Chapter VII: Job Design

Job design is the process of specifying the duties and responsibilities that will be included in
employees' roles. Human Resource (HR) managers aim is to design work duties specific to the
individual so that it allows the employee to maximize their performance and stay engaged and
motivated.

Job design is the process of creating a job that enables the organization to achieve its goals while
motivating and rewarding the employee. This means that a well-designed job leads to higher
productivity and quality of work, while also leading to higher job satisfaction, lower absence, and
lower employee turnover intentions.

To properly redesign jobs, we need a framework to guide this redesign process. Each job should
have five core job characteristics to be motivating for the individual.

Characteristic: Skill Variety

The degree to which a job requires a broad array of skills. A financial controller managing three
different departments will have more skill variety than a controller managing one specific
department. Jobs with greater skill variety are more challenging and require more competence.

Characteristic: Task Identity

The degree to which an individual performs a whole piece of work. For example, designing a full
house interior is more rewarding than designing a single room.

Characteristic: Task Significance

The degree to which the work impacts others. When work impacts others, the task feels more
meaningful, leading to higher satisfaction.

Characteristic: Autonomy

The level of independence and freedom an individual has. Higher levels of autonomy make a
person feel more responsible for their work.
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Characteristic: Feedback

The information that workers receive about the effectiveness of their work. Feedback can come
from the work itself (e.g., a functioning product) and external sources (e.g., customer
satisfaction). Feedback from the work itself provides the most satisfaction and leads to
knowledge of the results of work activities.

When a job has these five characteristics, it will be more meaningful, the employee will feel more
responsible, and have more knowledge of the work results. This, in turn, leads to the outcomes
like: high motivation, higher quality performance, job satisfaction, and low absenteeism and
turnover.

Job Design Strategies:

Job Rotation: Job rotation is the systematic movement of employees from one job to another
within the organization to achieve various human resources objectives such as orienting new
employees, training employees, enhancing career development, and preventing job boredom or
burnout.

Example:

∙A marketing employee could be moved to sales for a short period of time to understand
customers’ needs better and learn sales processes in the company.

∙A manufacturing employee may be transferred between positions to relieve the physical

# Abbott employees have the opportunity to rotate jobs in six focus areas:

∙ clinical

∙ finance

∙ information technology
 ∙ operations

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Those chosen for Abbot’s program commit to a two- to three-year assignment in which they
rotate between various tasks, disciplines, and office locations around the nation. This gives new
graduates the ability to experience several roles in a short period of time, allowing them to
investigate their own interests and preferences.

The job rotation program involves the temporary assignment of an employee in a position or
department for a predetermined period to perform the specific duties of another position. This is
normally a voluntary assignment where the employee treats the assigned duties as part of his or
her regular responsibilities.

Any supervisor or employee may initiate a request for job rotation assignment after careful
evaluation of other available workforce strategies. Job rotation may be inter-departmental, within
a division of a company, or in a cross-functional division.

Job rotation is a practice of moving employees between jobs in an organization. This increases
the skill variety, helps employees orientate in potential new roles, and learn through different
experiences. Job rotation programs can lead to increased motivation and create flexibility in
deployment resulting in easy replacement in case of absence.

An employee on job rotation assignment shall remain in the same position number and
compensation classification and shall retain all rights, benefits and privileges of his or her regular
position.

An employee on job rotation shall retain eligibility for promotional

opportunities. Benefits:

o Raises intrinsic reward potential of a job: Job Rotation is likely to raise intrinsic reward
potential of a job due to different skill and abilities needed to perform it. A worker
becomes a broader based versatile worker due to job rotation. Management gets the
 benefit of job rotation because workers become competent in several jobs rather than
only in one job. Staff adjustment in different department is possible easily due it the
practice of job rotation.

