Job Design Assign
Job Design Assign
Job Design Assign
JOB DESIGN
Job design is the process of putting together various elements to form a job, bearing in
mind organisational and individual worker requirements, as well considerations of
health, safety and ergonomics. The scientific management of Frederick Winslow Taylor
viewed job design as purely mechanistic, but the latter human relations movement
rediscovered the importance of workers’ relationship to their work and stressed the
importance of job satisfaction.
Job design integrates work content (tasks, function, relationships), the rewards
(extrinsic and intrinsic) and the qualifications required (skills, knowledge, ability) for
each job in a way that meets the needs of employees and organisation.
After years of various experiments to determine optimal work methods, Taylor proposed
the following four principles of scientific management.
1. Replace rule of thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study
of the tasks.
2. Scientifically select, train, and develop each worker rather than passively
leaving them to train themselves.
3. Cooperate with the workers to ensure that the scientifically developed methods
are being followed.
4. Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the
managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work and the
workers actually perform the tasks.
• Job enrichment
• Overall development
• Intrinsic motivation to perform caused by newer challenges
• Career development
Where as for an organisation, the benefits could include some of the following;
• Leadership development
• Aligning competencies with organisational requirements
• Lower attrition rates
• Performance improvement driven by unique view points of new people.
In order to realise the true potential of job rotation, there must be a planned system in
place with the policy taking the following into account.
• Organisational interest - employee commitment , attrition rates, specific business
issues etc
• Eligibility of the employees - qualifications, prior experience, aptitude,
competence etc
• Nature of the task - mandatory or voluntary
• The basis of selection of individual employees.
Advantages of job rotation
1. Burnout reduction
When employees perform the same job functions each day without variation, they
are highly likely to experience greater feelings of fatigue, apathy, boredom and
carelessness. Burnout tends to promote decreased productivity, increased
absenteeism, and increased likelihood of high staff turnover.
JOB ENLARGEMENT
Job enlargement means increasing the scope of a job through extending the range of
its job duties and responsibilities. This contradicts with the principles of specialisation
and the division of labour whereby work is divided into smaller units, each of which is
performed repetitively by an individual worker.
In order for an employee to be provided with job enlargement, they will need to be
retrained in new fields which can prove to be a lengthy process. Job enlargement is the
horizontal expansion of a job. It involves the addition of tasks of the same level of skill
and responsibility.
JOB ENRICHMENT
Job enrichment is a job design technique that is a variation on job enlargement. Job
enrichment adds new sources of job satisfaction by increasing the level of responsibility
of the employee. It is a vertical restructuring method in that it gives the employee
additional authority, autonomy and control over the way the job is accomplished.
Job enrichment should be distinguished from job enlargement. In job enrichment, the
attempt is to build into jobs a higher sense of challenge and achievement.
A job may be enriched by giving it variety, and also may also be enriched by;
• Giving the worker more latitude in deciding about such things as work method,
sequences and pace, or by letting them make decisions about accepting or
rejecting materials.
• Giving workers a feeling of personal responsibility for the tasks they do
• Taking steps to make sure that people can see how their tasks contribute to the
finished products and the welfare of the enterprises.
• Giving people an accurate feedback on their job performance.
• Involving workers in analysis and change of physical aspects of the worker
environment such as layout of office or plant, temperature, lighting and
cleanliness
1. Technology
There are some jobs which are highly technical, requiring skill. It will be difficult
to enrich such jobs because of associated cost. In work stations utilising specialised
machinery and assembly line techniques, it may not be possible to make every job
meaningful.
2. Cost
There is no guarantee that the extra cost of an enrichment programme will be
offset by the expected returns. However, the increase in cost may be compensated by
reduced absenteeism and labour turnover.
3. Attitude of managers
Top managers and personnel specialists tend to apply their own scale on other
people’s personalities. In most cases job enrichment is usually imposed on the
employees - they are told about it rather than consulted.
4. Attitude of workers.
Some employees complain that enriched jobs provide too many opportunities to
commit mistakes. Some fear that the increased productivity being sought may even mean
loss of jobs
7. Some people don’t want more responsibility and this must not be considered a
substitute for an appropriate pay scheme
References
http://www.oppapers.com/essays/Job-Design/174989
http://www.netmba.com/mgmt/scientific/
http://dailyojo.com/tags/
http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/
http://www.alagse.com/hr/hr9.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_enlargement
www.weorange.sk/horanic
http://www.businessdictionary.com/
http://www.brighthub.com/office/entrepreneurs/articles/55274.aspx