Job Design

A. What does HR consider when designing a job?

B. According to the authors of “Management of human resources”, job design can be broken into three categories. 1) Industrial engineering, which identifies and analyzes elements of job cycles in order to improve efficiency. 2) Behavioural engineering broadens the numbers of activities in which employees engage to overcome dehumanization and other problems associated with industrial engineering. And 3) human engineering, which takes into consideration ergonomics and tries to adapt job tasks to physical characteristics of the employee.

A. So by increasing the dimension of an employee’s job, companies can potentially increase employee motivation and satisfaction.

B. That’s correct. Each technique adds values to an employee’s job. For example, job enlargement assigns workers additional tasks at the same level of responsibility to increase the number of tasks they have to perform; job rotation systematically moves employees from one job to another; and job enrichment makes an employee’s job more rewarding or satisfying by adding more meaningful tasks and duties.

Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham also suggested a job characteristics model which outlines five core job characteristics:
1. skill variety,
2. task identity, or degree of completion
3. task significance, or impact on the lives and work of others
4. autonomy, or independence and
5. feedback.

A. What are some examples of ways employers can enrich jobs?

B. Examples may include:
- "increasing the level of difficulty and responsibility of the job
- assigning workers more authority and control over outcomes
- providing feedback about job performance directly to employees
- adding new tasks requiring training, thereby providing an opportunity for growth, and
- assigning individuals specific tasks or responsibility for performing a whole job rather than only parts of it" (pg. 65).

A. Okay, so a good job design not only identifies the tasks involved but examines ways to motivate and maintain the health and safety of the employees involved.

Key Terms
This week’s HR terminology includes:
- job enlargement
- job rotation
- job enrichment
- skill variety,
- task identity
- task significance
- autonomy
- feedback.

References
Dresslar, G et al. (2007). Management of human resource, in-class edition, second Canadian edition. Retrieved from University of Phoenix library.

Multiple-choice quiz
*Answer found at the end of the post.

1. Which of the following job characteristics is not generally linked to employee motivation and satisfaction?
A. Skill variety
B. Task identity
C. Task significance
D. Task complexity

2. Which of the following is not proposed by behavioural engineering?
A. job enlargement
B. job sharing
C. job rotation
D. job enrichment

3. Which of the following is also known as vertical loading
A. job enlargement
B. job enrichment
C. job rotation
D. none of the above


Answers: 1) d, 2) b, 3) b