Companies employ job design to create brand-new job roles or add duties to existing jobs. For example, the company ABC employs job design to create a job role for User Experience (UX) Researchers.
It is an important tool in any organization’s HR strategy, as job design can be used to motivate and engage employees. It also helps organizations retain top talent by ensuring job roles remain interesting, challenging, and rewarding. The tasks included in it are all responsibilities and work that an employee has to do. It might include-
- Tasks that are completed
- Ways through which tasks are completed
- Number of tasks that are completed
- The order in which tasks are completed
Table of Contents
What is Job Design?
Job design is a process used by businesses to create meaningful roles and responsibilities for employees to maximize both job satisfaction, employee performance, and employee satisfaction. Through this process, organizations can ensure that all employees are set up for success.
It is the detailed layout of a concerned job offered in an organization. It is also an ongoing process that adapts and makes adjustments as per the change in the conditions and tasks at the workplace. It refers to practices of organizing a set of tasks or a job role. It talks about how employees or workers go about their professional lives, plus it includes all the factors that might affect their work.
Why is Job Design important?
Job design is important due to following reasons-
-
Aligns businesses with employees to maximize success
Job design helps businesses align job roles with their business objectives. It allows employees to focus on job tasks that are in line with the overall business goals. This allows the job roles to be better utilized, which in turn, makes it easier to achieve the desired objectives.
-
Secures a competitive advantage
By job designing job roles and responsibilities effectively, businesses can gain a competitive edge over their rivals. Job design techniques can help to create job roles that are tailored to employees’ skills and qualifications, making them more productive and efficient.
-
Increases employee motivation & job satisfaction
Well-designed job roles help to increase job satisfaction and motivate employees. Job enrichment, job enlargement, job rotation, and other job design techniques can all help optimize employee engagement and employee satisfaction.
-
Helps in accomplishing organizational goals
Job design aims to encourage employees to do their routine tasks to ensure customer satisfaction, optimize client relationships, and meet organizational goals effectively.
Common Job Design Strategies
Primarily, four job design strategies are used- Job Engineering, Job Rotation, Job Enrichment, and Job Enlargement. In addition to these, job simplification, duty allocation, and job crafting are also becoming highly crucial strategies for work designing jobs. So, let’s have a detailed look at all these-
Job Engineering:
It lets employees gauge the interlining amongst work methods, their layouts, handling procedures, and human and machine interaction.
Job Rotation:
It involves the movement of employees from one task to another, plus the distribution of group tasks among different employees is also done in this.
Job Enrichment:
Job enrichment lets employees have more independence, responsibility, and accountability while learning new jobs. It also ensures more participation.
Job Enlargement:
Job enlargement changes the jobs for the inclusion of more and different tasks, plus it also does the addition of interest to the work. However, job enlargement might or might not give more responsibilities to the employees.
Job Simplification:
It involves breaking down job tasks into their most basic components and then assigning them to workers. It is a great way to make sure that job tasks are completed efficiently and with a high level of accuracy.
Duty Allocation:
Allocating employee roles and responsibilities based on their abilities, knowledge, and skills are a vital component of job competency. This allows the marketing department to better direct employees in areas where they can best contribute to the company’s success.
Job Crafting:
It lets employees take ownership of their job roles and shape them to fit better with their values. This helps to create job satisfaction and enhances employee engagement. Job crafting also encourages employees to develop new skills while honing their existing ones, both of which can help the business grow.
Job Design Components as per Job Characteristics Model (by Hackman and Oldham)
The job characteristics theory talks about certain job design principles that drive the job designing process as per the associated task significance. These principles are well-claimed for their versatility and useful framework.
Let us look into the main principles of good job design.
1. Skill Variety
A more significant variety factor in job profiles makes way for better and numerous job roles.
The job seeker or employee gets insight into their job and makes it worth working. The less variable job design is less favorable to the job seeker and the organization itself.
The variety factor sets an environment for challenges and competition in a company.
Preparing a job design with something new and fresh is preferable for all employees. The primary purpose of including variety in job design is to create an enjoyable work environment. The employees get to do something out of the box.
2. Responsibility
It is one of the vital factors of good job design.
All individuals in an organization need to feel their responsibility towards the company and their roles.
They should perform their job roles efficiently either individually or as a part of the team. The job design should mention their roles and responsibilities to perform well in their expertise area.
The employees can see their personal and the company’s roles very well with the help of job design. It all occurs because of their actions.
A good job design assigns these responsibilities very clearly and soundly. In this way, the supervisor also can hold employees accountable for the long term.
3. Autonomy
Autonomy here means that the employees get to understand their roles according to their job parameters.
They can customize their roles of responsibility according to their job profiles. Autonomy goes along with the responsibility factor. The employees get to regulate their roles with their job profile parameters.
The job holder gets to make some of the decisions for him or her under this principle.
They get more exposure and confidence through this principle. The decisions made by job holders are convenient and right according to their job profiles.
4. Task identity
Good job design has a distinct start and end for a particular task.
