Job Design

Introduction:
Job Design has emerged as one of the
important areas that have received the
attention of behavioral scientists. Based on
research studies, sufficient theoretical
framework for Job Design has developed. Job
Design involves integration of tasks, duties,
and responsibilities into a unit of work to
achieve certain objectives.
 Traditional Job Design
• Traditional job design is based on Taylor's
scientific management and other contributions
made on the lines of scientific management.
• Traditional job design takes into account only
technical aspect of a job, and job design is based
on time, motion, and fatigue study.
• The study suggests that a job should be designed
in such a way that its performance requires least
movement on the part of the job performer.
 Time, motion and fatigue study
ensures least movement in the
following ways
• Time study involves the determination of time a
movement takes to perform the job. The
movement which takes minimum time is the best
one.
• Motion study is the study of movements in parts
of human body involved in performing the job
and thereby, elimination of unnecessary
movements in performing the job.
• Fatigue study shows the amount and frequency of
rest required in completing the job.
 Motivational Job design
• Personality predisposition and characteristics such as
need partners, values, attributes, skills, tolerance for
ambiguity and locus of control;
• Characteristics of job such as nature of challenge it
offers, the autonomy in performing the job, and the use
of skills in performing the job; and
• Characteristics of the facilitating structures at the
workplace such as appropriate layout of the facilities,
reward system, training and development facilities, and
the extent to which innovative risk taking efforts of the
individual are encouraged and rewarded.
 Job characteristics model
Core job Critical Psychological Personal and work
Characteristics States Outcomes
Variety of skill identity Experienced
of the task significant meaningfulness of
of the task the work High internal
motivation.
Experienced High quality work
responsibility for performance.
Autonomy work outcomes High satisfaction with
the work.
Knowledge of Low turnover and
results from work absenteeism.
Feedback
activities

Moderated by
employee growth
need strength
 Motivating Potential Score

• MPS=Skill variety + Task identity + Task

significance

3
x Autonomy x Feedback.
 Factors in job design

Environmental
Factors

Organizational Motivating
Job design Outcomes
Factors Potential

Individual Factors
 Environmental development
• Technological development

• Availability of personnel

• Socio-cultural expectations
 Organizational factors
• Nature of task characteristics

• Use of Ergonomics

• Work practices
 Mechanism of job design
Low Degree of skill variety, responsibility and growth High

Simplification Rotation Enlargement Enrichment

• Job simplification
• Job rotation
• Job enlargement
• Job enrichment
 Job redesign
• Identification of jobs to be registered

• Identification of contents to be redesigned

• Effecting redesigning

• Evaluating effect of redesigning

 Job analysis
Organizational
design
Job
Acquisition of
description
personnel
Job Human resource
analysis development
Job evaluation and
compensation
Performance
Job appraisal
specification
Safety and health

Employee
counseling
• Organizational design
• Acquisition of personnel
• Human resource development
• Job evaluation and compensation
• Performance appraisal
• Safety and health
• Employee counseling
 Process of job analysis
Determination of uses
of job analysis

Strategic choices of
job analysis

Information collection

Information processing

Job Job
description specification
 Strategic choices in job analysis
• The extent of employee involvement

• The level of details of the analysis

• Timing and frequency of the analysis

• Post-oriented versus future-oriented job

analysis
 Information collection
• Types of information to be collected
• Persons involved in information collection
• Methods of information collection
• Personnel observation
• Interview
• Log records
• Critical incidents
• Check list
• Questionnaire
• Position analysis Questionnaire
 Functional job analysis
• A fundamental distinction is made between
what and things. What has been done and what
need to be done to get things done.
• Jobs are performed in relation to data, people
and things.
• The levels of difficulty required in dealing
with data, people and things are hierarchical
and can be represented by an ordinal scale.