Job Design

It is believed that a well-designed job motivates the employees for higher level
of performance. Poorly designed jobs often result in boredom and employee
frustration, high turnover, reduced motivation, low level of productivity and
increase in operating cost. To avoid such negative consequences, the jobs have
to be designed systematically and scientifically.

Thus, job design is a systematic process of organizing work into the tasks
required to perform a specific job. It defines the contents and the way the
tasks are combined to complete a job. Job design integrates the tasks,
function, and relationship in order to achieve certain organizational
objectives. It is a logical sequence of job analysis which provides job-related
data and skill requirement of the incumbent. There are three important
influences of job design, they are- work flow analysis, business strategy and
organizational structure.

Job design is a process through which job-related data are revealed and the
contents as well as methods of performing different tasks are specified. It plays
a key role in bringing organizational productivity and employee motivation at
work.

PURPOSE OF JOB DESIGN

There are three objectives of jobs design which are as follows:

• 1 To meet the organizational requirements such as higher productivity,

operational efficiency, quality of product/service, etc.
• 2. To satisfy the needs of the individual employees like interest,
challenge, achievement or accomplishment, etc.; and
• 3. To integrate the needs of the individual with the organizational
requirements.
•

Hackman and Oldham’s Job Characteristics Model

The Job Characteristics Model is a theory that is based on the idea that a task is
the key to the employee’s motivation. In short, a boring and monotonous job
with negative stress is disastrous to an employee’s motivation whereas a
challenging, versatile job has a positive effect on motivation. The theory
specifies five job characteristics that are predicted to benefit individuals’
psychological state and job results.

In 1980, Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham presented the definitive form of
the Job Characteristics Model in their book ‘Work Redesign’. They also created
the instruments Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS) and the Job Rating Form (JRF) for
assessing constructions based on the theory.

According to the definitive version of the Job Characteristics Model, five core
job characteristics were to invoke three psychological states in employees.
These five characteristics lead to a lot of favourable personal and work results.

Hackman and Oldham define the five job characteristics as follows:

Skill Variety: Skill variety refers to the degree to which a job demands different
activities in the execution of the tasks, where various skills and talents of the
working person are used.

A monotonous job with repetitive tasks doesn’t help the employee to develop
a variety of talents. A worker who does alternating work is probably more
satisfied with his job than a person who routinely produces the same work
each and every day.

Having different tasks, more responsibility and more independence will be

beneficial to a person’s intrinsic motivation.

Task Identity: This is the degree to which the work demands a complete
process or product. This means that a certain job within the package of tasks
has a clear beginning and ending, allowing a person to work on a complete
process rather than small parts.

Employees often value carrying out a complete process. Such a work cycle
ensures that they are more involved in their work and will most likely feel
more responsible than their colleagues who only take on a small part of the
process.

Task Significance: Task significance is the degree to which the job has a
substantial impact on the lives of other people within the organisation, but
also on society as a whole.
Feeling the meaningfulness of work is important for the employee’s
motivation. This can be encouraged when they help others to improve in a
physical, financial, psychological or any other field.

Autonomy: Autonomy within a job refers to the degree to which an employee

can work independently. The freedom to plan the workday and set up new
procedures that must be followed increases one’s sense of responsibility,
which in turn benefits motivation.

Within managerial positions, supervisory and ministerial positions, employees

often enjoy a higher level of autonomy, but this isn’t just the case for
managerial or high positions. Other employees can also have a strong sense of
responsibility and autonomy when they’re given the freedom to carry out their
tasks independently by means of personal initiatives.

Feedback: For the performance of the employees, it’s important that they are
informed of the effectiveness of their recent performances. Feedback can also
have a positive effect on their motivation.

When managers tell employees they’re doing a good job, this will motivate
them to continue in the same way. When they hear that their actions didn’t
meet the requirements, they will respond accordingly and try to improve their
performance.

Indexing Scores

Scores can be given to all five indicators, which are subsequently combined.
This number functions as an indicator for the general motivating potential of a
task or job that is examined. The number, the index, will represent how the job
positively or negatively impacts the employee’s attitude and behaviour. The
number is called the MPS, the Motivating Potential Score. The formula for
calculating the MPS is as follows:

MPS = (skill variety + task identity + task significance) / 3 * autonomy *

feedback

According to Hackman and Oldham, a low MPS score means that employees
don’t experience high intrinsic motivation and that the job or task must be
redesigned. From the equation, the conclusion can be drawn that feedback
and autonomy have more impact on motivation than the other indicators.
Furthermore, Hackman and Oldham indicate that an employee can only
experience the three psychological states if they have a high score on all five
indicators. These psychological states are experienced meaningfulness,
experienced responsibility, and knowledge of results.

The experienced meaningfulness of the work is the degree to which the

employee experiences the work to be inherent and meaningful, something
that adds value to the experience. Meaningfulness is characterised by three of
the job characteristics discussed above: Skill variation, task identity and task
importance.

