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What is the job? A job means is a group of specific tasks done under organisational support. Job design is very crucial and necessary in today’s world as it seeks to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of an organisation while recognising that the organisation’s workers or employees are at the centre of this process. According to Pravin Durai (2010), has defined job design as a fact in a combination of job content and the work method or strategies which have been adopted for the job. Job design is the process of allocating particular tasks to workers in groups or individual workers. In a very simple sense, job design means the ways that decision-makers choose to organise work tasks, duties, activities, and responsibilities.
Job design alternatives are meant to boost motivation among workers. At the same time, motivation is strengthened by concentrating on a couple of factors, which are high levels of job performance and job satisfaction. In other words, job design can only be very effective if the employees in an organisation take into consideration the skills and knowledge needed for a job and evaluating an employee’s suitability to define the skills and knowledge. If the jobs are designed properly, then highly efficient people will join the organisation and stay with an organisation. They will motivate them to improve the productivity and profitability of the organisation. However, if the jobs are designed badly, then it will result in conflicts, high labour turnover, and absenteeism.
There are different approaches to job design as outlined by different scholars and practitioners in the quest to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of organisations while ensuring that employees also experience job satisfaction. However, this assignment will focus on four approaches to job design according to Herzberg’s revolutionary work. It will discuss and evaluate job rotation, job enlargement, job enrichment, and team-based designs.
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Job Rotation
Shifting an employee from two or more jobs or assignments in a planned manner so that the employee can be motivated and can learn as well as hone skills for the new job is known as job rotation. According to Daft (2008), has defined job design systematically moves the workers or employees from one job to another to provide them with variety and stimulation. It is a pre-planned approach to test the employee’s competencies and skills to place her or him in the right place. Furthermore, job rotation reduces the monotony of the work and gives them a wider experience and helps them to gain more insights. In the view of Nila Shrestha (2014), job rotation means moving employees from one job to another to give or provide them with a greater variety of tasks and responsibilities so that to help them prevent boredom and increase flexibility. Therefore, job rotation is a well-planned practice to reduce or decrease the boredom of doing the same style of job daily and explore the hidden potential of a worker.
This job rotation process serves the purpose of both the employees and the management. Moreover, job rotation helps management in discovering the talent of employees and determining what she or he is best at, as well as she or he, can also replace in the position of a person who has left because of the termination, transfer, and retirement. On the other hand, it gives an individual a chance to explore her or his interests and increase their experience in different operations or fields to produce a product or service. Depending on the complicated tasks, workers could rotate jobs on a yearly, monthly, daily or hourly basis. This job rotation can be difficult and complex to manage from a human resources perspective, but the improvements to employee morale might make it more worthwhile for business or organisation.
For example, when an employee works across different job profiles or departments after a specific time interval, it qualifies as job rotation. A good example of job rotation is that of an Information Technology (IT) industry in which an employee can work in various roles specifically being a solution design, quality analyst, developer, and requirement analysis. This way the employee remains motivated and can learn different types of skills as well as can become a better resource, contribute, and learn more. Another example can be of doctors. A doctor in a hospital works across different departments and gives them exposure across various verticals of medicine. A doctor can work in different departments, such as geriatrics, paediatrics, maternity, physician, dental, and cardiovascular. This allows the doctor to learn the skills across verticals and shows their best fit. In this instance, job rotation is also known as cross-training. Thus, this concludes the definition of job rotation along with its overview.
Job Enlargement
Job enlargement is another method of job design when any organisation wishes to adopt proper job design it can choose for job enlargement. According to Fais Ahmad (2013), has defined job enlargement as the giving of several additional tasks to an individual that does not require any additional skills from him or her. To understand better, job enlargement involves expanding the content of jobs to include additional tasks. It is done to provide additional challenge and interest to the job holder, which is the employee. In the simplest form, job enlargement means increasing the scope of responsibilities and duties of an employee by adding the related activities to his or her existing job profile and generally without any change in his or her authority as well as his or her level in the hierarchy in an organisation. According to Carol Woods (2018), job enlargement is the process of making a position more fulfilling and interesting by expanding the number of tasks the employee needs to complete. In other words, job enlargement is an increase or additional in job responsibilities and tasks to make a position to be more challenging.
There are two types of approaches to job enlargement. Horizontal enlargement approaches and vertical enlargement approaches. Horizontal enlargement is the first approach in job enlargement, which means that the tasks added are at the same level as those in the current position. This is achieved by adding more tasks to the existing tasks performed by a worker at the same skill level. The overall goal of horizontal enlargement is to reduce the boredom of work and the level of specialisation, to reduce the number of difficult tasks as well as to lead towards the development of new employee skills. In the view of Pravin Durai (2010), has stated that a horizontal enlargement approach is usually preferred or used in the case of a complex and highly structured task. Besides that, the second type of approaches is vertical enlargement, which refers to which employees decide how the task is to be done. In the view of Pravin Durai (2010), has stated that the main goal of vertical enlargement technique is to enhance the status and self-fulfilment needs of the workers, while it allows the workers to take part in the organisation, and the planning as well as the control of tasks.
