Job Design & Job Analysis
Postgraduate Diploma in Business and Finance (PDBF) Program Human Resource Strategy Day 5. Activities Associated with the Management of Human Capital – Part 4 [email protected]
HRM Goal: Match Person & Job
Person KSAs Talents & Job Interests Content, Context Motivation Job Context
Job Content: Job Within the control Outcomes of the person Performance + Satisfaction The environment surrounding the job
1 Job Design Productivity Organizational Concerns • Job Design: “It is concerned Objectives Efficiency, Tasks, duties, with changing, modifying Effectiveness, responsibilities and enriching jobs in order improvement to capture the talents of employees while improving organization performance.” (Bohlander and Snell, 2010)
Ergonomic Behavioral Considerations Concerns Human Physiology, Talents, Abilities, Kinetics Commitment
Approaches to Job Design
• Mechanistic Approach • Humanistic Approach • Job Characteristics Approach • Socio-Technical Systems Approach
2 Mechanistic Approach
• Work is fully planned out by the management in advance and each employee receives written instructions, describing the task to be done • Focuses on tasks, work methods and flows, workplace layout, performance standards, and interdependencies between people and machines.
Humanistic Approach
• The Human Relations approach recognized the need to design jobs which are
interesting and rewarding. SATISFIERS • Herzberg’s research popularized the notion of enhancing need satisfaction through what is called job enrichment. DISSATISFIERS
3 Job Design and Job Enrichment
• Job Rotation • Moves employees from job to job giving them opportunities to perform a greater variety of tasks • Job Enlargement • Expands number of tasks performed, usually at same level of responsibility
• Job Enrichment • Empowers employees to assume more responsibility and accountability
How to implement job enrichment
• Vertical loading • Allows staff to perform tasks at a range of different levels of responsibility • An employee in a vertically loaded job has some of the responsibilities that management held previously. • This approach, when implemented correctly, should lead into feelings of personal accountability and responsibility for the work outcomes . • · Formation of natural work teams • These are small groups of workers that come together to plan how their work is best organized. • The objective is to increase ownership of the task, which contributes to the meaningfulness of work. •
4 How to implement job enrichment
• Establishment of customer relationships and employee ownership of the product • As teams become more advanced, they will be able to meet with customers and focus on the customers’ needs, not the needs of their supervisors. • There are three basic steps to achieve this: 1) the client must be identified 2) The contact between the client and the worker needs to be established 3) criteria and procedures are needed by which the client can judge the quality of the product • Employee receipt of direct feedback • Helps employees to know whether their performance is improving, staying at the same level or deteriorating.
Job Characteristics & Motivation
• People undertake actions according to the probability that these actions will lead to some instrumentally valued outcome • People undertake actions to achieve their goals • People act purposefully to fulfil their needs or to overcome need deficiencies • Individual action is motivated to achieve some desired objective such as more resources, promotion or additional power
5 Three Psychological States and Job Fit
• Experienced meaningfulness of work: The degree to which the individual experiences the job as generally meaningful, valuable, and worthwhile • Experienced responsibility for work outcomes: The degree to which the individual feels personally accountable and responsible for the results of his or her work • Knowledge of results: The degree to which the individual continuously understands how effectively he or she is performing the job
The Five Job Characteristics
• Skill variety: The degree to which the job requires a variety of activities that involve different skills and talents • Task identity: The degree to which the job requires completion of a ‘whole’ and identifiable piece of work, • Task significance: The degree to which the job affects the lives or work of other people • Autonomy: The degree to which the job allows the individual freedom, independence, and discretion regarding the work • Feedback: The degree to which the job activities give the individual direct and clear information about the effectiveness of his or her performance
6 The Job Characteristics Theory
Core Job Critical Characteristics Psychological Outcomes States Skill variety Task identity Task Meaningfulness significance Work motivation Growth satisfaction Autonomy Responsibility General satisfaction Work effectiveness Knowledge of Feedback from job results
Source: Hackman & Oldham (1975) Strength of employee growth needs [email protected]
Socio-technical systems theory, which synergizes the possibilities of both social and technical systems could be traced to Organizational the Hawthorn studies culture carried out in the late thirties of this century which added The Social System The Technical System •People •Plant the social dimension to the •Teams •Equipment task system of work. •Relationships •Processes •Roles •Tasks
External environment
7 Design Principles for Socio-Technical Systems
• Maintenance of Human • Proximate Physical values. Boundaries. • Minimum critical specification.. • Compatibility to • Multifunctional perspective Functional Goals. • Social support. • Availability of Information • Incompletion.. flow. • Minimum variation from the socio-technical criterion.
International Perspectives on the Design of Work The Japanese Approach • Emphasizes strategic level • Encourages collective and cooperative working arrangements • Emphasizes lean production
The German Approach – Technocentric - placing technology and engineering at the center of job design decisions (traditional German approach) – Anthropocentric - placing human considerations at the center of job design decisions (more recent German approach)
The Scandinavian Approach – encourages high degrees of worker control – encourages good social support systems for workers
8 Future Perspectives on the Design of Work: hyperspecialization
– As labor becomes more knowledge based and communications technology advances, the division of labor accelerates – it gives individuals to devote flexible hours to tasks of their choice – creates new social challenges, such as the possibility of neo-exploitation as Ref: HBR Jul-Aug 2011 work and neo-alienation.
Job Analysis Defined • Process of defining a job in terms of its component tasks or duties and the knowledge or skills required to perform them • NOTE: JA focuses on the job rather than the job holder
Work activities Recruitment and Job Description: Human behaviors selection Specifies task requirements Collected Technology needed Compensation Job Specification: Performance Performance appraisal Specifies people standards requirements
Types of Information Training and Job context Job Evaluation:
development Products JobAnalysis of Human Determines the Discovering new requirements Use Informationof Collected worth of the job needs Legal compliance [email protected]
9 Steps in Job Analysis Steps in doing a job analysis:
1 Decide how you’ll use the information.
2 Review relevant background information.
3 Select representative positions.
4 Actually analyze the job.
5 Verify the job analysis information.
6 Develop a job description and job specification.
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