1. CHAPTER 8 Job Design

2. Learning outcomes of this chapter To introduce and clarify the concepts of job design and job redesign To identify the potential importance of job design as part of the process of managing and leading people To recognise the contribution of job design to the development of ‘thinking performers’ To identify negative impacts and/or unintended consequences of job design and redesign To indicate the prevalence of enriched jobs in reality within the twenty-first-century global workforce.

3. Job design is not a new concept Management itself emerged partly as an attempt to design, structure and supervise jobs … with a view to improving performance. Links to motivation because the nature of a worker’s job has a fundamental impact on his/her experience of work. Recent work on the subject typically recommends expanding jobs to enhance flexibility and improve job satisfaction.

4. Definition of job design: Principles underlying the organisation of jobs, in particular the relative number and variety of required tasks and the extent of worker discretion in performing the job(s). Chapter 8, page 127

5. Approaches to job design Scientific Management Tasks organised into highly specialised jobs Managers design tasks and speed of work Minimised skill requirements? (eg Leach and Wall) Job redesign Workers’ motivation emerging from content of work Needs for autonomy and achievement Provide opportunity for meaningful work

6. Hackman and Oldham’s (1980) five key characteristics of motivating jobs Skill variety Task identity Task significance Autonomy Feedback Each leads to a ‘positive psychological state’.

7. Consider … How can the work involved in the following jobs be linked to Hackman and Oldham’s model? Dentist Railway ticket collector University lecturer Your current or most recent job

8. A note of caution Plenty of twenty-first-century jobs are still apparently designed in a ‘Taylorist’ way – eg scripted call centre work and fast-food operations. ‘Not every employee is looking for a challenging job. Many workers meet their higher-order needs off the job. There are 168 hours in every individual’s week. Work rarely consumes more than 30 per cent of this time.’ Robbins (2005)

9. A contingency approach to job design The nature of job design depends on a variety of factors: The work itself Chosen orientations to work among employees Cultural norms – the right to fulfilling work seen as a Western perspective

10. Job design concepts from Japan Teamwork – eg via quality circles Multi-skilling Total Quality Management (TQM) Single-status employment conditions frame job design principles Many employers now accept that quality issues should be the concern of all workers, and that this should be operationalised through job design.

11. Business process re-engineering (BPR) Radical review of work processes Strong customer focus Jobs reorganised around principles of customer care See Call centres need not be such a nightmare case study on page 135.

12. The upskilling thesis Work organisations require multi-skilled, proactive and customer-focused staff (thinking performers). Increasingly well-educated workforces will demand psychologically fulfilling jobs. High-performance work organisations will need to design (or let their employees design) jobs that are varied while giving workers scope for initiative and autonomy.

13. Conclusion Job design forms an important part of the process of managing people. It has often been seen as a key way of developing ‘thinking performers’ at work. The way work is designed can be a powerful motivator or de-motivator for the people carrying out that work. Job re-design has not been applied across many sectors of the economy and may be more prevalent in particular societies.

14. And finally … A contingency view of job design suggests that principles and practices may vary depending on the level of predictability required in the work and also the expectations of a workforce. There is a range of strategic choices available to decision-makers when approaching the area of job design.