Job Design

Individual responses to jobs vary. A job may be motivating to one person but not to someone else. Also, depending on how jobs are designed, they may provide more or less opportunity for employees to satisfy their job-related needs. For example, a sales job may furnish a good opportunity to satisfy social needs, whereas a training assignment may satisfy a person’s need to be an expert in a certain area. A job that gives little latitude may not satisfy an individual’s need to be creative or innovative. Therefore, managers and employees a like are finding that understanding the characteristics of jobs requires broader perspectives than it did in the past. Designing or redesigning jobs encompasses many factors. Job design refers to organizing tasks, duties, and responsibilities into a productive unit of work. It involves the content of jobs and the effect of jobs on employees. Identifying the components of a given job is an integral part of job design. More attention is being paid to job design for three major reasons:

• Job design can influence performance in certain jobs, especially those where employee motivation can make a substantial difference. Lower costs through reduced turnover and absenteeism also are related to good job design.
• Job design can affect job satisfaction. Because people are more satisfied with certain job configurations than with others, it is important to be able to identify what makes a “good” job.
• Job design can affect both physical and mental health. Problems such as hearing loss, backache, and leg pain sometimes can be traced directly to job design, as can stress and related high blood pressure and heart disease.

Not everyone would be happy as a physician, as an engineer, or as a dishwasher. But certain people like and do well at each of those jobs. The person/job fit is a simple but important concept that involves matching characteristics of people with characteristics of jobs. Obviously, if a person does not fit a job, either the person can be changed or replaced, or the job can be altered. In the past, it was much more common to make the round person fit the square job. However, successfully “reshaping” people is not easy to do. By redesigning jobs, the person/job fit can be improved more easily. Jobs may be designed properly when they are first established or “reengineered” later.

Nature of Job Design

Identifying the components of a given job is an integral part of job design. Designing or redesigning jobs encompasses many factors, and a number of different techniques are available to the manager. Job design has been equated with job enrichment, a technique developed by Frederick Herzberg, but job design is much broader than job enrichment alone.

JOB ENLARGEMENT AND JOB ENRICHMENT

Attempts to alleviate some of the problems encountered in excessive job simplification fall under the general headings of job enlargement and job enrichment. Job enlargement involves broadening the scope of a job by expanding the number of different tasks to be performed. Job enrichment is increasing the depth of a job by adding responsibility for planning, organizing, controlling, and evaluating the job. A manager might enrich a job by promoting variety, requiring more skill and responsibility, providing more autonomy, and adding opportunities for personal growth. Giving an employee more planning and controlling responsibilities over the tasks to be done also enriches. However, simply adding more similar tasks does not enrich the job. Some examples of such actions that enrich a job include:

• Giving a person an entire job rather than just a piece of the work.
• Giving more freedom and authority so the employee can perform the job as he or she sees fit.
• Increasing a person’s accountability for work by reducing external control.
• Expanding assignments so employees can learn to do new tasks and develop new areas of expertise.
• Giving feedback reports directly to employees rather than to management only.

JOB ROTATION

The technique known as job rotation can be a way to break the monotony of an otherwise routine job with little scope by shifting a person from job to job. For example, one week on the auto assembly line, John Williams attaches
doors to the rest of the body assembly. The next week he attaches bumpers. The third week he puts in seat assemblies, then rotates back to doors again the following week. Job rotation need not be done on a weekly basis. John could spend one-third of a day on each job or one entire day, instead of a week, on each job. It has been argued, however, that rotation does little in the long run to solve the problem of employee boredom. Rotating a person from one boring job to another may help somewhat initially, but the jobs are still perceived to be boring. The advantage is that job rotation does develop an employee who can do many different jobs.

Job Characteristics

The job-characteristics model by Hackman and Oldham identifies five important design characteristics of jobs. Figure 3—6 shows that skill variety, task identity, and task significance affect meaningfulness of work. Autonomy stimulates responsibility, and feedback provides knowledge of results. Following is a description of each characteristic.

SKILL VARIETY The extent to which the work requires several different activities for successful completion indicates its skill variety. For example, low skill variety exists when an assembly-line worker performs the same two tasks repetitively. The more skills involved, the more meaningful the work. Skill variety can be enhanced in several ways. Job rotation can break the monotony of an otherwise routine job with little scope by shifting a person from job to job. Job enlargement may as well.

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 is its task identity. For example, one corporation changed its customer
service processes so that when a customer calls with a problem, one employee, called a Customer Care Advocate, handles most or all facets of the problem from maintenance to repair. As a result, more than 40% of customer problems are resolved by one person while the customer is still on the line. Previously, less than

1% of the customer problems were resolved immediately because the customer service representative had to complete paperwork and forward it to operations, which then followed a number of separate steps using different people to resolve problems. In the current system, the Customer Care Advocate can identify more closely with solving a customer’s problem.

TASK SIGNIFICANCE The amount of impact the job has on other people indicates its task significance. A job is more meaningful if it is important to other people for some reason. For instance, a soldier may experience more fulfillment when defending his or her country from a real threat than when merely training to stay ready in case such a threat arises. In the earlier example, the Customer Care Advocate’s task has significance because it affects customers considerably.

