Job Design: Work arrangement (or rearrangement) aimed at reducing or overcoming job dissatisfaction and employee alienation arising from repetetive and mechanistic tasks. Through job design, organizations try to raise productivity levels by offering non-monetary rewards such as greater satisfaction from a sense of personal achievement in meeting the increased challenge and responsibility of one’s work. Jon enlargement, job enrichment, job rotation, and job simplification are the various techniques used in a job design exercise. -www.businessdictionary.com
It takes more than a salary to keep an employee satisfied with their job. Managing job design can help keep employees excited and productive, but there are many variables when trying to satisfy the needs of a diverse group of employees. These resources should be considered a starting point, but creativity and adaptability, as well as knowledge of your business and the needs of your employees are what will make your job design efforts successful.
Illustration of components that factor into job design, from http://whatishumanresource.com/job-design
Job Specialization:
The first major component of organizational structure is to break down the precise tasks and duties assigned to individuals. This breakdown of work becomes job specialization. Job specialization is the simple concept of assigning individual workers to set specific tasks on a very narrow field of duties. We can illustrate this with a basic chart. This being the simplest of organizational tools.
Benefits:
Job specialization creates a worker who is highly trained and can excel in quantity and quality of work. This is the first of 4 major reasons to proceed with creating very specialized workers. The second is that time is saved by not having to transition from one task to another. Employee’s spending time doing several different jobs are faced with the fact they must pause and concentrate on a new task. Each pause or break adds time to completing tasks and interrupts the previous or following tasks by preventing quick repetitive actions. Another important aspect to job specialization, is the realization of specialized applicable tools to each task. If more then one task is being done at one specific time, it is difficult to make tools to complete multiple tasks. Specialized single task equipment is inexpensive in comparison to larger multipurpose tools. Good examples are lathe’s and mills, vs. CNC multi-function machines. The fourth and last important benefit is the ease of training suitable replacements for single tasked employee’s. A trainee would easily be able to learn and apply single tasked jobs in comparison huge complex operations.
• Job Specialization
Article: What is Job Specialization? By Wanda Thibodeaux, eHow Contributor
http://www.ehow.com/info_8083551_job-specialization.html
Alternatives:
While job specialization can have increased productivity, and allows for easy replacement training, it has its drawbacks also. A employee performing the same task day in and day out can often get board and complacent. A board employee often has low employment moral and their likelihood of remaining at their task drops. A complacent employee can be a danger to him/herself and to others as they start to think of their tasks as routine and not critical. Often time work related injuries are the result of complacency with safety precautions. The alternative to specialization is to diversify tasks and expand an employee’s role. The primary alternatives to specialization are job rotation, job enlargement and job enrichment.
• Job Rotation
Job rotation is the process by which an employee is cross trained into other departments. This gives employees and employers the ability to be flexible in duties and work schedules. Employee’s can gain on the job knowledge and rotation may reduce boredom and complacency. But, that only lasts until the employee get’s board with the constant same rotation. But, depending on the job or manufacturing technique being applied, an employee in rotation might gain better insight into the sequential tasks and their place in the sequence of work. A good example being, an employee might find a task or small detail that when applied at their station, the following station might benefit as a result.
Article: How do I implement an effective job rotation program in my company? By Society for Human Resource Management
http://www.shrm.org/TemplatesTools/hrqa/Pages/Whatisjobrotation.aspx
Slideshow: Effective Job Rotation Programs. By Dr. John Sullivan.
Using Job Rotations For Improving Development And Retention from Dr John Sullivan
• Job Enlargement vs. Job Enrichment
These concepts are similar, as both involve expanding the employee’s workload with additional tasks. However, in Job Enlargement, new tasks are being added to build the employee’s skillset and increase productivity of the organization without regard to the employee’s existing skills and preferences. Job Enrichment takes the existing skills and preferences into consideration and leverages them to make the expanded responsibilities more stimulating and interesting to the worker.
Article: Job Enrichment: Increasing Job Satisfaction. Mindtools.com
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMM_81.htm
• Work Teams
Sometimes, assembling a team can rejuvenate the work process or help the business work through a problem that individuals can solve alone. Assembling an effective team requires skills of its own.
Article and tools: Workplaces that work: Productive Work Teams
http://hrcouncil.ca/hr-toolkit/workplaces-teams.cfm
Top 10 List for Building a Successful Team
1. Organizational Skills
A team in chaos is doomed to failure
2. Conversation
Communications lead to success
3. Accurate Perception
Assess what is working, recognize mistakes
4. Conflict Resolution
Don’t get derailed by disputes
5. Diversity
Varied perspectives inspire creativity
6. Innovative Thinking
Be brave and move beyond old routines
7. Responsibility
Hire people who follow through
8. Strong Work Ethic
Select workers who are dedicated
9. Appreciation
Set the tone of gratitude
10. Specific Roles
Match tasks to talents
Adapted from What are the top 10 qualities to build a successful work team? By Lisa Mooney, Demand Media. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/top-10-qualities-build-successful-work-team-25444.html
Management Tools and Resources 