Learning Objectives
• Understand why study job design, flexible work
a
angements?
• Briefly understand the intrinsic motivation and rewards
• What is job design? 4 basic approaches
• Explain job characteristics model
• Describe socio-technical job design, social information
and job design, multiskilling
• Understand goal setting and job design
• Understand Flexible work a
angements, types, benefits
Why Study about Job design, flexible work a
angements???
• Society & nature of workplace is changing
• There is a deep appreciation how the job itself promotes motivation
• Organisations have moved beyond providing extrinsic rewards
• Focus now is on intrinsic rewards that workers get in doing jobs
• Hence,
- Designing the work to maximise employee outcomes is fundamental
- Understanding job design approaches/theories are crucial
- The alignment of organisational goals through goal setting is key
- Understanding how flexible work a
angement enhance the quality of working lives is
important
Intrinsic work rewards arise directly as a result of
task performance.
Intrinsic motivation: The desire to work hard solely
for the pleasant experience of task accomplishment
• When do people desire intrinsic work rewards?
• How can one design jobs for people who
want greater intrinsic work rewards?
• How can one motivate those people who don’t
want intrinsic work rewards?
1. Intrinsic motivation and rewards
https:
images.app.goo.gl/42xzkzsPLUE7J8WUA
• Jo
• One or more tasks that an individual performs in direct support of an
organisation’s production purpose
• Job design
• Involves Planning and specification of job tasks and work setting designated
for their accomplishment
• A properly designed job facilitate both task performance and job
satisfaction.
• Manager’s responsibility is to design jobs that will motivate the employee
Individual needs +
task attributes +
work setting
Performance
&
Satisfaction
2. Job Design
There are four main approaches to job design:
• Job simplification
• Job enlargement
• Job rotation
• Job enrichment.
3. Job design approaches
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images.app.goo.gl/dGYyZLhaCanoTt617
Job simplification: standardising work procedures and employing people
in clearly defined and specialised tasks. (job engineering)
Advantages Disadvantages
• Increased operating
efficiency
• Low-skill and low-cost
labou
• Minimal training
equirements
• Controlled production
quantity
• Loss of efficiency due to
low quality work
• High absenteeism and
turnove
• Paying high wages to
get people to do
unpleasant jobs
3.1 Job simplification
https:
images.app.goo.gl/dpZzzjqYtvxNhhf89
3.2 Job enlargement
• Job enlargement: increases task variety by combining tasks of similar skill
levels that were previously assigned to separate workers into one job.
• The only change in the original job design is that a worker now does a
greater variety of tasks.
• May add variety and alleviate boredom
https:
images.app.goo.gl/WHQqJGJWj9nM6AV48
3.3 Job rotation
• Job rotation: Involves increasing task variety by periodically shifting workers among jobs
involving different tasks at similar levels of skill.
• Example: Nurse – geriatric patients, surgical patients, rehabilitation
• Efficiency losses (due to changing) are offset by gains in workforce flexibility
• New employees are rotated in jobs
• Horizontal loading (
eath of job increased by adding variety of tasks) vs vertical loading (increase job depth by adding responsibilities
such as planning, controlling, that previously done by managers)
https:
images.app.goo.gl/FT81jFiUCRt7XgfK8
3.4 Job enrichment
• Job enrichment: is the practice of building
motivating factors into job content.
• Seeks to expand job content by adding planning
and evaluating duties
• Changes increase job ‘depth’ through vertical
loading
Frederick Herzberg: 7 Principles guiding Herzberg’s approach to job enrichment
Note: Each principle is an action guideline designed to increase the presence of one or more motivating factors
Potential problems
• Lack of job diagnosis prior to redesign
• Lack of attention to situational factors
• Reports of job enrichment success may have been
overstated; lack of rigorous evaluation of outcomes
• Lack of attention to individual differences
• Lack of application in practice
3.4 Potential Problems in Job enrichment
Continuum of job design strategies
• The four basic approaches to job design (simplification, enlargement and rotation, and enrichment),have
provided vital insights into the complexity of effective job design.
• However, the common factor underlying these approaches is that they are ‘static’; that is, they assume
that all individuals will respond in the same, positive manner to these approaches.
• They fail to recognise the ‘dynamic’ nature of individual behaviour —that workers can, and will, respond
in a variety of ways to the implementation of any innovative job design approach.
To be effective, a manager needs to be able to understand, identify and predict how an
individual worker will respond to any job redesign approach.
Drawbacks of Basic Job design approaches
• Turner and Lawrence, Hulin and Blood – looked at role of individual differences in job design. How
would individuals respond to job redesign?
• This question led to the diagnostic approach
• Diagnostic approach – a technique developed by Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham, which is the
asis of job characteristics model (JCM)
• The JCM model addresses job design in a contingency fashion
• The diagnostic job design approach, recognises that there will be differences in the way any group
of individuals respond to a change in the design of their jobs
• Contingency approach that recognises individual differences.
