Individual responses to jobs vary. A job may be motivating to one person but not to someone else. Also, depending on how jobs are designed, they may provide more or less opportunity for employees to satisfy their job-related needs. For example, a sales job may furnish a good opportunity to satisfy social needs, whereas a training assignment may satisfy a person’s need to be an expert in a certain area. A job that gives little latitude may not satisfy an individual’s need to be creative or innovative. Therefore, managers and employees alike are finding that understanding the characteristics of jobs requires broader perspectives than it did in the past. Designing or redesigning jobs encompasses many factors. Job design refers to organizing tasks, duties, and responsibilities into a productive unit of work. It involves the content of jobs and the effect of jobs on employees. Identifying the components of a given job is an integral part of job design. More attention is being paid to job design for three major reasons:
Nature of Job Design
Identifying the components of a given job is an integral part of job design. Designing or redesigning jobs encompasses many factors, and a number of different techniques are available to the manager. Job design has been equated with job enrichment, a technique developed by Frederick Herzberg, but job design is much broader than job enrichment alone.
JOB ENLARGEMENT AND JOB ENRICHMENT
Attempts to alleviate some of the problems encountered in excessive job simplification fall under the general headings of job enlargement and job enrichment. Job enlargement involves broadening the scope of a job by expanding the number of different tasks to be performed. Job enrichment is increasing the depth of a job by adding responsibility for planning, organizing, controlling, and evaluating the job. A manager might enrich a job by promoting variety, requiring more skill and responsibility, providing more autonomy, and adding opportunities for personal growth. Giving an employee more planning and controlling responsibilities over the tasks to be done also enriches. However, simply adding more similar tasks does not enrich the job. Some examples of such actions that enrich a job include:
The technique known as job rotation can be a way to break the monotony of an otherwise routine job with little scope by shifting a person from job to job. For example, one week on the auto assembly line, John Williams attaches doors to the rest of the body assembly. The next week he attaches bumpers. The third week he puts in seat assemblies, then rotates back to doors again the following week. Job rotation need not be done on a weekly basis. John could spend one-third of a day on each job or one entire day, instead of a week, on each job. It has been argued, however, that rotation does little in the long run to solve the problem of employee boredom. Rotating a person from one boring job to another may help somewhat initially, but the jobs are still perceived to be boring. The advantage is that job rotation does develop an employee who can do many different jobs.
Job Characteristics
The job-characteristics model by Hackman and Oldham identifies five important design characteristics of jobs. Figure 3—6 shows that skill variety, task identity, and task significance affect meaningfulness of work. Autonomy stimulates responsibility, and feedback provides knowledge of results. Following is a description of each characteristic.
SKILL VARIETY The extent to which the work requires several different activities for successful completion indicates its skill variety. For example, low skill variety exists when an assembly-line worker performs the same two tasks repetitively. The more skills involved, the more meaningful the work. Skill variety can be enhanced in several ways. Job rotation can break the monotony of an otherwise routine job with little scope by shifting a person from job to job. Job enlargement may as well.
TASK IDENTITY The extent to which the job includes a “whole” identifiable unit of work that is carried out from start to finish and that results in a visible outcome is its task identity. For example, one corporation changed its customer
service processes so that when a customer calls with a problem, one employee, called a Customer Care Advocate, handles most or all facets of the problem from maintenance to repair. As a result, more than 40% of customer problems are resolved by one person while the customer is still on the line. Previously, less than
1% of the customer problems were resolved immediately because the customer service representative had to complete paperwork and forward it to operations, which then followed a number of separate steps using different people to resolve problems. In the current system, the Customer Care Advocate can identify more closely with solving a customer’s problem.
TASK SIGNIFICANCE The amount of impact the job has on other people indicates its task significance. A job is more meaningful if it is important to other people for some reason. For instance, a soldier may experience more fulfillment when defending his or her country from a real threat than when merely training to stay ready in case such a threat arises. In the earlier example, the Customer Care Advocate’s task has significance because it affects customers considerably.
AUTONOMY The extent of individual freedom and discretion in the work and its scheduling indicates autonomy. More autonomy leads to a greater feeling of personal responsibility for the work. Efforts to increase autonomy may lead to what was characterized as job enrichment by Frederick Herzberg. Examples of actions that increase autonomy include giving more freedom and authority so the employee can perform the job as he or she sees fit and increasing an employee’s accountability for work by reducing external control.
FEEDBACK The amount of information employees receive about how well or how poorly they have performed is feedback. The advantage of feedback is that it helps employees to understand the effectiveness of their performance and contributes to their overall knowledge about the work. At one firm, feedback reports from customers who contact the company with problems are given directly to the employees who handle the customers’ complaints, instead of being given only to the department manager.
Consequences of Job Design
Jobs designed to take advantage of these important job characteristics are more likely to be positively received by employees. Such characteristics help distinguish between “good” and “bad” jobs. Many approaches to enhancing productivity and quality reflect efforts to expand some of the job characteristics. Because of the effects of job design on performance, employee satisfaction, health, and many other factors, many organizations are changing or have already changed the design of some jobs. A broader approach is reengineering work and jobs.
