles.
The exercise is conducted with the help of the form shown below:

Your Expectation

Role:_______________ Role occupant‘s name:_____________

Role expectations:

List of functions:

Functions suggested for the

Rating %age of time spent
role

List of behaviors that you would like the role occupant to show:

1.
2.
3.
4.

List of functions that the role occupant must not perform:

1.
2.
3.

Expectations Summary

Your role:___________ Your name:____________

Functions A, B, C rating Degree of Modifications after

agreement discussion
(H, M, L)