Job enlargementJob enlargement means increasing the scope of a job through extending the range of its job duties and responsibilities generally with in the same level and periphery. This contradicts the principles of specialisation and the division of labour whereby work is divided into small units, each of which is performed repetitively by an individual worker. Some motivational theories suggest that the boredom and alienation caused by the division of labour can actually cause efficiency to fall. Thus, job enlargement seeks to motivate workers through reversing the process of specialisation. A typical approach might be to replace assembly lines with modular work; instead of an employee repeating the same step on each product, they perform several tasks on a single item. In order for employees to be provided with Job Enlargement they will need to be retrained in new fields which can prove to be a lengthy process. However results have shown that this process can see its effects diminish after a period of time, as even the enlarged job role become the mundane, this in turn can lead to similar levels of demotivation and job dissatisfaction at the expense of increased training levels and costs. The continual enlargement of a job over time is also known as 'job creep,' which can lead to an unmanageable workload.

Job enrichmentJob enrichment is an attempt to motivate employees by giving them the opportunity to use the range of their abilities. It is an idea that was developed by the American psychologist Frederick Hertzberg in the 1950s. It can be contrasted to job enlargement which simply increases the number of tasks without changing the challenge. As such job enrichment has been described as 'vertical loading' of a job, while job enlargement is 'horizontal loading'. An enriched job should ideally contain:

A range of tasks and challenges of varying difficulties (Physical or Mental)

A complete unit of work - a meaningful task Feedback, encouragement and communication

Techniques

Job enrichment, as a managerial activity includes a three steps technique:[citation needed]

1. Turn employees' effort into performance:

Ensuring that objectives are well-defined and understood by everyone. The overall corporate mission statement should be communicated to all. Individual's goals should also be clear. Each employee should know exactly how he/she fits into the overall process and be aware of how important their contributions are to the organization and its customers.

Providing adequate resources for each employee to perform well. This includes support functions like information technology, communication technology, and personnel training and development.

Creating a supportive corporate culture. This includes peer support networks, supportive management, and removing elements that foster mistrust and politicking.

Free flow of information. Eliminate secrecy. Provide enough freedom to facilitate job excellence. Encourage and reward

employee initiative. Flextime or compressed hours could be offered. Provide adequate recognition, appreciation, and other motivators. Provide skill improvement opportunities. This could include paid education

at universities or on the job training. Provide job variety. This can be done by job sharing or job rotation

programmes. It may be necessary to re-engineer the job process. This could involve

redesigning the physical facility, redesign processes, change technologies, simplification of procedures, elimination of repetitiveness, redesigning authority structures.

2. Link employees performance directly to reward:[citation needed]

Clear definition of the reward is a must Explanation of the link between performance and reward is important Make sure the employee gets the right reward if performs well If reward is not given, explanation is needed

3. Make sure the employee wants the reward. How to find out?[citation needed]

Ask them Use surveys( checklist, listing, questions)

Job satisfaction

Job satisfaction describes how content an individual is with his or her job. The happier people are within their job, the more satisfied they are said to be. Job satisfaction is not the same as motivation, although it is clearly linked. Job design aims to enhance job satisfaction and performance, methods include job rotation, job enlargement and job enrichment. Other influences on satisfaction include the management style and culture, employee involvement, empowerment and autonomous work position . Job satisfaction is a very important attribute which is frequently measured by organizations. The most common way of measurement is the use of rating scales where employees report their reactions to their jobs. Questions relate to rate of pay, work responsibilities, variety of tasks, promotional opportunities, the work itself and co-workers. Some questioners ask yes or no questions while others ask to rate satisfaction on 1-5 scale (where 1 represents "not at all satisfied" and 5 represents "extremely satisfied").

Definition

Job satisfaction has been defined as a pleasurable emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job;[1] an affective reaction to one’s job;[2] and an attitude towards one’s job.[3] Weiss (2002) has argued that job satisfaction is an attitude but points out that researchers should clearly distinguish the objects of cognitive evaluation which are affect (emotion), beliefs and behaviours.[4] This definition suggests that we form attitudes towards our jobs by taking into account our feelings, our beliefs, and our behaviors.