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o Beneficial to the organization: Due to job rotation, the organization stands to gain
because of the versatility of its employees who develop skills due to job rotation. It
develops a common culture because of wide and common exposure to workers.
o Worker becomes competent in several jobs: Due to job rotation, workers know about a
variety of jobs. It also facilitates personal growth of employees and makes the workers
more useful and valuable to the organization. The organization stands to benefit as the
workers become competent in several jobs. As and result, the management gets
employees who can perform a variety of tasks to meet contingencies.
o Improves inter-departmental co-operation: Periodical job rotation improves inter
departmental co-operation. Employees understand each other’s problems properly and this
facilitates co-operation among them.
o Motivates employees: Job rotation technique is used for motivating employees in the
organizations. It is suggested as a motivational strategy.
o Reduce Boredom: Job rotation reduce boredom and disinterest among employees. Due to
job rotation, a given employee performs different jobs of more or less the same nature.
The employee gets some variety of work, workplace and peers.
o Develops wide skills among workers: job rotation develops and wide range of skills
among employees. It broadens knowledge and skills of an employee. Personal worth of
employee also improves.

Job Enrichment: This technique allows employees to have more authority and accountability in
the organization. The job Enrichment technique is aimed at employees to feel more important and
fulfilled. Job enrichment is a strategy used to motivate employees by giving them increased
responsibility and variety in their jobs. The idea is to allow employees to have more control over
their work. By doing so, one can tap into their natural desire to do a good job and contribute to
the overall goals of the company.

Job enrichment involves creating meaningful roles through feedback, encouragement,

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It’s about creating a work culture based on psychological safety at work where managers
encourage a growth mindset and employees to strive to take on more responsibility.

If you fail to enrich an employee’s job and provide them with a sense of autonomy and
satisfaction, you run the risk of creating a repetitive and monotonous environment where
employees feel bored, undervalued, and dissatisfied. Once an employee feels that way, a pay rise
is unlikely to inspire them to give it their best.

For example, you have a graphic designer working at your company who is responsible for
designing and launching your new company website. Their job will usually involve receiving
briefs from the marketing manager and copy from the in-house copywriter. They might also be
responsible for reviewing potential designs with a UX expert and presenting a final draft for the
website to the marketing director.

With job enrichment, you might encourage the designer to take on additional tasks within the
scope of the project, such as creating the wireframe for the website. By doing this, you are
helping them to expand their skill sets, and showing them that you trust and value them as an
employee.

Benefits of Job Enrichment:

1. The most obvious benefit of job enrichment is that it improves the employee
experience and increases workplace motivation and job satisfaction. Cultivating
engagement is no longer making cosmetic changes to make workers feel
temporarily happy. To get employees truly invested, companies need a strategic
approach that will improve the employee experience. One that gives employees
 what they need to find fulfillment at work.
2. When your employees are satisfied, they are less likely to resign. This means that
there is a decrease in your turnover rate.
3. Employees who are happy and feel challenged are also far less likely to take time
off from work unless they are genuinely sick. They take more pride in their work
and look forward to coming into the office each day. This can be a great tool to
reduce absenteeism in the company.
4. When you promote job enrichment, you are also far more likely to cultivate an
environment of good internal communications between management and

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employees. This is primarily because employees rely on management to learn the
skills they need to perform the new duties assigned to them.
5. By encouraging your employees to take on more responsibilities and work more
autonomously, you also get a sense of which employees might be a good fit for
higher level roles within your company further down the line.
6. Job enrichment also leads to an increase in workplace productivity. For example,
your lower – level employees feel more valued and more motivated in order to
achieve their new goals. And by taking on some of the duties usually assigned to
supervisors, your managers have more free time to focus on more strategic
projects. This consequentially boosts overall productivity levels.

Job Enlargement: This is when more duties and tasks are added to the job role horizontally,
meaning that even though the variety of duties and tasks will increase the employees will stay at
the same hierarchical level. This technique is put in place to increase employees’ engagement in
their current roles, become more multiskilled and avoid boredom.

Job enlargement is when a manager adds tasks within a single position, giving the employee the
opportunity to expand their knowledge and skills. It can also help reduce monotony and gives
employees the chance to take on additional responsibilities. For example, an architect who only
works on designing restaurants may also become involved in bridge design.
Sometimes managers may determine the best task combinations to enlarge the skill sets of
existing team members and help them become more versatile. For example, a team member who
works on an assembly line may work on assembling more parts of the whole product before
passing their work along to the next phase of development. Over time, the team member
becomes more efficient in their role and develops stronger time management skills.