Job Design: Meaning and Approaches

After reading this article you will learn about the meaning and approaches of job design.

Meaning of Job Design:00

People like to work for both job satisfaction and need satisfaction. They want jobs that are away
from monotony, lack of power and decision-making. They want to do meaningful jobs as they
spend substantial part of their time at the work place.

The duties and responsibilities assigned to their jobs have to match their interests to derive
satisfaction and optimum performance at the job. It is, therefore, important to design the jobs in a
way that people feel good about their work/job.

The organisational work is broken into different jobs and each job involves different activities.
The specifications of different activities related to a job comprise the job design. Job design
refers to specification of task activities associated with a particular job. It defines a job in terms
of content, function and relationships. It is “the determination of an individual’s work-related
responsibilities.”

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Job design offers two major benefits:

1. Defining the jobs in terms of specific task activities increases organisational efficiency.

2. The way jobs are designed motivates the employees to perform those jobs well. It, thus, acts as
a motivational factor and influences the employee behaviour in accordance with the job design.

Job specialization:

Job design leads to job specialisation. It is “the degree to which the overall task of the
organisation is broken down and divided into smaller component parts.”

Merits of job specialisation:

Job specialisation has the following merits:

(a) Workers who perform specialised tasks become proficient in those tasks. This improves
efficiency of the work.

(b) Time taken to perform a specialised task is less than that required to perform the whole range
of activities associated with that task. There is, thus, increase in production per unit of time.
(c) Every organisational member does not have skills to perform all the organisational activities.
Job specialisation, therefore, enables an organisation to function effectively by enabling
members to perform only those tasks for which they have the necessary skills.

(d) Specialised task enables managers to provide training facilities and specialized equipment’s
to workers performing their jobs.

Approaches to Job Design:

There are four approaches to Job design:

1. Job Simplification:

The job is broken into simple and narrow set of activities. It makes a job very simple to perform.
Training individuals to perform such jobs is simple and inexpensive and workers can
conveniently interchange their work activities related to such jobs.

By making the jobs simple to perform; by designing the tasks in a way that workers repeatedly
perform one or a small number of tasks related to those jobs, managers can achieve quality
control and gain production efficiencies. Making a job too simple, however, may not motivate
employees as they may find that work boring and monotonous. This can negatively affect the
quality of work and result in low job satisfaction.

2. Job Rotation:

Continuous handling of tasks related to simple jobs can make work monotonous and dull. Job
rotation helps workers do away with the monotony by allowing them to work on different jobs
which involve different skills and work activities. Job rotation is the practice of shifting
employees from one job to another in a planned and systematic manner.

It is a better motivational tool than job simplification as it improves skills and flexibility to
perform challenging jobs and increase their capabilities. Job rotation develops employees and
increases their capabilities and understanding of different job structures of the organisation. It
also promotes innovations by stimulating exchange of ideas.

However, it suffers from the following limitations:

a. Employees do not enjoy specialisation of work if there is frequent movement from one job to
the other. In the modern era of specialisation, employees prefer to enhance their skills on one job
(simple or complex) rather than move to new jobs as a motivational tool.

b. Frequently moving employees from one job to the other can affect productivity. Every time an
employee moves to a new job, he has to learn job skills which slows down the work.

c. A person may not really be interested in job rotation for lack of interest in learning new job
skills. He may prefer job enrichment or enlargement to job rotation.
3. Job Enlargement:

Combining several routine jobs into one or enlarging the scope of a job by adding variety of
tasks is called job enlargement. It removes the dullness of performing the same activity over and
over again by giving the employees more tasks to perform on the same job.

Workers perform a wider variety of tasks on the job which increases their job satisfaction.
Managers may break a job into four activities (job enlargement) rather than ten simple activities
(job simplification). Performing a wider variety of tasks on a job is job enlargement.

Though beneficial as it appears, it suffers from the following limitations:

(a) Increased training costs,

(b) Demand from workers for increase in pay as they perform wider variety of tasks, and

(c) Not being sufficiently challenging, motivating and innovative as performing a few more
similar tasks is not motivating enough for workers to perform those tasks.

4. Job Enrichment:

Job enrichment means enriching a job with more responsibility, autonomy, skills and decision-
making power. It serves as a strong motivational force to increase potential for growth and
development. It provides a strong sense of achievement and recognition which provides internal
satisfaction to employees; a source of high morale leading to high productivity.

It is a more comprehensive approach than job enlargement. It not only increases the variety of
tasks on a job but also the control that worker has over the job. To enrich a job, managers
increase the job depth, that is, “the degree to which individuals can plan and control the work
involved in their jobs.”

