Functional Job Analysis

Functional job analysis, developed by the Employment and Training Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor, is a qualitative approach to analyzing a job role and the person doing it. It produces unique information based on the employee’s actual behavior and actions on the job.

FJA breaks job roles down into seven areas: things, data, worker instructions, reasoning, people, maths, and language. Looking at worker actions within these areas is central to the FJA process.

FJA tends to give a better understanding of both the employee and the role, but because it leans qualitative rather than quantitative, it is harder to standardize the analysis across an organization.