Job Rotation

For the executive, job rotation takes on different perspectives. The executive is usually not simply going to another department. In some vertically integrated organizations, for example, where the supplier is actually part of same organization or subsidiary, job rotation might be to the supplier to see how the business operates from the supplier point of view. Learning how the organization is perceived from the outside broadens the executive’s outlook on the process of the organization. Or the rotation might be to a foreign office to provide a global perspective.

For managers being developed for executive roles, rotation to different functions in the company is regular carried out

 

This approach allows the manger to operate in diverse roles and understand the different issues that crop up. If someone is to be a corporate leader, they must have this type of training. A recent study indicated that the single most significant factor that leads to leader’s achievement was the variety of experiences in different departments, business units, cities, and countries.

An organized and helpful way to develop talent for the management or executive level of the organization is job rotation. It is the process of preparing employees at a lower level to replace someone at the next higher level. It is generally done for the designations that are crucial for the effective and efficient functioning of the organization.

Benefits of Job Rotation

Some of the major benefits of job rotation are:

It provides the employees with opportunities to broaden the horizon of knowledge, skills, and abilities by working in different departments, business units, functions, and countries

Identification of Knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) required

It determines the areas where improvement is required

Assessment of the employees who have the potential and caliber for filling the position

Job AnalysisDefinition:

A job analysis is the process used to collect information about the duties, responsibilities, necessary skills, outcomes, and work environment of a particular job. You need as much data as possible to put together a job description, which is the frequent outcome of the job analysis. Additional outcomes include recruiting plans, position postings and advertisements, and performance development planning within your performance management system.

The job analysis may include these activities:

reviewing the job responsibilities of current employees, doing Internet research and viewing sample job descriptions online or offline

highlighting similar jobs, analyzing the work duties, tasks, and responsibilities that need to be

accomplished by the employee filling the position, researching and sharing with other companies that have similar jobs, and articulation of the most important outcomes or contributions needed from the

position.

The more information you can gather, the easier the actual writing of the job description will be.

Job Analysis

Job analysis is a systematic approach to defining the job role, description, requirements, responsibilities, evaluation, etc. It helps in finding out required level of education, skills, knowledge, training, etc for the job position. It also depicts the job worth i.e. measurable effectiveness of the job and contribution of job to the organization. Thus, it effectively contributes to setting up the compensation package for the job position.

Importance of Job AnalysisJob analysis helps in analyzing the resources and establishing the strategies to accomplish the business goals and strategic objectives. It forms the basis for demand-supply analysis, recruitments, compensation management, and training need assessment and performance appraisal.

 

ComponentsofJobAnalysis

Job analysis is a systematic procedure to analyze the requirements for the job role and job profile. Job analysis can be further categorized into following sub components.

       

JobPositionJob position refers to the designation of the job and employee in the organization. Job position forms an important part of the compensation strategy as it determines the level of the job in the organization. For example management level employees receive greater pay scale than non-managerial employees. The non-monetary benefits offered to two different levels in the organization also vary.

JobDescription

Job description refers the requirements an organization looks for a particular job position. It states the key skill requirements, the level of experience needed, level of education required, etc. It also describes the roles and responsibilities attached with the job position. The roles and responsibilities are key determinant factor in estimating the level of experience, education, skill, etc required for the job. It also helps in benchmarking the performance standards.

JobWorth

Job Worth refers to estimating the job worthiness i.e. how much the job contributes to the organization. It is also known as job evaluation. Job description is used to analyze the job worthiness. It is also known as job evaluation. Roles and responsibilities helps in determining the outcome from the job profile. Once it is determined that how much the job is worth, it becomes easy to define the compensation strategy for the position.

Therefore, job analysis forms an integral part in the formulation of compensation strategy of an organization. Organizations should conduct the job analysis in a systematic at regular intervals. Job analysis can be used for setting up the compensation packages, for reviewing employees’ performance with the standard level of performance, determining the training needs for employees who are lacking certain skills.

 

job design  

Definition

Work arrangement (or rearrangement) aimed at reducing or overcoming job

dissatisfaction and employee alienation arising from repetitive and mechanistic tasks.