The job holders find it preferable when the task comes with a specific time frame. They do the task more enthusiastically, and with more passion. The work output is desirable for the organization and its people.
Employees identify their tasks more efficiently with good job design.
5. Feedback principle of adeptly-designed jobs
This principle revolves around the benefits of sharing information about how an employee is working.
Feedbacks play an essential role in motivating and guiding employees more effectively. Line managers are supposed to share genuine feedback for establishing a relationship with employees or workers.
The use of one-on-one meetings for discussing work objectives can be one example of such a relationship. The inclusion of feedback in job design is considered highly effective in informing and empowering employees to channel growth.
6. Participation
Including employees to be an integral part of decision making is another important principle of good job design.
Some employees or workers like to participate in the decision making processes that directly affect their work. Even experienced workers or employees always expect that they should also be asked to contribute, as their experiences are valuable assets for the company.
For including this, managers can use specialist subject discussions and institutional meetings sorts of practices.
7. Recognition and support
Employees enjoy working at jobs that also give importance to them.
Good job design channelizes self-respect in the workers by incorporating strategies for the acceptance and recognition of the employees by their managers, supervisors, and owners.
Getting recognition for doing good work is an essential factor for motivating employees to work harder and better next time. Also, offering support wherever needed and channelizing teamwork culture are integral to well-designed jobs.
It weakens the feeling of isolation and depression from the workforce and plays a crucial role in optimizing employee motivation, engagement, and retention.
8. Working environment
Well-designed jobs always offer safe and healthy working environments for the workers.
The workplace must be impartial, non-discriminatory, and all-inclusive. It should also be free from different sorts of harassment and safety hazards.
A good working environment is beneficial in empowering the workforce to work with full enthusiasm without any negativities. A proper mechanism should always be incorporated for handling any discrepancies or other issues at the workplace.
Process of Work Design and Job Description
Specify individual tasks:
Job design first involves breaking complex job duties into individual tasks. This process requires job holders to identify the specific job-related activities that need to be completed, describe those tasks in detail, and decide the most effective order for completing them.
Combine Tasks into Jobs:
Job designers then combine related tasks to create a job or set of job duties. This job design step is crucial because jobholders must be able to group related tasks into cohesive job components, like job responsibilities or job functions. This job design process helps jobholders better understand the job and how it fits in with other jobs within the organization.
Specify the methods:
The final job design step involves job designers specifying methods for jobholders to use to complete job tasks. This job design step involves jobholders deciding the specific materials, tools, and/or technology required to complete job activities. It also involves jobholders designing procedures for jobholders to follow when completing job activities and any job goals that must be met.
Characteristics of a Good Job Design
When a job is dexterously designed, it plays a pivotal role in-
- Enabling a variety of ‘good’ body positions
- Comprising moderate strength requirements
- Needing a moderate amount of mental activities
- Encouraging feelings of achievement, job satisfaction, and self-esteem
- Paying heed to the muscular and mental energy of employees
- Giving a sense of contribution to the employees
- Including training to let employees know the tasks, they are supposed to do
- Offering effective work-rest schedule
- Offering a balance between static and dynamic work
- Giving feedback to the employees
Advantages of Job Design
The whole process of job design is to make it more accessible to all the jobholders. It is all aimed at complete the work environment more healthy and productive. All job holders and organization gets benefits from the job design.
Some of the critical job design advantages are as follows:
1. The employee gets the chance to input their roles
A good job design enables all employees to put their efforts and input into the respective job profile. They get to give their feedback on the company’s roles. This all happens due to a structured job design made by the company.
2. Paves the way for employee training
Training is mandatory for any organization. A right job design emphasizes the training of fellow job holders to make them ideal for the role. It contains good scope for their training and development.
3. Structured work and break hours
The job design has defined work and breaks hours for all jobholders. There is no chance of any confusion regarding the work and break hours of the organization. It is all mentioned in the job design. All hours are clearly defined as per the job profiles of jobholders.
4. Job design enables us to make adjustments according to the job profile
Some job profiles require more human resources, and some don’t. The jobholders can adjust their job requirements according to their needs. This can work very efficiently for all jobholders as they can minimize and maximize their energy as per their requirements.
Problems that a Successful Job Design Solves
- Issues related to limited control over the work
- Overloading or underloading of the work
- Isolation, repetitiveness, and shiftwork-related problems
- Problems associated with excessive working hours
- Shallow or inefficient understanding of the whole job process
- Issues related to delays in the filling of different vacant positions
Final Thoughts!
The job design process is continuous and evolving. The process depends on the organization’s needs, and all job holders get benefits from a structured job design.
This helps all job holders to maintain their energy throughout the job role. It is an essential part of any organization. It holds the foundation firmly and motivates more development and betterment. Its ultimate goal is to reduce dissatisfaction and foster more job engagement in the workplace.
After understanding everything about a job design, what will be your definition of a good job design?
Liked this post? Check out the complete series on Human resources
