CHAPTER FIVE

"Job Design"

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

CHAPTER OUTLINE

• How is job design defined?
• What's the purpose of job design and why is it important?
• Basic approaches to job design.
• Which design to use?

HOW IS JOB DESIGN DEFINED?

Job design is the process by which the characteristics and qualities of jobs are determined and created. Jobs are created in job design and they are described in job analysis [see next chapter]

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF JOB DESIGN AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

Since the time of Frederick Taylor and the development of scientific management, jobs have been designed for¹:

• Efficiency - finding the one best way to produce a product at the lowest cost
• Productivity - obtaining maximum use of human and physical resources.

Today, job design serves as a vital way by which organisations can accommodate a more diverse workforce - in terms of gender, age, life-style and ability. Thus, to the previous list of job design purposes we can add:

• Accommodation of a diverse workforce
• Motivation of a diverse workforce.

These four purposes are being served by job design in organisations today. In fact, organisations are emphasizing careful job design more than ever because they recognise that total quality management often depends on enriching jobs and creating self-managed teams.

APPROACHES TO JOB DESIGN

There are four basic approaches to job design:

o The Scientific Approach. Under the scientific approach, job analysts [typically, industrial engineers] take special pains to design jobs so that the tasks performed by employees do not exceed theirabilities. The jobs designed in this way often result in work being partitioned into small, standardised segments. These tasks lend themselves well to time and motion studies and to incentive pay systems, each for the purpose of obtaining high productivity. The scientific approach to job design is still an important part of many modern organisations.

o Individual contemporary job design approaches. Because the scientific approach is not always effective, organisations began searching for alternative job designs².

Source: Adapted from J. R. Hackman and G. R. Oldham, Work Redesign (Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley, 1980): 77, Figure 4.2

Fig. 5.1 "The core characteristics model", Randall, p. 161

One such individual contemporary job design is job enrichment. As shown in Figure 5.1, five positive personal and work outcomes - high motivation, quality work performance, satisfaction, absenteeism and turnover - result when people are allowed to function in an environment where work enables the individual to obtain a sense of:

• meaningfulness
• responsibility
• empowerment
• satisfaction in knowing the results

According to two well-known researchers, Hackman and Oldham,these are critical psychological states that evolve from five core job characteristics: [1] skill variety - or, degree to which task performance requires different abilities and skills; [2] job significance - degree to which the job has substantial importance; [3] job identity - the degree to which a whole and identifiable piece of work with a visible outcome is produced; [4] autonomy - degree of freedom and discretion in work scheduling and procedures; and [5] feedback - amount of direct and clear information about performance effectiveness.

Job enrichment results when jobs are high on these core characteristics. When employees value feelings of meaningfulness, responsibility,empowerment, and knowing the results of their work, job enrichment leads to positive personal and work outcomes³

Several different alternatives to individual job design include: job rotation and job enlargement.

Job rotation does not change the nature of a specific job; it increases the overall number of duties an employee performs overtime - by moving the employee around different jobs in the same - or even other departments. Thus, job rotation can increase task variety and job identity since the employee is performing several tasks.

Job enlargement is the opposite of the scientific approach, which seeks to reduce the number of duties in a given job. Job enlargement seeks to increase skill variety. In addition, job identity can also improve - when the employee completes a whole and identifiable piece of work. Job enlargement is also known in the literature as horizontal loading, since it involves adding more duties with the same type of tasks characteristics. Whereas, vertical loading means creating a job with more autonomy and responsibility. Thus, job enrichment loads a job vertically, whereas job enlargement loads the content of the job horizontally.

• The team contemporary approach. Whereas the individual contemporary and the scientific approaches design jobs for individuals, the team approach designs jobs for teams of individuals. These designs generally show a concern for the social needs of individuals as well as the constraints of technology. Here teams of workers often rotate jobs and many follow the product they are working on to the last step in the process. In the team contemporary design, each worker learns to handle several duties - many requiring different skills. Thus, they can satisfy their needs for achievement and task accomplishment, as well as some needs for social interaction. When faced with decisions, teams that work well together try to involve all members in decision-making [teamwork]. If their decisions and behaviours result in greater output, all team members share the benefits. Typically, teams may start out making only a few decisions.Yet, after time, training and familiarity, they begin to make more decisions.Essentially, the team members pass through stages of greater empowerment- allowing people the freedom and authority to do their jobs well⁴.In each new stage, they make more decisions, resulting in self-managed teams. The tasks these teams most often make decisions on are shownin Table 5.1. As noted, some decisions are made without the supervisor and some with.

Table 5.1 "Task-responsibilities of self-managed teams", Schuler, p. 165

• Ergonomics. Ergonomics is concerned with fitting jobs to the basic physical abilities and characteristics of people so they can perform the jobs without undue effects on their health⁵.Studies have shown that when jobs are designed along ergonomic principles, worker productivity is greater.

WHICH DESIGN TO USE?

Selection of a job design approach must take into account not only such considerations as the corporate culture, the characteristics of the available workforce, the HR philosophy of the company and the environment,but also the advantages and disadvantages of each approach.. To help inthe selection, Table 5.2 lists advantages and disadvantages of each. The final selection will also be influenced by such several factors as cost considerations and the technology and equipment available⁶.

Table 5.2 "Advantages and disadvantages of the four job design approaches", Schuler, p. 166

In a TQM environment, with its focus on empowerment and teamwork, two types of job design are suggested at the individual and group levels: job enrichment and teamworking - with particular emphasis on autonomous work teams.

CASE: REDESIGN OR RELOCATE?

During the past five years, productivity and worker satisfaction at the Jackson Toy Company have been declining. Productivity is now so low that Dr. Helen Jackson, the company's founder and president, is considering closing the plant and moving south, although she wants to retain the company.

When Jackson, a mechanical engineer, started the company in 1980, she installed an assembly line so that workers could become specialised at their jobs and, hence, become very productive. The employees were quite productive during the first ten years of operation. The, several younger, newly hired employees began complaining about the repetitive, boring nature of the work. About that time, Jackson began to notice a decline in productivity. Her response was to assume that pay was too low. Whereas many of the original employees were essentially 'second-income earners', the newly hired employees were younger, and were 'moonlighting' [working outside regular employment hours, taking 12 or more additional hours per week] in order to earn more money, and they were coming to work too tired to work efficiently. Consequently,she increased everyone's salary by 20 percent. Since she had seventy-five employees, this represented a substantial increase in payroll expense. Nevertheless, she was concerned about productivity, as well as the 'plight'of the workers.

About two months after the salary increase, Jackson noted that the level of productivity had not increased . In fact, it had actually declined slightly. Jackson called the local University. Professor Erin Brief, a specialist in job redesign, suggested that Jackson either completely redesigned the jobs for the employees or implement a job rotation programme. Although it would be more costly to completely redesign the jobs, Professor Brief recommended that alternative. Jackson wondered if it would be more trouble than it was worth.

QUESTIONS.

1. On what basis would Brief recommended job redesign?

2. What would you recommend to Jackson? Why?

3. Was increasing salaries by 20 percent a valid way forJackson to test her assumption about the cause of the productivity problems? What would you have done?

Source: Schuler, R.S. and Jackson, S.E. [1996]. HumanResource Management. Min/St. Paul : West Publishing.

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NOTES.