AUTONOMY The extent of individual freedom and discretion in the work and its scheduling indicates autonomy. More autonomy leads to a greater feeling of personal responsibility for the work. Efforts to increase autonomy may lead to what was characterized as job enrichment by Frederick Herzberg. Examples of actions that increase autonomy include giving more freedom and authority so the employee can perform the job as he or she sees fit and increasing an employee’s accountability for work by reducing external control.

FEEDBACK The amount of information employees receive about how well or how poorly they have performed is feedback. The advantage of feedback is that it helps employees to understand the effectiveness of their performance and contributes to their overall knowledge about the work. At one firm, feedback reports from customers who contact the company with problems are given directly to the employees who handle the customers’ complaints, instead of being given only to the department manager.

Consequences of Job Design

Jobs designed to take advantage of these important job characteristics are more likely to be positively received by employees. Such characteristics help distinguish between “good” and “bad” jobs. Many approaches to enhancing productivity and quality reflect efforts to expand some of the job characteristics. Because of the effects of job design on performance, employee satisfaction, health, and many other factors, many organizations are changing or have already changed the design of some jobs. A broader approach is reengineering work and jobs.

Individual Motivation

The performance that employers look for in individuals rests on ability, motivation, and the support individuals receive; however, motivation is often the missing variable. Motivation is the desire within a person causing that person to act. People usually act for one reason: to reach a goal. Thus, motivation is a goal directed drive, and it seldom occurs in a void. The words need, want, desire, and drive are all similar to motive, from which the word motivation is derived. Understanding motivation is important because performance, reaction to compensation, and other HR concerns are related to motivation. Approaches to understanding motivation differ because many individual theorists have developed their own views and theories. They approach motivation from different starting points, with different ideas in mind, and from different backgrounds. No one approach is considered to be the “ultimate.” Each approach has contributed to the understanding of human motivation.

Content Theories of Motivation

Content theories of motivation are concerned with the needs that people are attempting to satisfy. The most well-known theories are highlighted briefly next.

MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS

One theory of human motivation that has received a great deal of exposure in the past was developed by Abraham Maslow. In this theory, Maslow classified human needs into five categories that ascend in a definite order. Until the more basic needs are adequately fulfilled, a person will not strive to meet higher needs. Maslow’s well-known hierarchy is composed of (1) physiological needs, (2) safety and security needs, (3) belonging and love needs, (4) esteem needs, and (5) self-actualization needs. An assumption often made by those using Maslow’s hierarchy is that workers in modern, technologically advanced societies basically have satisfied their physiological, safety, and belonging needs. Therefore, they will be motivated by the needs for self-esteem, esteem of others, and then self-actualization. Consequently, conditions to satisfy these needs should be present at work; the job it self should be meaningful and motivating.

HERZBERG’S MOTIVATION/HYGIENE THEORY

Frederick Herzberg’s motivation/hygiene theory assumes that one group of factors, motivators, accounts for high levels of motivation. Another group of factors, hygiene, or maintenance factors, can cause discontent with work. Figure 3—4 compares Herzberg’s motivators and hygiene factors with Maslow’s needs of hierarchy. The implication of Herzberg’s research for management and HR practices is that although managers must carefully consider hygiene factors in order to avoid employee dissatisfaction, even if all these maintenance needs are addressed, people may not be motivated to work harder. Only motivators cause employees to exert more effort and thereby attain more productivity, and this theory suggests that managers should utilize the motivators as tools to enhance employee performance.


Process Theories of Motivation

Process theories suggest that a variety of factors may prove to be motivating, depending on the needs of the individual, the situation the individual is in, and the rewards the individual expects for the work done. Theorists who hold to this view do not attempt to fit people into a single category, but rather accept human differences. One process theory by Lyman Porter and E.E. Lawler focuses on the value a person places on a goal as well as the person’s perceptions of workplace equity, or fairness, as factors that influence his or her job behavior. In a work situation, perception is the way an individual views the job. Figure 3—5 contains a simplified Porter and Lawler model, which indicates that motivation is influenced by people’s expectations. If expectations are not met, people may feel that they have been unfairly treated and consequently become dissatisfied.

Using the Porter and Lawler model, suppose that a salesclerk is motivated to expend effort on her job. From this job she expects to receive two types of rewards: intrinsic (internal) and extrinsic (external). For this salesclerk, intrinsic rewards could include a feeling of accomplishment, a feeling of recognition, or other motivators. Extrinsic rewards might be such items as pay, benefits, good working conditions, and other hygiene factors. The salesclerk compares her performance with what she expected and evaluates it in light of both types of rewards she receives. She then reaches some level of job satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Once this level is reached, it is difficult to determine what she will do. If she is dissatisfied, she might put forth less effort in the future, she might

work harder to get the rewards she wants, or she might just accept her dissatisfaction. If she is highly satisfied, it does not always mean she will work harder. She may even slack off a bit, saying, “I got what I wanted.” The essence of the Porter and Lawler view of motivation is perception. In addition, as the feedback loop in Figure 3—5 indicates, performance leads to satisfaction rather than satisfaction leading to performance.