The techniques for analyzing the Resource Management Skills consist of data collection and analysis methods with especial importance given to those elements that have been assessed at many Airlines. The following text will briefly describe the generalized data collection techniques proceeded by the further explanation of the four analytical steps that should be taken care of while identifying the Resource Management Skills.
Data Collection Techniques are used to initiate the process of skill identification that in turn fulfills the requirements at individual, team and organizational levels. The following are the basic data collection techniques that have been implemented by Airlines to analyze the skills of the practitioners. These techniques illustrate the varied types of data collection that can be adapted to identify and assess the skills individually and/or collectively.
- Direct Observation: In this technique continuous job performance of an individual or a team is recorded as per the observation of the professional analyst appointed for this task. The direct observation technique is constrained to a small sample since it is both time consuming and costly.
- Questionnaires: This technique comprises of surveys, checklists, feedbacks, and others which are designed to collect the information showing the efficiency level of the job done. With the help of the questionnaires, the concerned department of the Airline is able to gather job information from quite a large number of SME (Subject Matter Expert) Pilots. This technique is very handy in evaluating the skills of the team.
- Logs: Officials note down the job activities by filling out the diaries and the logs. This type of data collection technique is used in the initial stages of evaluation process when a very little information is available regarding the job or the skills.
- Individual Interviews: Individual Interviews are arranged in the pretext of a meeting between an official and an analyst. It is recommended to hold a well composed interview along with some flexibility in order to analyze the skills of an individual.
- Group Interviews: This data collection technique is executed by placing a meeting amongst the Subject Matter Experts and the facilitator. Group Interviews usually emphasize over a single job at a time. This technique manages to collect a huge amount of job information in a relatively shorter span of time.
- Analysis of Documents of Training Systems: Elementary level of job information can be obtained through analyzing job and organizations files and documents. Documents are usually analyzed in cases when a very small amount of job information is present.
- Subject Matter Expert Conferences: Subject Matter Experts gather information concerning jobs or jobs’ elements such as the skills. SMEs work in a group so that they can attain a certain level of consensus before they submit the gathered job information. The conference can collect the job data in a more effective manner if the Subject Matter Experts are made available in the same time at the common place.
- Job Performance by Analysts: This data collection technique designates an analyst to study and execute the job of his interest. It has limited number of applications in cases of complicated jobs where abundant experience is mandatory prior to executing the jobs. (Edens, Bowers and Salas, 2001)
A concise overlook on the above mentioned data collection techniques will be very helpful to determine the most appropriate one for identifying the Resource Management Skills. As per the title’s indication, the Direct Observation is the data collection technique providing the most current, detailed and on the spot form of information regarding the job and the skills of the person performing that job. The biggest drawback of selecting the Direct Observation Technique for evaluating the Resource Management Skills is that it can turn out to be very tough to comprehend the data obtained from this technique due to the psychological nature of most of those skills.