Analyze the job or the worker?
When doing a job analysis, it’s helpful to start with a research question you are looking to answer. It could be something like,
What are the critical tasks I should train people on in this job?
What are the typical characteristics of people who currently have this job?
What kinds of characteristics do we see in newcomers into this job?
You’ll see these questions focus on specific areas of work. In the first question, we are looking into the job itself. What kinds of tasks do they routinely complete? How frequently do they complete those tasks? How difficult does an average incumbent feel the task is? Are some tasks more prone to error than others? How critical are some tasks? Are some tasks related to specific performance indicators? Here we are analyzing the work or tasks.
The second question focuses on those who are currently doing the work. How many are there? What kinds of education do they have? How much experience do they have doing this type of work? How long do they typically hold this job? What kinds of career paths lead them to this position and what career paths do they pursue afterwards? What kinds of age groups are there and how close to retirement may some be?
The third question focuses on those who are just joining the company or possibly promoting into that job. What kinds of backgrounds do they come in with? What kinds of education levels do they have? Do they come in with any typical preconceptions of how the job works? Do they misunderstand or underestimate things about the work? Where do they tend to catch on quickly and where do they tend to struggle?
These are all valuable research projects and can shed a lot of light on your training content and training audience. However, you should exercise caution not to try to research everything at the same time. It helps to take things one step at a time. Start with learning about the work and the tasks. Once you get a sense of the types of work they do, start another project to learn about the users and gather that information. As you start the training program, you may have an opportunity to gather information about the newcomers and then you can expand this out to gathering data as they transition from training to the job.
They are all valuable but please make sure you establish the research question first. Have clarity on what you are trying to answer before you begin asking questions and collecting data.