Concept, Benefits and Method of Job Design

Definition and Concepts

The information and documentation of job analysis, job description, and job evaluation including job design are essential elements that manage the behavior of the company. This method helps in defining the job requirements and describe the job and job skill, skill mapping, and identifying skill inventories in a company. In past, these important elements are used for deciding about the manpower requirement in the company for meeting the needs of present and future. However, dimensions of behavior are essential for effective management of company behavior. The concepts of job design provide information for incorporating elements, responsibility, authority and control. Job design tells all jobs are different; some have duties for decision-making and some have control about how the jobs are done. The concept of job design has come by breaking down the task related with each element. Job design is importance at twentieth century through the development of rapid technological increment, higher production and assembly line operations. The jobs now have continued to become more critical and specialized, the requirement for an educated and motivated workforce has become essential. The objective of job design is to motivate the employee and increase productivity. Increasing in production can manifest itself in different forms. For instance, we can focus on quality improvement and quantity of product, saving operation cost, and low turnover and training costs.

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Similarly, the employee can be motivated by achieving increased job satisfaction. The Model of Herzberg shown in Table 10.1 tells about two-factor products such as satisfaction and dissatisfaction, which affect worker self-esteem and opportunity for self-actualization in the organization.

Herzberg developed importance difference between these factors such as when a person does not move in a continuum from being dissatisfied to becoming satisfied or vice versa. Rush criticize Herzberg’s point by telling that, ‘the opposite of satisfaction is not dissatisfaction, but no satisfaction; and that the opposite of dissatisfaction is not satisfaction but no dissatisfaction’. The practical term describes that the dissatisfaction factors support and maintain the structure of the job and the satisfaction factors help the workers in reaching self-actualization and motivating the employee for continuously for doing the job (see Exhibit 10.1).

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Benefits of Job Design

It is not wrong for us to assume that the most important motivation element at work is salary. Yet, we have studied various factor of motivation elements for the employee. How can a job design have a major effect on the motivation of workers, job satisfaction, and commitments to a company, absenteeism, and turnover?The question tells that how the job is designed so that employees can be more productive and more satisfied and gain the attention of top level managers and researchers.

Organizational Design structure and motivation of competent employees

The contents and procedures for performing the task in the company are called job design. So it helps to design structure of the company. The structure of the company is identified by the process of job design. The important role assessing the demands and requirement of the structure of the company is through company design. Job design includes the culture of the company, norms and values that must be followed by the member for achieving company objective. The systematic approach for providing job-related knowledge and information about skills, knowledge and ability for performing the activity is job design. The information tells that the job description and job specification schedule must be prepared, that helps the candidate for finding the right job. It provides a data for selecting the talented worker who is capable of performing the activities well in the company. The task becomes more interesting and challenging through job design, that motivates the workers for a higher level of performance. The challenging and complex job gives better pay for the workers that motivate other for better job performance. The high degree of commitment towards company goal is brought by job design. It develops firm production and workers satisfaction at work.

Adaption, quality and productivity of organization

An organization activity is produced in changing environment. So, any change in the environmental factors has direct effect upon the performance of the company. Therefore, job design process that is effective determines the change that may arise in the company environment. The job design and job redesign method is developed so that is can sustain in the changing environmental factors. A developed design of job helps to provide close relation between employees and management. Similarly, unprepared job design increase grievances in the organization, broken rules and regulation actions, higher turnover, higher absenteeism and conflict. A quality of work life helps to develop the cordial relationship between workers and company working environment. A planned job design helps to increase the quality of work life, along with a better design of work schedules, people see a growing future in the organization which ultimately leads to high motivation at work and a positive change in their thoughts and beliefs. Finally, these changes will have a direct impact on the quality of work life. The job design specifies the contents and working procedures of how the task is performed. This leads to a positive change in job performance and job analysis. As a result of which, the organizational productivity will be enhanced through efficient work performance.

