Compiled by : Afroza Binte Maleque Bithi

Job design is an important business management function .Job design is associated with employee’s motivation and satisfaction vis-à-vis business success of an organization. There exist a few popular Job Design Approaches which are described below:

Job Rotation:

Job rotation aims at moving employees from job to job to add variety and reduce boredom by allowing them to perform a variety of tasks with interest and challenges. The employee would be moved to another job at the same level that has similar skill requirements.

Job Engineering:

Job engineering refers to the  tasks to be performed, methods to be used, workflows among employees, layout of the workplace, performance standards and interdependence among people and machines.

Job engineering are adopted successfully only through following the golden rules in job designing as stated below:

  • The end product/output of the work is clearly defined and fully understood by the employees.
  • The steps/tasks to be performed to achieve required end product/output are clearly defined in the appropriate sequence.
  • The employees know and understand where their responsibility starts and finishes in the work process.
  • The tools, facilities and information needed to perform the work, are readily available and fully understood by the employees.
  • There is a process whereby the employees can suggest possible improvements in the work design and exercise initiative in implementing them.
  • The employees are involved in the work design process.

Specialization of labour is also the important criteria in job engineering process. Low skilled people can be trained and paid relatively low wages. It also reduces the need for supervision by using simplified jobs and by standardization.

 Job Enlargement

Job enlargement refers to the expansion of the number of different tasks performed by an employee in a single job. Job enlargement attempts to add somewhat similar tasks to the existing job so that it has more variety and more interesting. An enlarged job can motivate an employee for the reasons like task variety, meaningful work modules, ability utilization, worker-paced control and performance feedback.

Job Enrichment:

Job Enrichment means adding a few more motivators to a job to make it more rewarding. Specifically, a job is said to be enriched when the nature of the job is exciting, challenging and creative or give the job holder more decision-making, planning and controlling powers. According to Herzberg an enriched job has eight characteristics such as direct feedback (from management), client relationship(direct relationship with clients), new learning (feeling of growing intellectually), scheduling own work(freedom to schedule own work), unique experience (quality controller visiting supplier), control over resources, direct communication authority(directly communicate with people who use his output), personal accountability (the concerned employee is responsible for result).

Job enrichment has been found to be a valuable motivational technique. Many studies have found the usefulness of job enrichment as a employees motivator.

Socio-technical aspects:

The specific job design must take into consideration of relevant socio-cultural and technical vis-à-vis the internal and external environment while going for designing a particular job.

Ergonomics is an important factor in this context. It means the minimizing the physical demands and risks of work. This ingredient of job approach ensures that job demands are consistent with people’s physical capabilities to perform them with least risk. This is found to be more relevant to accommodate individuals with physical disabilities (loss of mobility, impaired hearing, etc.).

The foregoing analysis adequately shows us the power and strengths of job design approaches for Job Design to ensure employees motivation and job satisfaction leading to enhanced productivity and profitability of a business organization. Some weaknesses of different approaches for  job design are also reported by different experts. Nevertheless, an effective and specific job design when formulated following the appropriate job design approaches can become a potential management tool to boost up employees motivation leading to productivity and profit maximization of any business organization. Go to Job Design.