Methods of Job Design | HR Tutorial

Job design refers to the process of organizing and defining the tasks, responsibilities, and duties that employees are expected to perform in a particular job. The aim of job design is to improve productivity, quality of work, job satisfaction, and employee motivation. Here are some common methods of job design:

Job Rotation: This method involves moving employees from one job to another, either within the same department or across different departments. It is an effective way of broadening an employee’s skill set, and it can prevent boredom and monotony associated with repetitive tasks.
Job Enrichment: This method involves increasing the level of responsibility, autonomy, and control employees have over their work. By giving employees more challenging and meaningful tasks, they are likely to be more motivated and engaged in their work.
Job Simplification: This method involves breaking down complex tasks into simpler, more manageable tasks. By simplifying the job, it becomes easier to perform, and the employee can focus on performing the tasks quickly and efficiently.
Job Enlargement: This method involves adding more tasks and responsibilities to an employee’s existing role. It is designed to prevent monotony and boredom by giving employees a more diverse set of tasks to perform.
Team-Based Job Design: This method involves designing jobs that require employees to work in teams to achieve organizational goals. By working collaboratively, employees can develop their communication and teamwork skills, which are essential for success in many modern workplaces.
Autonomous Job Design: This method involves giving employees greater control over their work by allowing them to set their own goals and manage their own schedules. This approach can lead to increased employee satisfaction, motivation, and productivity.

Job Simplification

In job design this simplification technique simplify or specializey the job. A given job is divided into small sub-parts and each part is assigned to one individual employee. Job simplification is introduced when job designers feel that the jobs are not specialized enough.

Job Rotation

Job rotation implies systematic movement of employees from one job to the other for job design. Job remains unchanged but employees performing them shift from one job to the other. With job rotation, an employee is given an opportunity to perform different jobs, which enriches his skills, experience and ability to perform different jobs. It is the process of preparing employees at a lower level to replace someone at the next higher level. It is generally done for the designations that are crucial for the effective and efficient functioning of the organization. By this to some extent boredom is reduced. However for this people interest is primary importance. By this they can also learn new things, new techniques, and new ways of doing better work. It may also happen that over a period of time they will be finding a job for which they are better suitable. They can also contribute in a better way to achieve the goals of the organization.

This aspect of job rotation can be seen widely applied in Retail scenario, where end user or consumer is in direct presence all through. This has for large extent reduced boredom, reduced irregularities due to familiarity, acquired new skills & assuming new and varied responsibilities. In other words it will lead to better job satisfaction, which is the ultimate goal for better contribution.

Job Enlargement

Job enlargement means expanding the scope of the job design. Many tasks and duties are aggregated and assigned to a single job. It is opposite to job simplification. Job enlargement is an extension of Job rotation, exposing the people to several jobs without changing the job duties to be performed. He is taken off the boring job for a while & is allowed to take up a related task & so on. Monotony is relieved temporarily. Critics are of the opinion that this approach involves nothing more than having to perform several boring jobs rather than one. Job enlargement is to expand in several tasks than just to do one single task. It is also the horizontal expansion of a job. It involves the addition of tasks at the same level of skill and responsibility. It is done to keep workers from getting bored. This would also be considered multi tasking by which one person would do several persons jobs, saving the company money and man hours that normally would be paid to additional workers. Small companies may not have as many opportunities for promotions, so they try to motivate employees through job enlargement. For example when I worked at a restaurant. I would bus the tables, wash the dishes, and run food upstairs. If they had just one person doing each job on the same night, it would cost the management three times the money. This adds more functions; increases variety of tasks and this is short lived. It cannot enrich the human content of job. The ultimate answer is Job Enrichment.

Job Enrichment

Job enrichment means making the job rich in its contents so that an employee will get more satisfaction while performing that job. It upgrades the responsibility, scope and challenge. A vast majority of the jobs are repetitive and monotonous in nature. This results in reducing the motivational content and human element of the job with repercussions on performance. The central focus of job enrichment is giving people more control over their work (lack of control is a key cause of stress, and therefore of unhappiness.) Where possible, allow them to take on tasks that are typically done by supervisors. This means that they have more influence over planning, executing, and evaluating the jobs they do. In enriched jobs, people complete activities with increased freedom, independence, and responsibility. They also receive plenty of feedback, so that they can assess and correct their own performance.

Job Enrichment tries to embellish the job with factors of motivation: Achievement – Recognition – Increased Responsibilities – Self Involvement – Opportunities for Growth – Advancement – Increased Competence. Job Enrichment is concerned with redesigning the job to include a variety of work content; that gives the person more autonomy & responsibility for planning, directing & controlling his own performance & provide opportunity for personal growth & meaningful work experience. Job Enrichment also for decentralization of decision making rights to individual over areas that directly affect his task functions.

The emphasis is on the result of efforts rather than the procedure to carry out the work, thus making the job result oriented. This also results in motivation, satisfaction in believing oneself to be personally accountable for results & being able to know how satisfactory ones efforts are. By Job Enrichment, condition or state of human capabilities which were not fully utilized & creation of frustration among the individual is removed to the extent possible.

Practice Questions

Q1: What is job design?
a) The process of organizing and defining the tasks, responsibilities, and duties that employees are expected to perform in a particular job.
b) The process of hiring new employees.
c) The process of terminating employees.
d) The process of training employees.

Correct Answer: a) The process of organizing and defining the tasks, responsibilities, and duties that employees are expected to perform in a particular job.

Q2: Which method of job design involves moving employees from one job to another?
a) Job enrichment
b) Job rotation
c) Job simplification
d) Job enlargement

Correct Answer: b) Job rotation

Q2: Which method of job design involves giving employees more challenging and meaningful tasks?
a) Job enrichment
b) Job rotation
c) Job simplification
d) Job enlargement

Correct Answer: a) Job enrichment

Q3: Which method of job design involves breaking down complex tasks into simpler, more manageable tasks?
a) Job enrichment
b) Job rotation
c) Job simplification
d) Job enlargement

Correct Answer: c) Job simplification

Q4: Which method of job design involves adding more tasks and responsibilities to an employee’s existing role?
a) Job enrichment
b) Job rotation
c) Job simplification
d) Job enlargement

Correct Answer: d) Job enlargement

Q5: Which method of job design involves designing jobs that require employees to work in teams?
a) Team-based job design
b) Autonomous job design
c) Job enrichment
d) Job rotation

Correct Answer: a) Team-based job design

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