WORK AND THE WAY

Job Design

Figure 1 - Jobboom

According to Armstrong (2012), Work Design (WD) deals with the ways, in which it is carried out in the work system of an organization, by teams and individuals. Hence, the three distinct processes of   “Work, Organization and Job design” establish the work and the way it should be done. Armstrong (2012), defines the WD is helpful in transforming the organizations in to "a great place to work', by creating work systems in an environment where efficiency and effectiveness is increases. A great working place is always ensures employees' health, safety and well-being.

The “Job Design (JD)” is an arm of WD, and according to Armstrong (2012), it specifies basis of jobs/tasks in order to satisfy work requirements and meet the personal needs of the job holder. As a consequence of job design been more specific in addressing personal needs of employee, assumptions are high in increasing the levels of employee engagement.

In Human Resource Management (HRM) history, the classical management practices have come out at the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The early notion of job design was tightly related to the organizational costs. Today, the 21st century's aim of the job design is to improve job satisfaction and quality of the work. It's also aim to reduce employee problems. 

Evaluation of job:

According to Norris and Porter (2012), the five techniques specified below, help improving employee motivation by influencing critical psychological states of the employees. A good study about them may guide HRM to create higher value through JD.

Figure 2 -  Job Characteristic Model -Norris and Porter (2012)

Approaches to Job Design:

Job design has a huge scope under various approaches. According to  Quick and Nelson (2010), they are, perceptual motor approach, biological approach, mechanistic approach and motivational approach. Both the perceptual motor approach and the biological approach have their roots in human factors engineering. Their major focus is on the integration of human and machine systems which emphasis is on equipment design and the proper match to operators. The other two approaches are clearly highlight the potential trade-offs that must frequently be made by organizations with regard to job design. Taylor’s scientific management and the motivational approach by job enrichment are best exemplify the mechanistic approach.

Figure 3 - Approaches to Job Design - Quick and Nelson (2010).

Job rotation - Moving employees from one department to another to experience different works is known as rotation. This is mostly done within the organization. It add variety and reduce boredom by allowing them to perform a variety of tasks. When an activity is no longer challenging, the employee would be to another job at the same level that has similar skill requirements. 

Job Engineering - Focuses on the tasks to be performed, methods to be used, workflows among employees, layout of the workers, performance standards, and interdependence among people and machines. Experts often examine these job design factors by means of time-and-motion studies, determining the time required to do each task and the movements needed to perform it efficiently.

Job enlargement - Expansion of the number of different tasks performed by an employee in a single job is job enlargement and it attempts to add somewhat similar tasks to the existing job so that it has more variety and be more interesting.

Job enrichment - Has become a popular concept. It simply means adding a few more motivators to a job to make it more rewarding. To be specific, a job is enriched when the nature of the job is exciting, challenging and creative, or gives the job holder more decision-making, planning and controlling power.

Contemporary issues in design of work:

According to Quick and Nelson (2010), rather than worker-well being and job design, a comprehensive attention has to pay on telecommuting, alternative work patterns, techno stress, task revision and skill development which are the issues of economic competition. These issues are having a high impact on overall performance requirement of the organization and employee requirements,  as the competition is overlapping  the better balance between work and employees personal/family requirements.The globalization and technology has reshaped the work, work force and work place (CIPD, 2013). Accordingly, the objectives become more strategic affecting HRM to find greater changes in job/work design.

CarMax is the United States' largest used-car retailer and a Fortune 500 company. The first CarMax location opened in September 1993. As of March 2017, the company had 173 locations. Recently, in challenging economic times, they implement job reshuffling (Quick and Nelson, 2010). Same as CarMax some great companies adopt different approaches while creating flexible work environment for employees through altering the design of job.

The Starbucks provide a wide range of opportunities for their employee development aiming job engagement. Accordingly “Every eligible U.S. Starbucks partner (employee) working part or full-time receives 100 percent tuition coverage for all four years of a bachelor’s degree, delivered through Arizona State University’s top-ranked online degree program.” They see the customers as neighbors to the employees (Starbucks, 2018) .

References:

1. Armstrong, M. (2017). Armstrong's Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. 12th ed. London: Kogan Page, pp.136-152.
2. CIPD (2013). Megatrends. The trends shaping work and working lives. [online] London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, p.2. Available at: https://www.cipd.co.uk/Images/megatrends_2013-trends-shaping-work_tcm18-11401.pdf [Accessed 7 Jul. 2018].
3. Norris, S. and Porter, T. (2012). The Encyclopedia of Human Resource Management. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, p.Article 53.
4. Quick, J. and Nelson, D. (2010). Principles of organizational behavior. Mason, Ohio: South-Western, pp.496-501.
5. Starbucks (2018). Career Center. [online] Starbucks Coffee Company. Available at: https://www.starbucks.com/careers [Accessed 5 Jul. 2018].