Different Methods of Job Design

management

Discuss about the Impact Of Job Design On Employees.

With the technological advancement, the global business sector is also growing fast. The markets are growing more competitive as well as dynamic. The systems which the successful entrepreneurs used to utilize once have now become out dated hence demotivating. This is the reason why the current managers are now following the trends of attitude and expectations of their employees. in order to bring more flexibility in the organization, these global managers have started to find out the new and apt ways to organize the work in the companies. Ob design is the core function of the company’s human resource managing. It is related to the specification of the contents, approaches and relationship of the jobs to satisfy the technological as well as organizational requirements of the firms. This topic however is much debated where one set of critics support the idea that the managers through perfect job designing can only cater the organizational requirements but have no positive impact on the employees. On the contrary, another set of critics argue that through job designing, the firms cater the social as well as personal requirements of the job holders or the employees.

The methods of job designing logically follows job analysis which provides all the related data and the skills and information expected of the incumbent to the discharge of the job. this job designing compromises of the methods of organizing tasks and responsibilities into the team of work in order to achieve assured objectives. The basic things that the firms require from the employees are high productivity, quality of work and technical efficiency. Therefore, it can be said that the main purposes of job design are to assimilate the needs of the individuals and the requirements of the organization (Oldham and Fried 2016). The chief ways which comprises the concept of job designing are job rotation, job enlargement, job enrichment and job simplification.

Job rotation implies the constant shifting of the workers from one job to another without changing the nature of job. though this the employees perform different jobs but there are more or less same. Job simplification mainly relates the gaining expertise in the given job. In this matter, the managers usually break down a large job into small sub-parts and assign these parts to individual employees. This particular method of job simplification is associated with some specific types of tasks like the mechanical processing of the tasks, repetitive works, working with one specific part of one product, predetermining the tools as well as techniques and some skill requirements.

Criticisms of Job Design

Job enlargement is another aspect of job designing this is the process of the enhancing the scopes of the job though the addition of more tasks to it. Here, all the related tasks are combined. Job enlargement is associated with expanding the amount and number of task assigned to some given jobs. Job enlargement however opposite of the job simplification. Job enrichment is the process of designing a job in such a way which create scope for the workers to gain more autonomy to plan as well as control their own performance. This method seeks to advance efficiency, the quality of tasks along with the human satisfaction. This method of job designing works by building the employees to face more difficult organizational challenges.

The concept of job designing purely depends on the skills and psychology of the employees. Therefore, with changing perspective after globalization, the mangers have begun to explore the process of job designing by merging different systems which include social, technological and psychological aspects (Hendrick and Kleiner 2016). There are some more methods through which the mangers increase productivity of the firms. These are socio-technical systems, work reform, scientific management, human relations and other motivational work designs.

The chief point of argument, where the job design seems only benefitting for the employers through increased job performance but do not benefit the workers, has wide range of contradictions. The critics who contest that the method of job designing only benefit the employees argue that the four chief methods of job designing never help the employees to peruse their career in their own ways. Job rotation do not have any direct connection with the employee motivation. The employees who aim to perform more challenging jobs in their expertise areas, may feel frustrated due to sudden job rotation. Despite the fact that they are shifted into a new position, this change actually profits the organization. this is because these shifts are horizontal rather than vertical benefitting the employees. the main different is only that instead of performing one monotonous job, they have to perform quite a lot of jobs of similar nature. Frequent shifts of employees can cause interruptions in the consistent work routine of the employees. The managers of the contemporary world may feel that that job rotation will increase productivity if they shift the employees to the new positions, they can judge the employees’ area of expertise. However, this process often increases costs but decreases productivity of the firms. Moreover, the employees who want some specific responsibilities in the chosen specialty may feel demotivated by job rotation. The most important factor that these critics have pointed out in the process of job rotation is that the basic nature of the job remains the same this is way the employees do not get any scope for learning new things or skills.

Impacts of Job Design on Employees and Employers

Job simplification greatly helps the employers but do limited good for the employees. The employers no not need to provide training to the employees. The companies even if arrange for trainings, are not very costly. Therefore, they can use unskilled labors in their organization without paying much wages to the workers. Through job simplification, the organizations increase the job speed which often become pressure for the employees. These employees feel boredom as they perform similar tasks over and over and do not have much scope for improvement of their skills. The employees lose the opportunities to learn new skills in their jobs and do not get chance to exercise their own judgments but take problems in stride.  In this respect, the employers are more benefitted by this type of job design as the employees do not have freedom to make decisions of their own rather depend on the instructions of the employers.

