HRM and the Design of Work

Job Design or Work Design

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Job design is determining the duty and responsibilities of the employees in a particular job which they are expected to perform and also how to interact with their associates to realize those contributions to achieve the organizational objectives. It’s should be in the capabilities of the job holder and meets the personal and social need of the Job holder which will give work satisfaction for the Job holder.

“Job design means which outlines the contents, methods and relationship of a job that fulfill the technological and organizational needs as well as the social and personal needs of the job holder” (Davis, 1966).

Job design is a major function in Human Resource Management on staffing. The main two expectation of job design is to satisfy the needs of an organization such as Increasing productivity, quality of product or services, profitability, operational efficiency, etc. and to satisfy the needs of the employee which will give job satisfaction and encourage to be committed to do their Job role well (Armstrong, 2006).

Job role should be design to provide motivation for the employee and use their skills and capabilities efficiently to meet the job requirements.

Techniques of Job Design

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The main techniques used for Job design are Job Simplification, Job Rotation, Job Enlargement and Job Enrichment.

ü  Job Simplification

A complete job is simplified by dividing into several parts so it can be done simultaneously so the complete job can be done more quickly and efficiently. The employee doesn’t need more specialized training to do their task. Time and motion studies are used for job simplification.

ü  Job Rotation

It’s a systematic method to move employees from one job to the other which give employees an opportunity perform different jobs to increase their skills, knowledge and experience. It doesn’t change the depth of the job; here the employees are assigned to different kind of jobs with different cycle. E.g.: In a Bank a staff that used to do Customer Service can be assigned to do chq clearing.

ü  Job Enlargement

It’s a method to include additional tasks or activities at the same job level. It increases the scope of the job. Job remains the same but it enhances the activities than before. It’s done by giving added responsibilities to the workers at their existing job. It’s a method used to keep the workers not to get bored by doing the same task every day (What is humanresource, no date).

ü  Job Enrichment

It’s a method to give more responsibility, control and variety in addition to their given job tasks. It’s a way of motivating employees to use their variety of abilities and skills and to increase their responsibilities. An enrich job design contains variety of challenges and tasks, complete unit of work and feedback (What is humanresource, no date). That the job itself becomes a source of motivation to the individual. It helps to reduce the labor turnover and absenteeism.

This is a method developed by Frederick Hertzberg an American psychology. According to Herzberg (1968) “It’s not just increasing the variety of tasks; nor it is the provision of opportunities of job rotation”.

References

Armstrong, M. (2006). A Handbook of Human Resources Management Practices (10 ed.). London: Kogan Page Limited .

Davis, L. E. (1966). The Design of Jobs, Industrial Relation (6 ed.).

Herzberg, F. (1968). One more time: How do you motivate employees? Harvard Business Review.

What is humanresource. (no date). Job design. Retrieved 08 30, 2018, from http://www.whatishumanresource.com

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