After floods hit Mumbai in 2005, an NGO needed to conduct a large-scale damage survey. The NGO's head of HR, John Alex, wanted to hire 25 student interns for a month and develop a job description to outline their duties. Existing employees objected, thinking documentation was unnecessary. John had never formally documented job descriptions before, as employees knew their roles, but the expanded survey scope required clarification.
After floods hit Mumbai in 2005, an NGO needed to conduct a large-scale damage survey. The NGO's head of HR, John Alex, wanted to hire 25 student interns for a month and develop a job description to outline their duties. Existing employees objected, thinking documentation was unnecessary. John had never formally documented job descriptions before, as employees knew their roles, but the expanded survey scope required clarification.
After floods hit Mumbai in 2005, an NGO needed to conduct a large-scale damage survey. The NGO's head of HR, John Alex, wanted to hire 25 student interns for a month and develop a job description to outline their duties. Existing employees objected, thinking documentation was unnecessary. John had never formally documented job descriptions before, as employees knew their roles, but the expanded survey scope required clarification.
Social Surveyors in flood Hit Areas- Case let Chapter 4- Job Analysis; HRM: by Gary Dessler
and Biju Varkkey
After the unexpected floods that hit the city of Mumbai in July 2005, causing wide spread damage to life and property, John Alex was in a dilemma. John heads the HR and administration department of a national level MGO that works to improve the urban quality of life in the city of, Mumbai. The NGO focuses on promoting community-based solid waste management and other initiatives in localities like dharavi, the lasts slum in the city. It has 25 full time employees in Mumbai and at any point of time has four or five part time volunteers. The floods had affected the lives of many existing employees of the NGO too. John had never considered drawing formal job description earlier because the existing employees knew their job very well and this knowledge was transmitted verbally to any new employee. The work culture was also such that all employees helped each other in their jobs, as and when required. However, after the flood water receded, the NGO had to take immediate action. A detailed survey of the areas had to be undertaken to determine the extent of damage caused. While 3 employees of the NGO had experience in conducting surveys, this time the scope and coverage of the survey was going to be larger. Also, all three of them were engaged in other work so they could not be involved full time. John decided to recruit 25 final year statistics students firm local colleges as part time interns for one month. To give them a proper idea about the job, John wanted to develop a job description for interns and wanted to consult the existing employees. The proposal was not received well by the current employees, who thought that the time was not right for such an exercise and what was required "was action, not documentation or bureaucracy or paper work". Question: 1. Should John have proposed the ideas of developing job description for the interns? What advantage will the formal JD give? 2. If you were john, how would you have gone about developing the job description?