- Job design can influence performance in certain jobs, especially those where employee motivation can make a substantial difference. Lower costs through reduced turnover and absenteeism also are related to good job design.
- Job design can affect job satisfaction. Because people are more satisfied with certain job configurations than with others, it is important to be able to identify what makes a “good” job.
- Job design can affect both physical and mental health. Problems such as hearing loss, backache, and leg pain sometimes can be traced directly to job design, as can stress and related high blood pressure and heart disease.
Nature of Job Design
Identifying the components of a given job is an integral part of job design. Designing or redesigning jobs encompasses many factors, and a number of different techniques are available to the manager. Job design has been equated with job enrichment, a technique developed by Frederick Herzberg, but job design is much broader than job enrichment alone.
JOB ENLARGEMENT AND JOB ENRICHMENT
Attempts to alleviate some of the problems encountered in excessive job simplification fall under the general headings of job enlargement and job enrichment. Job enlargement involves broadening the scope of a job by expanding the number of different tasks to be performed. Job enrichment is increasing the depth of a job by adding responsibility for planning, organizing, controlling, and evaluating the job. A manager might enrich a job by promoting variety, requiring more skill and responsibility, providing more autonomy, and adding opportunities for personal growth. Giving an employee more planning and controlling responsibilities over the tasks to be done also enriches. However, simply adding more similar tasks does not enrich the job. Some examples of such actions that enrich a job include:
- Giving a person an entire job rather than just a piece of the work.
- Giving more freedom and authority so the employee can perform the job as he or she sees fit.
- Increasing a person’s accountability for work by reducing external control.
- Expanding assignments so employees can learn to do new tasks and develop new areas of expertise.
- Giving feedback reports directly to employees rather than to management only.
The technique known as job rotation can be a way to break the monotony of an otherwise routine job with little scope by shifting a person from job to job. For example, one week on the auto assembly line, John Williams attaches doors to the rest of the body assembly. The next week he attaches bumpers. The third week he puts in seat assemblies, then rotates back to doors again the following week. Job rotation need not be done on a weekly basis. John could spend one-third of a day on each job or one entire day, instead of a week, on each job. It has been argued, however, that rotation does little in the long run to solve the problem of employee boredom. Rotating a person from one boring job to another may help somewhat initially, but the jobs are still perceived to be boring. The advantage is that job rotation does develop an employee who can do many different jobs.
Job Characteristics
The job-characteristics model by Hackman and Oldham identifies five important design characteristics of jobs. Figure 3—6 shows that skill variety, task identity, and task significance affect meaningfulness of work. Autonomy stimulates responsibility, and feedback provides knowledge of results. Following is a description of each characteristic.
SKILL VARIETY The extent to which the work requires several different activities for successful completion indicates its skill variety. For example, low skill variety exists when an assembly-line worker performs the same two tasks repetitively. The more skills involved, the more meaningful the work. Skill variety can be enhanced in several ways. Job rotation can break the monotony of an otherwise routine job with little scope by shifting a person from job to job. Job enlargement may as well.
TASK IDENTITY The extent to which the job includes a “whole” identifiable unit of work that is carried out from start to finish and that results in a visible outcome is its task identity. For example, one corporation changed its customer
service processes so that when a customer calls with a problem, one employee, called a Customer Care Advocate, handles most or all facets of the problem from maintenance to repair. As a result, more than 40% of customer problems are resolved by one person while the customer is still on the line. Previously, less than
1% of the customer problems were resolved immediately because the customer service representative had to complete paperwork and forward it to operations, which then followed a number of separate steps using different people to resolve problems. In the current system, the Customer Care Advocate can identify more closely with solving a customer’s problem.
TASK SIGNIFICANCE The amount of impact the job has on other people indicates its task significance. A job is more meaningful if it is important to other people for some reason. For instance, a soldier may experience more fulfillment when defending his or her country from a real threat than when merely training to stay ready in case such a threat arises. In the earlier example, the Customer Care Advocate’s task has significance because it affects customers considerably.
AUTONOMY The extent of individual freedom and discretion in the work and its scheduling indicates autonomy. More autonomy leads to a greater feeling of personal responsibility for the work. Efforts to increase autonomy may lead to what was characterized as job enrichment by Frederick Herzberg. Examples of actions that increase autonomy include giving more freedom and authority so the employee can perform the job as he or she sees fit and increasing an employee’s accountability for work by reducing external control.
FEEDBACK The amount of information employees receive about how well or how poorly they have performed is feedback. The advantage of feedback is that it helps employees to understand the effectiveness of their performance and contributes to their overall knowledge about the work. At one firm, feedback reports from customers who contact the company with problems are given directly to the employees who handle the customers’ complaints, instead of being given only to the department manager.
Consequences of Job Design
Jobs designed to take advantage of these important job characteristics are more likely to be positively received by employees. Such characteristics help distinguish between “good” and “bad” jobs. Many approaches to enhancing productivity and quality reflect efforts to expand some of the job characteristics. Because of the effects of job design on performance, employee satisfaction, health, and many other factors, many organizations are changing or have already changed the design of some jobs. A broader approach is reengineering work and jobs.
source by Human Resource Management 9th Edition Robert L. Mathis John H
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