McClelland's Theory of Needs

In his acquired-needsachievement, affiliation, or power. A person's motivation and effectiveness in certain job functions are influenced by these three needs. McClelland's theory sometimes is referred to as the three need theory or as the learned needs theory. theory, David McClelland proposed that an individual's specific needs are acquired over time and are shaped by one's life experiences. Most of these needs can be classed as either

Achievement

People with a high need for achievement (nAch) seek to excel and thus tend to avoid both low-risk and high-risk situations. Achievers avoid low-risk situations because the easily attained success is not a genuine achievement. In high-risk projects, achievers see the outcome as one of chance rather than one's own effort. High nAch individuals prefer work that has a moderate probability of success, ideally a 50% chance. Achievers need regular feedback in order to monitor the progress of their acheivements. They prefer either to work alone or with other high achievers.

Affiliation

Those with a high need for affiliation (nAff) need harmonious relationships with other people and need to feel accepted by other people. They tend to conform to the norms of their work group. High nAff individuals prefer work that provides significant personal interaction. They perform well in customer service and client interaction situations.

Power

A person's need for power (nPow) can be one of two types - personal and institutional. Those who need personal power want to direct others, and this need often is perceived as undesirable. Persons who need institutional power (also known as social power) want to organize the efforts of others to further the goals of the organization. Managers with a high need for institutional power tend to be more effective than those with a high need for personal power.

Thematic Apperception Test

McClelland used the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) as a tool to measure the individual needs of different people. The TAT is a test of imagination that presents the subject with a series of ambiguous pictures, and the subject is asked to develop a spontaneous story for each picture. The assumption is that the subject will project his or her own needs into the story.

Psychologists have developed fairly reliable scoring techniques for the Thematic Apperception Test. The test determines the individual's score for each of the needs of achievement, affiliation, and power. This score can be used to suggest the types of jobs for which the person might be well suited.

Implications for Management

People with different needs are motivated differently.

· High need for achievement - High achievers should be given challenging projects with reachable goals. They should be provided frequent feedback. While money is not an important motivator, it is an effective form of feedback.

· High need for affiliation - Employees with a high affiliation need perform best in a cooperative environment.

· High need for power - Management should provide power seekers the opportunity to manage others.

Note that McClelland's theory allows for the shaping of a person's needs; training programs can be used to modify one's need profile.

Systems Approach to Training

The success of orientation or any other type of training can be gauged by the amount of learning that occurs and is transferred to the job. Too often, unplanned, uncoordinated, and haphazard training efforts significantly reduce the learning that could have occurred. Training and learning will take place, especially through informal work groups, whether an organization has a coordinated effort or not—because employees learn from other employees. But without a welldesigned, systematic approach to training, what is learned may not be what is best for the organization. Figure 10—6 shows the relevant components of the three major phases in a training system: (1) the assessment phase, (2) the implementation phase, and (3) the evaluation phase.

Assessment Phase
In the assessment phase, planners determine the need for training and specify the objectives of the training effort. Looking at the performance of clerks in a billing department, a manager might find that their data-entry and keyboard abilities are weak and that they would profit by having instruction in these areas. An objective of increasing the clerks’ keyboard entry speed to 60 words per minute without errors might be established. The number of words per minute without errors is the criterion against which training success can be measured, and it represents the way in which the objective is made specific. To make the bridge between assessment and implementation, the clerks would be given a keyboard data-entry test.

Implementation Phase
Using the results of the assessment, implementation can begin. For instance, a billing supervisor and an HR training specialist could work together to determine how to train the clerks to increase their speeds. Arrangements for instructors, classrooms, materials, and so on would be made at this point. A programmed instruction manual might be used in conjunction with a special data-entry class set up at the company. Implementation occurs when training is actually conducted.

Evaluation Phase
The evaluation phase is crucial. It focuses on measuring how well the training accomplished what its originators expected. Monitoring the training serves as a bridge between the implementation and evaluation phases and provides feedback for setting future training objectives.

source by Human Resource Management 9th Edition Robert L. Mathis John H

Labour Market

There actually is not one, but several labor markets that are the external sources from which employers attract employees. These markets occur because different conditions characterize different geographical areas, industries, occupations,and professions at any given time. For example, the demand for over-theroad truck drivers is very strong at this writing (a tight labor market). Yet with downsizing and mergers in the banking industry, there is a surplus of middlelevel banking managers (a loose market).