The basic aim of job enlargement is to stimulate the interest of a worker in an exceeding job, namely increasing job attraction, through the differentiated and numerous tasks that the employee performs in her or his job. Job enlargement involves combining a variety of activities at the same level in the organisation and adding them to the existing job. It increases the scope of the job. By expanding the scope of a job, you increase the types or number of tasks a worker or employee performs. This can make workers feel more valuable towards the organisation and reduce absenteeism due to boredom and morale with a single task. However, when workers receive too much of responsibility, they can feel ill-equipped and overwhelmed to handle the job. So, the implement of job enlargement program only after conducting adequate training. Employees must have the knowledge, skills, and resources to complete all the job tasks assigned to them.
For instance, Mr Chandru is an accountant in a large corporation. For his position, Mr Chandru is responsible for posting entries and creating financial statements for a few small companies the corporation owns. He is been doing this for a couple of years now, and the tasks required each month are found in a checklist he works down for each company. Although he likes accounting, his work is getting a bit monotonous. Sometimes a change in work tasks can add a much-needed boost of enthusiasm, due to the change in daily activities, and can improve morale. The employee will also need to increase his or her productivity to accomplish the new tasks, so he or she has a chance to implement methods that speed up his or her output. It also shows the employee that management is aware of the work he or she is doing and feels he or she can accomplish more which can add to job satisfaction. Another example is Mr John works as a trash man for the city. His boss might switch the routes that Mr John has to cover or may ask him to pick up the recycling routes in addition to his routine trash routes. Even though Mr John is not given an extra challenge or authority by taking these additional routes, it does provide Mr John with new tasks that can lessen the repetitiveness of his usual trash route. Hence, this concludes the definition of job enlargement together with its summary.
Job Enrichment
Job enrichment is one of the several job designs to identify the responsibilities, roles, and duties of an employee. According to Ali and Aroosiya (2012), has explained the term of job enrichment as a technique entails enriching job, which refers to the inclusion of greater different of work content, giving workers the responsibility and autonomy in terms of controlling, directing, and planning their own performance, requiring a higher level of skill and knowledge, and providing meaningful work experience as well as opportunity for personal growth. In other words, job enrichment involves increasing the decision-making authority of the worker making an individual or someone concerned a lot in meaningful tasks on the job challenging his or her skills. Job enrichment helps not only in adding to the motivation of the worker however it helps the organisation accomplish or succeed its objectives more expeditiously in the long-run or long-term by more effective utilisation of its employees.
In the view of Michael Armstrong (2003), has clarified that apart from employee motivation job enrichment is positively correlated with feedback-seeking behaviour, which in turn improves not only job performance but also organisational effectiveness. The main characteristics that play an important role in job enrichment are feedback, the use of abilities, and the belief that the task is crucial. According to Mohr and Zoghi (2006), has stated that job enrichment includes many different workplace practices, such as information sharing, self-directed teams, quality circles, and job rotation. Besides, job enrichment is also known as a job enhancement or vertical expansion, which means it is a job design technique that relies on adding new sources of job satisfaction for the employees. It increases the level of responsibility for each of the members of the worker.
Last but not least, the purpose of using job enrichment is to give the employee a clear meaning of his or her roles so that it gives more satisfaction and motivation to them. From the view of a business perspective, this is vital because satisfied employees are generally more loyal and productive. Besides, the first action point of job enrichment is to reduce the repetition of tasks. It makes the job more enjoyable, less boring, and improves productivity with self-driven employees. This can be seen in the operator at the clothing factory who previously only sews clothes are now allowed to design, cut and embroider. Therefore, the operator is given the responsibility to control the planning, execution, and evaluation of his or her performance.
Team-Based Designs
Team-based job designs are gaining popularity in today’s organisational management. In the view of Margaret Rouse (2011), has stated that the team-based design is a style of project management in which all the members on the project team are held equally responsible for the quality, failure, or success of the project. Team-based designs are also called as the whole-team approach, team-based structure, or team-based organisation. Moreover, a work team can be very effective if it fulfils the job characteristics as suggested in the “Job Characteristics Model (JCM)” .
Furthermore, the team also has to fulfil the conditions of an effective team. In team-based job design, employees work in the specific groups that are tasked with a project. With a few exceptions, these teams or groups do not have a supervisor which means that the employees must establish trust with each other to achieve project goals. This also means that the employees share responsibility for managing each of the tasks and are given the authority to make decisions that are typically made by supervisors and managers in more traditionally structured businesses. In most of the team-based job design, managers establish performance, goals, standards, and milestones but allow team members to determine how to meet these requirements.
The team-based design’s characteristics mentioned above greatly enhance the motivation of team members and increases team effectiveness by boosting the members’ sense of responsibility and ownership over their work.