Methods of job design

Classical Approach

F.W Taylor is the developer of the classical approach. After work, time and motion study, he understood when there match between labor, tools and tasks it can increase productivity. This approach describes the job design on the basis of requirements of the company. Its goal is to simplify the activities and split them into small work units. This approach focuses on planning, standardizing and improving human effort at work in order to optimize mass productivity of the company. The methods of classical approach are as follows:

Rotation, Job Enlargement, and Enrichment

The next synonyms of job specialization are job rotation. The movement of employees from one job to another job at regular intervals is job rotation. When workers move from one job to different jobs, the job can be monotonous. For instance, cleaning international, a company which provides cleaning services for households and businesses, through job rotation so that cleaning the toilet in one house would clean the kitchen in a different one.This technique helps the company for reducing its turnover level. In a superstore study, the wholesalers were rotated to work in different departments. The rotation helped employees’ to reduce the levels of stress measured through their blood pressure. Moreover, the workers experienced less pain in their neck and shoulders. The advantages for organizations using job rotations are it help employees to develop new skills and for the company to increase the entire skill level of their worker. When employee increases their positions, they trained for performing various activities, through increasing the manager flexibility for assigning workers to various parts of the company when required. Job rotation helps in transferring education between departments.Rotation benefit includes decreasing workers boredom, depending on the types of the jobs the workers are performing at a specific time. From the worker's view, the rotation is a benefit, as they can develop new skills which help to keep them marketable in the long run.

The way of expanding the tasks performed by workers for adding more variety is called job enlargement. The several different tasks of worker that must be performed and avoiding their activities to a small number of tasks, the company tends to reduce boredom and monotony and utilize optimum resources more effectively. Job enlargement and job rotation have same advantages because it includes teaching workers different tasks. Research describe that when enlarged jobs arise, employees find themselves capable of performing complex activities. The enlargement is beneficial, since it is closely related to employee satisfaction and higher customer services, and it reduces the error. At the same time, the impact of job enlargement may depend on the nature of enlargement. For instance, job enlargement includes adding simple activity which had negative consequences on workers satisfaction with the job. Alternatively, the workers with higher activities that require them to be educated in various areas seemed to have more positive effects.

The job redesign technique that provides employee more control over how they perform their own tasks is known as job enrichment. The workers are given more responsibility in this approach. Similar to the job specialization, organization with job enrichment may develop positive results, such as reducing turnover, increasing productivity, and reducing absences.This may be because employees who have the authority and responsibility for their work can be more efficient, eliminate unnecessary tasks, take shortcuts, and increase their overall performance. Similarly the job enrichment may result dissatisfying among certain workers. The workers with autonomy and responsibility always have high expectation on greater levels of pay or other types of compensation, and if this requirement is not fulfilled they may be dissatisfied. One important matter to understand is that job enrichment is not suitable for everyone. The employees do not have want to have control over how they work, and if they lack this desire, they may be frustrated and looses the cool and may have stress with an enriched job

Socio-technical Approach

These approaches of job design consider social and technical aspects of the company. Under this approach, jobs are designed to need of individual and organizational forecasting. Furthermore, it includes both job-related technical systems and social forces of the job which refers to means an entire job situation in accordance with company and social factors while designing jobs. This approach move towards the development of self-managed work teams in company.The technical and social aspects of job are identified for creating jobs where relationship arises. Moreover, the hard work of workers, supervisors, and union representatives for designing and redesigning the jobs under this approach. Therefore, the situational approaches assess the technological requirements and social environment of the job.

Behavioral Approach

Behavioral approach includes behavioral elements such as autonomy, task identity, task significance, feedback mechanism etc. The above given behavioral elements are analyzed and considered when job is designed under behavioral approach. The various behavioral methods are:

Job Enrichment: The process of putting complex activities together so that the worker who is assigned the task must be responsible for performing the entire task.

Job Characteristics:The job characteristics have the great impact on the process of job designing. Job characteristics is concerned with redesigning the job, the structure of work, job enrichment, and so on for improving company productivity and quality of work life of workers.

Autonomous Team:They are the group of workers who are involved in solving problems, implementing the solution and taking full responsibility for results. This team is self-motivated and self-managed people who perform independent tasks.

Modified Work Schedule:The techniques where job design includes the working schedules, time, working week etc. is being rescheduled as per the convenience of the employee.This helps to achieve the organization goals through the benefits of forward and backward schedule.

References

Dessler, Gary.a Framework for Human Resource Management.Florida: Pearson Education Asia, 2002.

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