There are many ways to identify labor markets, including by geographical area, type of skill, and educational level. Some labor market segments might include managerial, clerical, professional and technical, and blue collar. Classified differently, some markets are local, others regional, others national; and there are international labor markets as well. For instance, an interesting labor market segment opened up with the demise of the Soviet Union. A number of excellent Soviet scientists became available due to the absence of job opportunities in their own countries. Several research organizations, including Sun Microsystems, have recruited them for jobs. Many of these recruits have continued to live in their home countries and are linked electronically to their employers in the United States.

Recruiting locally for a job market that is really national likely will result in disappointing applicant rates. For example, attempting to recruit a senior accounting faculty member in a small town is not likely to be successful. Conversely, it may not be necessary to recruit nationally for workers in unskilled positions on the assembly line. The job qualifications needed and the distribution of the labor supply determine which labor markets are relevant.

Changes in a labor market may force changes in recruiting efforts. If a new major employer locates in a regional labor market, then other employers may see a decline in their numbers of applicants. For instance, when three riverboat casinos, employing a total of 3,000 workers, opened in Council Bluffs, Iowa, many employers in the area noticed a dramatic decrease in the number of applicants for job openings outside of the casino industry. Also, some employers, particularly smaller manufacturing firms, had to raise their wages to prevent turnover of existing workers. Similar occurrences have followed the opening of large automobile manufacturing plants in South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama.

To understand the components of labor markets in which recruiting takes place, three different concepts must be considered. Those three groups are labor force population, applicant population, and applicant pool. The labor force population includes all individuals who are available for selection if all possible recruitment strategies are used. This vast array of possible applicants may be reached in very different ways. Different recruiting methods for example, newspaper ads versus college recruiting will reach different segments of the labor force population.

The applicant population is a subset of the labor force population that is available for selection using a particular recruiting approach. For example, an organization might limit its recruiting for management trainees to MBA graduates from major universities. This recruiting method will result in a very different group of applicants from those who would have applied had the employer chosen to advertise openings for management trainees on a local radio station.

At least four recruiting decisions affect the nature of the applicant population:

• Recruiting method: advertising medium chosen and considering use of employment agencies.
• Recruiting message: what is said about the job and how it is said.
• Applicant qualifications required: education level and amount of experience necessary.
• Administrative procedures: time of year recruiting is done, the follow-ups with applicants, and use of previous applicant files.
  

The applicant pool consists of all persons who are actually evaluated for selection. Many factors can affect the size of the applicant pool. For example, the organization mentioned previously is likely to interview only a small percentage of the MBA graduates at major universities, because not all graduates will want to be interviewed. The applicant pool at this step will depend on the reputation of the organization and industry as a place to work, the screening efforts of the organization, and the information available to the applicant population. Assuming a suitable candidate can be found, the final selection is made from the applicant pool.

The supply and demand of workers in the labor force population has a substantial impact on the staffing strategies of organizations. Internal labor markets also influence recruiting because many employers choose to promote from within whenever possible, but hire externally for entry-level jobs. A discussion of these and other strategic decisions to be made in recruiting follows.

source by Human Resource Management 9th Edition Robert L. Mathis John H

Human Resource Development

Development can be thought of as growing capabilities that go beyond those required by the current job; it represents efforts to improve employees’ ability to handle a variety of assignments. Development is beneficial to both the organization and the individuals. Employees and managers with appropriate experiences and abilities enhance the ability of an organization to compete and adapt to a changing competitive environment. In the development process, the individuals’ careers also gain focus and evolve.