Through job design, organizations try to raise productivity levels by offering non-

monetary rewards such as greater satisfaction from a sense of personal achievement in

meeting the increased challenge and responsibility of one's work. Job enlargement, job

enrichment, job rotation, and job simplification are the various techniques used in a job

design exercise.

Job Evaluation

Job Evaluation - What is it ?

Job evaluation is a practical technique, designed to enable trained and experienced

staff to judge the size of one job relative to others. It does not directly determine

pay levels, but will establish the basis for an internal ranking of jobs.

The two most common methods of job evaluation that have been used are first,

whole job ranking, where jobs are taken as a whole and ranked against each other.

The second method is one of awarding points for various aspects of the job. In the

points system various aspects or parts of the job such as education and experience

required to perform the job are assessed and a points value awarded - the higher the

educational requirements of the job the higher the points scored. The most well

known points scheme was introduced by Hay management consultants in 1951.

This scheme evaluates job responsibilities in the light of three major factors - know

how, problem solving and accountability.

Some Principles of Job Evaluation

Clearly defined and identifiable jobs must exist. These jobs will be

accurately described in an agreed job description.

All jobs in an organisation will be evaluated using an agreed job evaluation

scheme.

Job evaluators will need to gain a thorough understanding of the job

Job evaluation is concerned with jobs, not people. It is not the person that is

being evaluated.

The job is assessed as if it were being carried out in a fully competent and

acceptable manner.

Job evaluation is based on judgement and is not scientific. However if

applied correctly it can enable objective judgements to be made.

It is possible to make a judgement about a job's contribution relative to other

jobs in an organisation.

The real test of the evaluation results is their acceptability to all participants.

Job evaluation can aid organisational problem solving as it highlights

duplication of tasks and gaps between jobs and functions.

Job Evaluation - The Future

As organisations constantly evolve and new organisations emerge there will be

challenges to existing principles of job evaluation. Whether existing job evaluation

techniques and accompanying schemes remain relevant in a faster moving and

constantly changing world, where new jobs and roles are invented on a regular

basis, remains to be seen. The formal points systems, used by so many

organisations is often already seen to be inflexible. Sticking rigidly to an existing

scheme may impose barriers to change. Constantly updating and writing new jobs

together with the time that has to be spent administering the job evaluation

schemes may become too cumbersome and time consuming for the benefits that

are derived.

Does this mean that we will see existing schemes abandoned or left to fall into

disrepute ? Will providers of job evaluation schemes examine and, where

necessary, modify them to ensure they are up to date and relevant ? Simply

sticking rigidly to what is already in place may not be enough to ensure their

survival.

Job Evaluation - More

Job evaluation is essentially one part of a tripartite subject, which is collectively

referred to as Job Study (other names exist). The three parts are Job Analysis ; Job

Evaluation - the information collected is evaluated using a numerical scale or

ranking and rating methodology; and Merit Rating - BSI definition (32542).

BSI definition - 32529 – “Any method ranking the relative worth of jobs which can

then be used as a basis for a remuneration system”

It is essentially a comparative process.

Job evaluation evaluates selected job factors, which are regarded as important for

the effective performance of the job, according to one of several alternative

methods. The resulting numerical gradings can form the basis of an equitable

structure of job gradings. The job grades may or may not be used for status or

payment purposes.

Explanation:

Job Evaluation is concerned with measuring the demands the job places on its

holder. Most factors that contribute to this job pressure, e.g. physical strength

required, knowledge of mathematics required, are assessed and the result is a

numerical estimate of the total job pressure. When evaluations are carried out on

all hourly paid personnel the technique’s uses include establishing relative wage

rates for different tasks. It is possible to use it for all grades of personnel, even

senior management.

Illustration:

The Time Span of Discretion is an interesting and unusual method of job

evaluation developed by Elliot Jaques for the Glacier Metal Company. In this

method the job pressure is assessed according to the length of time over

which managers decisions commit the company. A machine operative, for

example, is at any moment committing the company only for the period

needed to make one product unit or component. The manager who buys the

machine is committing the company for ten years.