Section 9Job Design

Managing Performance

through Job Design

A set of principles and practices designed to increase the performance of individual workers by stressing job simplification and job specialization.

Job simplification: The breaking up of the work that needs to be performed in an organization into the smallest identifiable tasks.

Job specialization: The assignment of workers to perform small, simple tasks.

Time and motion studies: Studies that reveal exactly how long it takes to perform a task and the best way to perform it.

Job engineering comes from this perspective

The Study of Jobs- Scientific Management

Pay is the principal outcome used to motivate workers to contribute their inputs. Piece-rate pay system

Scientific management focuses exclusively on extrinsic motivation and ignores the important role of intrinsic motivation.

Specific disadvantages: Workers may feel that they have lost control

over their work behaviors. Workers may feel as if they are part of a

machine and are treated as such. Workers have no opportunity to develop and

acquire new skills.

The Study of Jobs- Scientific Management

Transition from Scientific Management for Performance to

Job Design (Hackman & Oldham) for Satisfaction AND

Performance

Job Characteristics ModelJob Characteristics Model

Skill Variety The extent to which the work requires several

different activities for successful completion. Task Identity

The extent to which the job includes a “whole” identifiable unit of work that is carried out from start to finish and that results in a visible outcome.

Task Significance The impact the job has on other people.

Characteristics of Jobs

Autonomy The extent of individual freedom and discretion in

the work and its scheduling. Feedback

Amount of information employees receive about how well or how poorly they have performed.

Characteristics of Jobs

Job Characteristics ModelJob Characteristics Model

How can we affect jobs?Management strategies for affecting…

Skill Variety Task Identity Task Significance Autonomy Feedback

Job Enlargement Broadening the scope of a job

by expanding the number of different tasks to be performed.

Job Enrichment Increasing the depth of a job

by adding the responsibility for planning, organizing , controlling, and evaluating the job.

Job Rotation The process of shifting a

person from job to job.

Ways to Redesign JobsCombine tasks so that aworker is responsible fordoing a piece of work fromstart to finish.

Skill varietyTask identityTask significance

A production worker is responsible for assembling a whole bicycle, not just attachingthe handlebars.

Group tasks into natural workunits so that workers areresponsible for an entire setof important activities rather than just a part of them.

Task identityTask significance

A computer programmer handles allprogramming requests from one division instead of one type of request from severaldifferent divisions.

Allow workers to interact withcustomers or clients, and make workers responsible formanaging these relationshipsand satisfying customers.

Skill varietyAutonomyFeedback

A truck driver who delivers photocopiers notonly sets them up but also trains customers inhow to use them, handles customer billing, andresponds to customer complaints.

Vertically load jobs so thatworkers have more controlover their work activities andhigher levels of responsibility.

Autonomy A corporate marketing analyst not only preparesmarketing plans and reports but also decides when to update and revise them, checks them for errors, and presents them to upper management.

Open feedback channelsso that workers know howthey are performing theirjobs.

Feedback In addition to knowing how many claims he handlesper month, an insurance adjuster receives his clients’responses to follow-up questionnaires that hiscompany uses to measure client satisfaction.

Change Made Job Dim Inc Example

Advice to Managers Realize that increasing subordinates’ intrinsic motivation

decreases your need to closely supervise subordinates and frees up your time for other activities.

To increase levels of intrinsic motivation and job satisfaction, increase levels of the five core dimensions.

Do not redesign jobs to increase levels of the five core dimensions if workers do not desire personal growth and development at work.

Before any redesign effort, make sure that workers are satisfied with extrinsic job outcomes. If workers are not satisfied with these factors, try to increase satisfaction levels prior to redesigning jobs.

Make sure that workers have the necessary skills and abilities to perform their jobs. Do not redesign jobs to increase levels of the core dimensions for workers whose skills and abilities are already stretched by their current jobs.

Periodically assess workers’ perceptions of the core dimensions of their jobs as well as their levels of job satisfaction and intrinsic motivation.

Empowerment Peter Drucker The Practice of Management (1954) “It does not matter whether the workers

wants responsibility or not…The enterprise must demand it of him.”

Final Comments on Job Design- Safety

Safety Awards

Question on Job Design?