At the organizational level of analysis, executives responsible for crafting the broader organizational strategies should establish a system for developing the people who will manage and achieve those identified strategies. The successful CEO is likely to have employee and managerial succession plans on several levels and in several different succession pathways as part of that development. Specific development needs can be identified by HR planning. Currently, more jobs are taking on the characteristics of knowledge work. People in such jobs must combine mastery of technical expertise with the ability to work in teams with other employees, form relationships with customers, and analyze their own practices. The practice of management increasingly involves guiding and integrating autonomous, highly skilled people.

The HR Development Process

Development should begin with the HR plans of an organization. As discussed in Chapter 2, such plans deal with analyzing, forecasting, and identifying the organizational needs for human resources. Also, HR planning allows anticipating the movement of people through the organization due to retirement, promotion, and transfers. It helps identify the capabilities that will be needed by the organization in the future and the development necessary to have people with those abilities on hand when needed.

Figure 11—2 illustrates the HR development process. As the figure shows, HR plans first identify necessary abilities and capacities. Such capacities can influence planning in return. The specific abilities needed also influence decisions about who will be promoted, and what the succession of leaders will be in the organization. Those decisions influence—and are influenced by—an assessment of the development needs in the organization. Two categories of development planning follow from this needs assessment: organizational and individual. Finally, the success of the developmental process must be evaluated and changes made as necessary over time.

Succession Planning

Succession planning can be an important part of development. For example, combined with skills training, management development, and promotion from within, it has been linked to “turning around” a plant acquired by another company. The general result for the plant was a large increase in capacity over four years, with virtually no infusion of new managers or employees. Existing talent was developed instead.

SUCCESSION IN SMALL AND CLOSELY HELD ORGANIZATIONS Succession planning can be especially important in small- and medium-sized firms, but studies show that these firms have done the least planning. Few small- and medium-sized firms have formal succession plans. In closely-held family firms (those that are not publicly traded on stock exchanges), many CEOs plan to pass the business on to a family member. Planning in advance for the orderly succession and development needs of the successor is important to avoid a host of potential problems.

REPLACEMENT CHARTS Traditional career paths in a company include a range of possible moves: lateral moves across departments, vertical moves within departments, and others. Each possible path represents actual positions, the experience needed to fill the positions, and the relationships of positions to each other. Replacement charts (similar to depth charts used by football teams to show the backup players at each position) give a simple model of the process. The purpose of replacement charts is to ensure that the right individuals are available at the right time, and that they have had sufficient experience to handle the targeted jobs. Replacement charts can be part of the development planning process by specifying the nature of development each employee needs to be prepared for the identified promotions. This information can be used to identify development needs and “promotion ladders” for people.

Selecting and Placing Human Resources

Selection is the process of choosing individuals who have relevant qualifications to fill jobs in an organization. Without qualified employees, an organization is in a poorer position to succeed. A vivid case in point is athletic organizations like the Dallas Cowboys, Atlanta Braves, and Los Angeles Lakers, who fail or succeed on their ability to select the coaches, players, and other employees to win games.

Selection is much more than just choosing the best available person. Selecting the appropriate set of knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs)—which come packaged in a human being—is an attempt to get a “fit” between what the applicant can and wants to do, and what the organization needs. The task is made more difficult because it is not always possible to tell exactly what the applicant really can and wants to do. Fit between the applicant and the organization affects both the employer’s willingness to make a job offer and an applicant’s willingness to accept a job. Fitting a person to the right job is called placement.

More than anything else, placement of human resources should be seen as a matching process. Gaps between an individual’s skills and the job requirements are common factors that lead to rejection of an applicant. How well an employee is matched to a job affects the amount and quality of the employee’s work. This matching also directly affects training and operating costs. Workers who are unable to produce the expected amount and quality of work can cost an organization a great deal of money and time. Estimates are that hiring an inappropriate employee costs an employer three to five times that employee’s salary before it is resolved.2 Yet hiring mistakes are relatively common.

Good selection and placement decisions are an important part of successful HR management. Some would argue that these decisions are the most important part. Productivity improvement for an employer may come from changes in incentive pay plans, improved training, or better job design; but unless the employer has the necessary people with the appropriate KSAs in place, those changes may not have much impact. The very best training will not enable someone with little aptitude for a certain job to do that job well and enjoy it.