Experienced Responsibility: The experienced feeling of responsibility is formed

by the amount of autonomy the job offers and demands.

Knowledge of Results: Knowledge of results is formed by feedback systems

within a company. It indicates the degree to which the task holder is provided
with direct and clear information on the effectiveness of his or her
performance.

The final part of the Job Characteristics Model describes that when the five
core job characteristics are present and the three psychological states are
reached, the following results are likely to be achieved for the employee
concerned High Performance, High Motivation and High satisfaction.

Job Rotation

Job design involves periodic assignment of an employee to completely

different sets of job activities. As traditionally used, job rotation is low in both
impact and complexity because it typically moves employees from one routine
job to another.

Advantages:

• It is an effective way to develop multiple skills in employees, which

benefits the organization while creating greater job interest and career
options for the employee.
 • Job rotation may be of considerable benefit if it is part of a larger
redesign effort and/or it is used as a training and development approach
to develop various employee competencies and prepare employees for
advancement.
• At times, it may be used to control the problem of repetitive stress
injuries by moving people among jobs that require different physical
movement.

Disadvantages

• Frequent Interruption: Job rotation results in frequent interruption of

work. A person who is doing a particular job and gets it comfortable
suddenly finds himself shifted to another job or department. This
interrupts the work in both the departments.
• Reduces Uniformity in Quality: Quality of work done by a trained
worker is different from that of a new worker. When a new worker “I”
shifted or rotated in the department, he takes time to learn the new job,
makes mistakes, in the process and affects the quality of the job.
• Misunderstanding with the Union Member: Sometimes job rotation
may lead to misunderstanding with member of the union. The union
might think that employees are being harassed and more work is being
taken from them. In reality this is not the case.

Job Enlargement

Job enlargement combines into one job with two or more tasks which are to be
performed. Sometimes it is called “horizontal loading” as all tasks involve the
same level of responsibility .The job enlargement approach often has positive
effects on employee effectiveness. However, some employees view job
enlargement as just adding more routine, repetitive tasks to their already
boring job. Other employees regard it as eliminating their ability to perform
their jobs almost automatically.

Advantages: Job enlargement and job rotation approaches are useful in many
work settings. One of their biggest advantages is that:
 • They offer a form of training.
• They allow workers to learn more than one task, thus increasing their
value to the employer.
• As they allow workers to perform many tasks, they can be used more
flexibly as circumstances.

Disadvantages

• Increases Work Burden: Job enlargement increases the work of the

employee and not every company provides incentives and extra salary
for extra work. Therefore, the efforts of the individual may remain
unrecognized.
• Increasing Frustration of the Employee: In many cases employees end
up being frustrated because increased activities do not result in
increased salaries.
• Problem with Union Members: Many union members may
misunderstand job enlargement as exploitation of worker and may take
objection to it.

Job Enrichment

Frederick Herzberg, the advocate of two-factor theory, cautioned that jobs

designed according to rules of simplification, enlargement, and rotation can’t
be expected to be highly motivational for the workers. He instead suggested a
clear and distinct job design alternative called “job enrichment”. Job
enrichment seeks to add profundity to a job by giving workers more control,
responsibility, and freedom of choice over how their job is performed. It occurs
when the work itself is more challenging, when achievement is encouraged,
when there is prospect for growth, and when responsibility, feedback, and
recognition are provided. Nonetheless, employees are the final judges of what
enriches their jobs.

Advantages

• Interesting and Challenging Job: When a certain amount of power is

given to the employees it makes the job more challenging for them, we
can say that job enrichment is a method of employee empowerment.
 • Improves Decision-Making: Through job enrichment we can improve
the decision-making ability of the employee by asking him to decide on
factory layout, method and style of working.
• Identifies Future Managerial Calibre: When we provide decision-making
opportunities to employees, we can identify which employee is better
than other in decision-making and mark employees for further
promotion.
• Identifies Higher Order Needs of Employees: This model identifies
higher order needs of the employee. Abraham Maslow’s theory of
motivation speaks of these higher order needs, e.g., ego and esteemed
needs, self-actualization etc. These needs can be achieved through job
enrichment.
• Reduces Work Load of Superiors: Job enrichment reduces the work load
of senior staff. When decisions are taken by juniors the seniors work
load is reduced.

Disadvantages

• Job enrichment is based on the assumptions that workers have complete

knowledge to take decisions and they have the right attitude. In reality
this might not be the case due to which there can be problems in
working.
• Job enrichment has negative implications i.e., along with usual work
decision-making work is also given to the employees and not many may
be comfortable with this.
• Superiors may feel that power is being taken away from them and given
to the junior’s. This might lead to ego problems.
• This method will only work in certain situations. Some jobs already give a
lot of freedom and responsibility; this method will not work for such
jobs.
• Some people are internally dissatisfied with the organization. For such
people no amount of job enrichment can solve the problem.