It allows the workers to decide their goals, ways of achieving those goals and self-control their
activities. This increases the sense of responsibility, capabilities to accept new and challenging
tasks and opportunities for growth and development.

Job enrichment helps employees satisfy their higher order needs of recognition, prestige and
achievement.

It is a “deliberate upgrading of responsibility, scope, and challenge in work.”

— Hersey and Blanchard

It is a “the process of upgrading the job-task mix in order to increase significantly the potential
for growth, achievement, responsibility and recognition.” — Bartol and Martin

Ways of Achieving Job Enrichment:

The model has three elements:

(a) Core Job Characteristics

(b) Critical Psychological States

(c) Outcomes

(a) Core Job Characteristics:

There are five characteristics of a job:

(i) Skill variety:

The job should involve activities which require variety of skills.

(ii) Task identity:

The job should represent a major part of the work rather than fraction of the whole work, that is,
the job should have independent identity.

(iii) Task significance:

Workers should feel the impact of their job output on others’ output and also on the enterprise as
a whole. It represents importance of the task.

(iv) Autonomy:

Workers should have autonomy to decide how the job is done, sequence involved in the
activities, work methods for achieving the output, etc.

(v) Feedback:

Workers should have timely feedback on their job performance to know how well the job is
performed so that deviations can be checked in time. These characteristics make the job
challenging and motivating for the workers.

(b) Critical Psychological States:

Workers experience three critical psychological states:

(i) Feeling that the work is meaningful

(iii) Actually finding out the results

The core job characteristics have motivational value if they have the psychological states.

(c) Outcomes:

When workers with critical psychological states perform jobs with core job characteristics,
they experience the following outcomes:

(i) High internal work motivation.

(ii) High satisfaction of ‘growth needs’.

(iii) High degree of job satisfaction.

(iv) High degree of work effectiveness.

The job characteristic model enriches the job when individuals have the knowledge and skills to
perform the redesigned jobs, have high growth-needs (needs for personal growth and
development) and feel satisfied with factors related to ‘job context’ (factors other than the job,
like salary, job security, working conditions etc.) The above features make the job rich in content
and motivate the employees to work hard to achieve the goals related to these jobs.

Merits of Job Enrichment: Job enrichment has the following merits:

(i) It increases employees’ internal motivation.

(ii) It satisfies their ‘growth’ needs’.

(iii) It provides them job satisfaction.

(iv) It reduces labour turnover and absenteeism.

(v) It increases the efficiency of work through qualitative and quantitative improvement of work.

(vi) Greater freedom and autonomy to handle the work activities provides measures of self-
control. The deviations are checked by the employees themselves rather than pointed by the
supervisors.

Limitations of Job Enrichment: Job enrichment suffers from the following limitations:

(i) Expensive:
To enrich a job by adding more activities and allowing the workers to assume responsibility for
the entire job may be costly for small concerns. Large concerns may, however, derive benefits
which will offset the increased cost.

(ii) Workers’ perception:

Some workers are satisfied with the present content of the job and job enrichment becomes an
additional liability for them. They are more interested in job security than job enrichment. Job
enrichment may not, thus, prove to be lucrative in such situations.

(iii) Imposition on workers:

Workers may not be capable to accept the challenges associated with the jobs. They feel that job
enrichment is an added burden for them and want managers to consult them before adding more
responsibilities to the job.

(iv) Technological considerations:

The present technology may not be appropriate for enriching the current jobs. Job enrichment
may not, therefore, be possible because of technological constraints. These limitations are
primarily related to small-sized concerns or concerns which have unskilled or low skilled
workers who perform routine work and do not want to add more responsibility to their job
content. Highly skilled workers favour job enrichment for personal growth and development.

Effective Job Enrichment:

The following guidelines can make job enrichment effective:

(i) Consult the workers:

Managers should consult the workers and invite their suggestions on what they think about job
enrichment. This involves greater participation by workers and acceptance of higher
responsibility.

(ii) Share the benefits with workers:

Companies can share the benefits of job enrichment with workers who are not enterprising and
innovative and, therefore, do not perceive job enrichment as an addend to their competence. In
monetary terms, managers can offer some fraction of the profits to workers. This will motivate
them to view job enrichment as a positive attribute of job design.

(iii) Be informed about the reasons for job enrichment:

Workers do not go against management. If properly explained about the reasons why managers
want to enrich the jobs and what benefits it will offer to both individuals and organisations, they
will accept job enrichment as a positive reinforcement on their behaviour.