To put selection decisions in perspective, consider that organizations on average reject a high percentage of applicants. In some situations about five out of six applicants for jobs are rejected. Figure 9—1 depicts the reasons why employers most often reject applicants. Perhaps the best perspective on selection and placement comes from two traditional HR truisms that clearly identify the importance of effective employment selection.

• “Good training will not make up for bad selection.” The implication here is that when the right people with the appropriate KSAs are not selected for jobs, it is very difficult for the employer to recover later by somehow trying to train those individuals without the proper aptitude, interests, or other KSA deficiencies.
  

• “If you don’t hire the right one, your competitor will.” There is an opportunity cost in failure to select the right employee, and that cost is that the “right one” went somewhere else.

Criteria, Predictors, and Job Performance

At the heart of an effective selection system is knowledge of what constitutes appropriate job performance and what characteristics in employees are associated with that performance.4 Once the definition of employee success (performance) is known, the employee specifications required to achieve that success can be determined. A selection criterion is a characteristic that a person must have to do the job successfully. A certain preexisting ability is often a selection criterion. One example is the criterion appropriate employee permanence, which considers that a person must stay in a job long enough for the employer at least to break even on the training and hiring expenses incurred to hire the employee. Figure 9—3 shows that ability, motivation, intelligence, conscientiousness, appropriate risk, and permanence might be good selection criteria for many jobs. To predict whether a selection criterion (such as “motivation” or “ability”) is present, employers try to identify predictors as measurable indicators of selection criteria. For example, in Figure 9—3 good predictors of the criterion “appropriate permanence” might be individual interests, salary requirements, and tenure on previous jobs.

The information gathered about an applicant should be focused on finding predictors of the likelihood that the applicant will be able to perform the job well. Predictors can take many forms, but they should be job related, valid, and reliable. A test score can be a predictor of success on the job only if it is valid. Previous experience can be a predictor of success if it is related to the necessary performance on the current job. Any selection tool used (for example, application form, test, interview, education requirements, or years of experience

required) should be used only if it is a valid predictor of job performance. Using invalid predictors can result in selecting the “wrong” candidate and rejecting the “right” one.

VALIDITY Validity is the correlation between a predictor and job performance. As mentioned in Chapter 5, validity occurs to the extent that a predictor actually predicts what it is supposed to predict. Validity depends on the situation in which the selection device is being used.5 For example, a test designed to predict aptitude for child-care jobs might not be valid in predicting sales potential in a candidate for a sales representative.

RELIABILITY Reliability of a predictor is the extent to which it repeatedly produces the same results, over time. For example, if the same person took a test in December and scored 100, but upon taking it in March scored significantly higher, the test would not be highly reliable. Thus, reliability has to do with consistency, and predictors that are useful in selection should be consistent.

source by Human Resource Management 9th Edition Robert L. Mathis John H

Careers

A career is the sequence of work-related positions a person occupies throughout life. People pursue careers to satisfy deeply individual needs. At one time, identifying with one employer seemed to fulfill many of those needs. Now, the distinction between the individual’s career as the organization sees it and the career as the individual sees it is very important.

Organization-Centered vs. Individual-Centered Career Planning

Career planning can be somewhat confusing, because two different perspectives exist. Career planning can be organization centered, individual centered, or both. Organization-centered career planning focuses on jobs and on constructing career paths that provide for the logical progression of people between jobs in an organization. These paths are ones that individuals can follow to advance in certain organizational units. For example, a person might enter the sales department as a sales counselor, then be promoted to account director, to sales manager, and finally to vice-president of sales.

Individual-centered career planning focuses on individuals’ careers rather than organizational needs. It is done by employees themselves, and individual goals and skills are the focus of the analysis. Such analyses might consider situations both inside and outside the organization that could expand a person’s career.

Organizational retrenchment and downsizing have changed career plans for many people. They have found themselves in “career transition”—in other words, in need of finding other jobs. Small businesses, some started by early retirees from big companies, have provided many of the new career opportunities.

How People Choose Careers

Four general individual characteristics affect how people make career choices.