The supporters of the job design in the current organizational settings argue that it is one of the most important aspect which perfectly address the issues of employees. Through job designing, the employers increase productivity in the firms by advancing the personal and professional skills of the employees. The method of job design creates scopes for the employees to empower their employees effective. The critics state that by the means of job enlargement, the employers can increase the job varieties which enhance the interest of the employees. This method of job designing can effectively reduce repetitive actions making the process more attractive. The employees need to perform quite a lot of different tasks in their organizations which enhance the learning process without even training. As the employees feel attracted to their tasks, they put more efforts to the learning process the complete the tasks which increase productivity in one hand and creativity on the other. However, in some cases enlarged jobs need longer training period which affect the employers greatly.

In the aspect of job enrichment, the critics argue that it seeks to enhance the quality of tasks, the employee efficiency and support for human satisfaction. This process builds greater scope for the personal achievements as well as recognition for the employees. This is because, the employees face more challenging as well as responsible tasks therefore get more opportunities for personal developments (Tims and Bakker 2014). This particular notices of jo designing, benefits the employees as well as the employees in a similar way. This is due to the fact that job enrichment considers the importance of motivation, job satisfaction, performance, job involvement hence reduced absenteeism. The job holders can identify personal scopes for achievement thus can have the prospect of meeting certain psychological needs. This process can add status to one’s job hence the employees feel motivated in their career. Employee empowerment is a byproduct this particular process of job designing which create a sense of ownership as well as the control over their jobs. Despite the fact that job enrichment has similar motivational advantages like job enlargement, this must be preceded by the provision of other variables which contribute to the quality of work life.

Other Methods of Improving Productivity

The other factors of job designing such as scientific management can effectively address the problems of the industrial unrest. Through this process the managers guarantee that their subordinates can have the maximum economic gains by the means of rationalized processes. The organizations often follow the concepts from the human relations schools which tales the perspective that the social systems in which the emotional as well as psychological factors are present, may have an important influence on the employees’ productivity (Jong et al. 2015). This particular theory believes that organizational performances can be improved a good human relation. The managers need to take care of the staffs an identify the bothering factors. The leaders of the organizations must be democratic rather than authoritarian. Unlike the other factors, this particular theory does not subscribe the idea of motivating the employees with economic gains but influence them greatly through social as well as emotional rewards (Bruning and Campion 2018). For influencing the employees there must be great relation among the teams. The job design ideas include work reform which also states about improved relation between the employees and the managers. Therefore, the  encourage increased workforce participation.

The socio-technical systems aim to fulfill the productivity and all psychological needs to the employees though jointly optimizing the operations of the social along with the technological system. These job designs mainly focus the comfort of the employees through job designing. The motivational work design effectively motivates, influence job satisfaction and job performance of the employees of an organization. This particular method of motivating the employees affects the connection between the expectancy of the employees which gradually increases their performance. This eventually leads to rewards and the preference of different rewards for the individual. There are several ways of job designing which affect the employees greatly. The managers of the organizations often mandate the employees to be responsible though having a direct link with the customers which ultimately leads to the feeling of ownership and personal responsibility among the employees. The managers of the current organizations largely depend on the employee evaluation or feed backs so that they can judge the actions taken by them for increasing productivity of the employees. This on the other hand help the employers to identify the issues and scope of improvement for the employee motivation. By giving the authority to the workers, the employers can attain a successful job design.

Therefore, it can be concluded that the concept of job designing has given birth of argument among the scholars of different times. There are numerous aspects which distinguish the utility of job designing in the contemporary organizations. It can be definite that there are huge utilization of job designing in order to increase productivity of the employees. Some of the critics support the idea of perfect job designing that help the employers to serve their own interest but providing no benefit to the employees. one the contrary, another set of critics feel that there are ample scopes for the employees to flourish both personally as well as professionally. Hence the employers must bring balance in the organizational benefits so that no issues effect the manager and employee relation.

References:

Bruning, P.F. and Campion, M.A., 2018. A Role–resource Approach–avoidance Model of Job Crafting: A Multimethod Integration and Extension of Job Crafting Theory. Academy of Management Journal, 61(2), pp.499-522.

Hendrick, H.W. and Kleiner, B. eds., 2016. Macroergonomics: theory, methods, and applications. CRC Press.

Jong, J.P., Parker, S.K., Wennekers, S. and Wu, C.H., 2015. Entrepreneurial behavior in organizations: Does job design matter?. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 39(4), pp.981-995.

Oldham, G.R. and Fried, Y., 2016. Job design research and theory: Past, present and future. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 136, pp.20-35.

Tims, M. and Bakker, A., 2014. Job design and employee engagement. Employee engagement in theory and practice, pp.131-148.