4. Job characteristics model
• Five core job characteristics are identified as task attributes of special importance in the diagnosis of job designs.
• A job that is high in these core characteristics is said to be enriched.
• Five core characteristics in job design:
1. Skill variety (The degree to which the job requires an employee to undertake a variety of different activities and use different skills and talents)
2. Task identity (The degree to which the job requires completion of a ‘whole’ and identifiable piece of work (that is, it involves doing a job from beginning to end with
a visible outcome).
3. Task significance (The degree to which the job is important and involves a meaningful contribution to the organisation or society in general)
4. Autonomy (The degree to which the job gives the employee substantial freedom, independence and discretion in scheduling the work and determining the
procedures used in ca
ying it out.)
5. Job feedback. (This is the degree to which ca
ying out the work activities results in the employee obtaining direct and clear information on how well the job has
een done)
4.1 Job characteristics model – JCM (Hackman and Oldham)
• Secondly, Hackman and Oldham refer to critical
psychological states which must be realised for people
to develop intrinsic work motivation.
These are:
1. experienced meaningfulness in the work
2. experienced responsibility for the outcomes of the
work
3. knowledge of actual results of the work activities.
• These psychological states represent intrinsic rewards
that are believed to occur and influence later
performance and satisfaction when the core job
characteristics are present in the job design.
4.2 Job characteristics model – JCM (Hackman and Oldham)
Critical psychological states & Work Outcomes
4.3 Job characteristics model – JCM (Hackman and Oldham)
Individual Differences
• The job characteristics model recognises that the five core job characteristics do not affect all people in the same
way.
• Unlike many earlier theories of job design, the job characteristics model recognises individual differences in response
to changes in job design.
• A number of factors will influence the manner in which any individual employee responds to changes in the design of
his or her job.
• These factors are called ‘job design moderators’.
- Growth need strength
- Knowledge and Skill
- Context Satisfaction
• Individual differences moderate the influence of core
characteristics:
• Growth-need strength (people high in growth need will respond positively; low
growth – will feel anxiety to enriched jobs) – Maslows, Alderfe
• Knowledge and skill (competency/self efficacy respond positively)
• Context satisfaction. (Herzberg: those satisfied with salary levels, supervision and
working conditions are more likely than their dissatisfied colleagues to support job enrichment)
• If there is a match between individual capabilities and enriched
job requirements positive feelings and performance gains (and
vice versa).
4.3 Job characteristics model – JCM (Hackman and Oldham)
Individual Differences
• Job diagnostic survey:
– Questionnaire used to examine each dimension of job
characteristics model.
• Motivating potential score:
– Summary of job’s overall potential for motivating
worker.
MPS = (variety + identity = significance)/3 x autonomy x
feedback
4.4 JCM - Testing and motivating potential score
4.5 Implementing the job characteristics model
5 Socio-technical job design
• Technology can sometimes constrain the ability to enrich jobs.
• Socio-technical job design recognises this problem and seeks to optimise the
elationship between the technology system and the social system.
• This is achieved by designing work roles that integrate with the technology system.
• Changing existing technology and work practices is difficult and costly most
effective in new sites.
• Gerald Salancik and Jeffrey Pfeffer question whether jobs have stable and objective characteristics
that individuals perceive and to which they respond predictably and consistently.
• The social information processing approach argues that individual needs, task perceptions and
eactions are the result of socially constructed realities.
• Social information in the workplace influences workers perceptions of the job and their responses
to it.
6. Social Information and job design
• Multiskilling: employees acquire a
ay of skills needed to perform multiple tasks in an
organisational production or customer service process.
• The cross-training and multiskilling of employees allow them to assume
oader
esponsibilities so they are better equipped to solve problems
• In an environment that fosters multiskilling there is always someone who can take over a role.
• Has helped improve organisational performance by 30 to 40 per cent in some cases.
7. Multiskilling
• Goal-setting is linked to job design and motivation and performance
• Goal-setting: Process of developing, negotiating and formalising an employee’s targets and
objectives.
• Goals should be challenging and specific, and should incorporate task feedback.
• Goals foster high performance when:
• individuals have ability and self-efficacy
• goals are accepted & there is commitment to them.
8. Goal-Setting Theory (Locke and Latham)
8.1 Locke and Latham – Goal-Setting Framework
MBO involves managers working with their employees to establish performance goals and plans that are consistent with
higher-level work unit and organisational objectives
8.2 Goal setting and MBO (Managing by Objectives)
Notice how joint supervisor–employee discussions are designed to extend participation from the point of initial goal establishment to the point of
evaluating results in terms of goal attainment.
• The concept of individual goal setting has been further developed over the past few years to introduce the concept of key
performance indicators (KPIs)
• Key performance indicators (KPIs): standards against which individual and organisational performance can be measured.
• Important in organisational benchmarking.
• Link between KPIs and SMART goals i.e. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound.
• KPIs