1. Interests: People tend to pursue careers that they believe match their interests.
2. Self-image: A career is an extension of a person’s self-image, as well as a molder of it.
   
3. Personality: This factor includes an employee’s personal orientation (for example, whether the employee is realistic, enterprising, and artistic) and personal needs (including affiliation, power, and achievement needs).
   
4. Social backgrounds: Socioeconomic status and the educational and occupation level of a person’s parents are a few factors included in this category.
   

Less is known about how and why people choose specific organizations than about why they choose specific careers. One obvious factor is the availability of a job when the person is looking for work. The amount of information available about alternatives is an important factor as well. Beyond these issues, people seem to pick an organization on the basis of a “fit” between the climate of the organization as they perceive it and their own personal characteristics. Many factors may influence job choice, including the gender of the job informant who passed along job information.

Career Plateaus

Those who do not job-hop may face another problem: career plateaus. As the babyboom generation reaches midlife, and as large employers cut back on their workforces, increasing numbers of managers will find themselves at a career plateau. Plateauing may seem a sign of failure to many people, and plateaued employees can cause problems for employers when frustration affects performance. Perhaps in part because of plateauing, many middle managers’ optimism about opportunity for advancement has declined. Even though these managers have more responsibility and less influence in the decision-making process, the result has been leaner, more competitive organizations with few promotion opportunities.

Moonlighting As a Career Strategy

Moonlighting traditionally has been defined as work outside a person’s regular
employment that takes 12 or more additional hours per week. More recently, the
concept of moonlighting has been expanded to include such activities as selfemployment, investments, hobbies, and other interests for which additional remuneration is received. The perception that moonlighting is a fixed outside commitment is no longer sufficiently broad, because the forms that it may take
are varied and sometimes difficult to identify.

Moonlighting is no longer just a second job for the underpaid blue-collar worker but also a career development strategy for some professionals. A growing number of managers are dividing their work efforts by moonlighting as consultants or self-employed entrepreneurs. Consulting not only increases their income but also provides new experiences and diversity to their lives. Many individuals also view such activities as providing extra security, especially in these times of layoffs among middle managers.

Most moonlighting managers cannot afford to walk away from their corporate salaries, but they are looking elsewhere for fulfillment. An HR manager at a TV network moonlights by working for a training firm that she and a friend set up. An advertising executive at a cosmetics company accepts freelance assignments from his employer’s clients. A computer software expert secretly develops a home computer program to market on his own.

If someone is working for a company and freelancing in the same field, questions bout whose ideas and time are involved are bound to arise. Some organizations threaten to fire employees who are caught moonlighting, mainly to keep them from becoming competitors.36 But that does not seem to stop the activities. Other organizations permit freelance work so long as it is not directly competitive. Many believe that staff members should be free to develop their own special interests.

There is evidence that some people who hold multiple jobs work a second job in preparation for a career change. Whether or not a career change is sought, the concept of “job insurance” plays a role, as mentioned earlier. Moonlighting can be viewed in the same context as auto, car, home, or life insurance. The second job can serve as a backup in the event the primary job is lost.

Moonlighting is not without its problems. The main argument against moonlighting has been that energy is being used on a second job that should be used on the primary job. This division of effort may lead to poor performance, absenteeism, and reduced job commitment. However, these arguments are less valid with a growing number of employees.

Key for employers in dealing with moonlighting employees is to devise and communicate a policy on the subject. Such a policy should focus on defining those areas in which the employer limits employee activities because of business reasons.

source by Human Resource Management 9th Edition Robert L. Mathis John H

Job Design

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:

• 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.

Not everyone would be happy as a physician, as an engineer, or as a dishwasher. But certain people like and do well at each of those jobs. The person/job fit is a simple but important concept that involves matching characteristics of people with characteristics of jobs. Obviously, if a person does not fit a job, either the person can be changed or replaced, or the job can be altered. In the past, it was much more common to make the round person fit the square job. However, successfully “reshaping” people is not easy to do. By redesigning jobs, the person/job fit can be improved more easily. Jobs may be designed properly when they are first established or “reengineered” later.

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.

JOB ROTATION

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