POM Job Design

Job satisfaction is an important consideration for employees motivation as it reflects the degree to which a person finds fulfilment in their job.

Job design is the application of motivational theories to the structure of work for improving productivity & satisfaction.

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Job Design refers to the way in which tasks are combined to form complete jobs. The different combinations create a variety of job approaches to:
a) Job Design for individuals
b) Job Design for groups

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Job Design For Individuals
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1) Job simplification
 - Small number of narrow tasks to perform, which are simple, repetitive and standardised tasks.
Advantages:
 - Increase efficiency
 - Workers are interchangeable
Disadvantages:
 - Reduces job satisfaction due to narrow, repetitive and boring tasks

2) Job rotation (take turns)

3) Job enlargement (increase number of responsibilities in a job)
 -  With job enlargement, an employee performs a greater range of tasks which makes their job more complex and interesting.

4) Job enrichment
 -  Process of expanding a person's responsibilities so that work becomes challenging and satisfying.
 - Specialised tasks are expanded to include greater decision making responsibilities.
 - This will increase job depth (degree to which individuals can plan and control the work involved in their jobs).

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Job Characteristics Model (JCM)
Core Job Dimensions > Critical Psychological States > Personal And Work Outcomes

1) Skill Variety - Extent to which the job requires different skills
2) Task Identity - Degree to which the job allows completion of a major piece of work
3) Task Significance - Extent to which the worker sees the job output as having a significant impact on others
4) Autonomy - Amount of discretion allowed in determining schedules and work methods
5) Feedback - Degree to which job provides clear information about performance results

The motivational value of these five characteristics stems from worker experiencing these criticail psychological states:
a) Work is meaningful
b) They are responsible for the outcomes

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Job Design For Groups
- Integrated work teams
1) Accomplish many tasks by making specific assignments to members and rotating jobs among them.
2) Used frequently in building maintenance and construction.

- Autonomous work teams
1) Have wider range of discretion than integrated work teams.
2) Are also given a goal to achieve and then free to determine own work assignments.
3) Supervisory positions to become less important.

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Alternative Work Schedules
- Not the usual 5 days and 9-5 time of work schedule.

Devise alternative work schedules to meet organisational and work needs.

Some non-traditional work schedules:
Flexitime
- Flexible working hours.
- A work schedule specifying certain core hours on the job.
- Flexibility in starting and ending work times; total number of hours per day is the same.

Compressed Workweek
- Work fewer days per week, longer hours per day, but maintaining full-time total weekly hours.

Job Sharing
- Two or more people sharing a single full-time job, usually when there's a retrenchment or an economic downturn.

Telecommuting
- Allows employees to work from home or at another location.