Job Design Flashcards
What are the important elements for employers?
-Having the completed properly to fulfil organisational goals
-Making sure that the work is logically organised into jobs that can be compensated fairly
-Having work that employees are willing to do
What are the important elements for employees?
-Having a clear understanding of what is expected in the job
-Completing tasks they personally enjoy
-Being rewarded appropriately for their work
-Having a sense that what they do is important and respected
What is the definition of work?
Effort directed towards producing or accomplishing particular results
What is the definition of job?
The grouping of tasks, duties and responsibilities that constitute the total work assignment for an employee
What does workflow analysis involve?
Workflow analysis studies the way in which work moves through the organisation, and usually begins with an examination of the desire and actual outputs (goods and services) in the terms of both qualitative and quantitative. Then the activities (tasks and jobs) that lead to the outputs are evaluated to see whether they can achieve the desired outputs. Finally, the inputs (people material, information, data, equipement) must be assessed to determine whether these inputs make the outputs and activities more efficient and better.
What is re-engineering?
It generates the changes that the business processes need. Improve product development, customer service and service delivery.
What is involved in the engineering process?
Rethink: Examine how the current organisation of the work and jobs affects the satisfaction of, and service, to the customers
Redesign: How are the jobs put together? How does the work flow? How are results achieved? Design the process as needed.
Revisit: Use of new technology to improve production and productivity, customer satisfaction and the quality of service provided.
What is the definition of job design?
The manipulation of the content, functions and relationships of jobs in a way that both accomplishes organisational goals and satisfies the personal needs of individual job holders.
Job design involves structuring tasks, responsibilities, and relationships to enhance both productivity and job fulfillment.
It defines how a job should be performed.
What are the dimensions of job design?
The content of a job encompasses the variety performed, the autonomy of the job holder, the routineness of tasks performed, the difficulty of the task performed and the identity of the job holder, or the extent to which the whole job is performed by the person involved. (What the job involves)
The functions of a job encompass the work methods used, as well as the coordination of the work, responsibility, information flow and authority of the job. (How the job is performed)
The relationships of a job encompass the work activities shared by the job holder and other individuals in the organisation. (With whom the job interacts)
What are the three approaches to job design?
-A specialisation-intensive approach
-A motivation-intensive approach
-A sociotechnical approach
What is a specialisation-intensive job approach?
Job specialisation refers to jobs that requires few tasks that are repeated through the workday, e.g., data capturing, call centre operators, or assembly line workers.
What are the problems with over-specialisation?
·Repetition: quickly become bored
·Mechanical pacing: transfer their attention to anything other than the task at hand if required to maintain a certain pace at work
·No end product: responsible for one small aspect of the product, in which they will have little pride and enthusiasm.
·Little social interaction: difficult for employees to develop significant social bonding at work, because job require constant attention.
·No input: Lack of personal control
·Job dimensions:
-Job scope: How long it takes an employee to complete a total task
-Job depth: how much planning, decision-making and controlling the employee does in the total job.
What is management’s role in job design?
- The manager determines the one best way of performing the job
- The manager hires individuals according to their abilities, which must match the needs of the job design.
- Management trains employees in the one best way the job should be performed. The manager does all the planning, organising and control related to the job. Allows for employees to learn task rapidly, shot work cycles so performance can take place with minimal effort, and reduces costs because low-skilled workers can be hired and trained easily and paid low wages.
What is a motivation-intensive job approach?
Rearranging work in a way that creates enough interest to motivate employees, yet keeps the work simple enough for most employees to perform. It encompasses job rotation, job enlargement and job enrichment
What is job rotation?
The process of shifting an employee from job to job or alternating jobs or tasks.
Don’t have the same day to day work and can broaden their skills
Addresses the problem of assigning employees to jobs of limited scope but the depth of the job does not change. Employees perform several boring and monotonous jobs rather than one
Assigned to different jobs with different cycles
Involves moving employees between roles with similar levels of responsibility and complexity, so it doesn’t deepen the task itself—just broadens the range of tasks
They focus on one role at a time, but the role changes periodically.
What is job enlargement?
A change in the scope of a job to provide greater variety to an employee. More tasks are added on the same level (horizontal expansion).
The employee takes on more tasks within their current role and does them simultaneously.
Eliminates short-cycle jobs
Does not increase the depth of the job.
Longer training period because there is a lot more to learn.
Change many methods of operation
What is job enrichment?
Enhancing a job by adding more meaningful tasks and duties to make the work more rewarding or satisfying. More tasks are added, but more on advanced levels (vertical expansion).
Employee decides how the job is performed, planned and controlled, and makes decisions about the entire process.
Job crafting: The changes that employees make to their jobs with the intention of improving the job for themselves.
Gives employees more control and ownership over their work, which can improve motivation, satisfaction, and performance.
What is the sociotechnical approach?
It is based on two premises: that an organisation or work unit is combined, social-plus-technical system, and that this system is open in relation to its environment.
What is self-managed teams?
Teams that control their own work, schedules and tasks and whose members often train one another
What are virtual teams?
Teams of people who are not in the same geographical area but work together on projects or jobs using technology to accomplish particular goals.
What is Total quality management (TQM)?
A philosophy aimed towards the continual improvement of the quality of products/services of the organisation and its processes to meet/exceed the expectations of customer/clients
What are the potential pitfalls of TQM?
-Improper implementation and lack of support
-Insufficient focus on results
What is ergonomics?
An approach to designing equipment and systems within work environments to ensure that employees can use them easily and efficiently.
What are the respects within ergonomics towards the employee when designing the job?
-Posture: prevent prolonged immobility in the same position by incorporating enough movement
-The back: reduce back injuries by designing lifting tasks carefully.
-The hand: Avoid the use of hand tools that cause constant compression of the palm of the hand
-The environment: lighting, noise, glare, windows/ceiling lights, video displays, eye-strain,
What is productivity?
A measure of the output of goods and services directly relative to the input of labour, market and equipment.
What are the three major components of productivity?
Utilisation: The extent to which we use the resource
Efficiency: Doing things right
Effectiveness: Doing the right things
What are the kind of work schedules?
Flexitime:Alternative work schedules for employees who may follow different schedules of work each day of the workweek.
Compressed workweeks: Hours worked per day increase, while hours work per week are still the same.
What are kind of work locations?
Telecommuting: Telecommuting is the use of smartphones, tablets, personal computers and other communications technology to do work at home or other locations that were traditionally done in the workplace.
What are the pitfalls with telecommuting?
- Has little need for face-to-face contact with co-workers or customers
-Can commute directly from home or other locations to customers
-Has access to quiet office space at home/their alternative workplace free from interruptions
-Has access at home/the alternative workplace to required equipment
-Is a self-starter and able to work with little supervision
-Performs tasks that can be done at an alternative location
-Reports to a supervisor who manages by results, not by surveillance or time clock
-Works for someone who trusts him or her
-Has excellent time-tracking, organisational abilities and self-discipline
-Has the ability to adapt to change and is flexible to work outside a typical schedule.
What is a job analysis?
A systematic way to gather and analyse information about the content, context, and the human requirements of jobs.
Why is there a need for job analysis?
-Organisational restructuring due to downsizing that calls for basic changes in ‘who does what, where and with what’
-The need to motivate and reward people, especially managers and professionals, on the basis of what they know, along with traditional job objectives
-The impact of technology, particularly information systems technology, on jobs throughout the organisation
-Labour legislation pertaining to employment equity and general discriminatory practices
-The implementation of teams
What are the components of a job?
Job family (highest-level): A category in which similar occupations are grouped together
Occupation: Jobs that are combined across organisation based upon the skills, efforts and responsibilities required by the job.
Job: A group of positions that are similar enough in their job elements, tasks and duties to be covered by the same job analysis
Position: The combination of all the duties required of the person performing a job
Duty: Several distinct tasks that are performed by an individual to complete a work activity for which he or she is responsible
Task: An identifiable unit of work activity that is produced through the application of methods procedures and techniques.
Element (lowest-level) : The smallest practical unit which any work activity can be subdivided.
