2. What Will Be Covered
The topic
The tools
Brainstorming
Inner workings
How it works
A real world example
An exercise
Summary
3. What is Job Design?
By using a variety of tools and techniques
we try to find the best way to keep
employees satisfied while maintaining as
high as possible productivity, monetary or
otherwise.
4. Job Design
What is the goal of Job design?
The goal is job satisfaction, it is the key to
successful job design. Everything is
contingent upon job satisfaction.
5. The Topic
• We will engineer a job design by using previous
work experiences.
• We will briefly discuss the resistance to change.
And discuss a few of the pros and cons of our
actions.
7. The Tools cont’
Task variety
Task significance
Compensation
Autonomy: level of freedom
Feedback: lucid communication on performance
8. Brainstorming Exercise
Break up into groups of three to five people.
Designate a note taker.
Choose one person to speak for the group.
9. Brainstorming cont’
Discuss your past jobs, specifically those that
you did not like.
Choose one job from the entire group that was or
is most disliked.
That job is going to be the focal point of your
brainstorming session.
10. Brainstorming cont’
Use your imagination…
Why did you dislike this job?
What were some of the negative effects of working in an
unsatisfying job?
i.e. absenteeism, tardiness, sub-par-productivity, depression, sore
back, etc…
Did other employees feel the same way you did?
11. Brainstorming cont’
How do you think your performance as well as those
around you affected the company?
What did you like about this job?
Keep this in mind for later.
Narrow down your dislikes to list of four.
12. Brainstorming cont’
Solutions to your dissatisfaction…
Brainstorm on some ideas that would improve
this job?
Let your imagination flow; do not censor your
ideas, creativity is key.
13. Brainstorming cont’
Narrow down your ideas.
Discard the ideas that you all agree are not usable;
use your best judgment.
Choose four ideas from these.
Compare your four solutions to your four
dislikes.
Did you discover four solutions?
14. Brainstorming cont’
Implementing your solutions, the pros and cons…
Discuss amongst yourselves how you are going to
implement these changes.
Do you think you can design a satisfying job with this
new information?
Will the employees accept your new idea?
What are some of the monetary and mental difficulties of
implementation?
i.e. Learning curves will initially slow down production.
15. Brainstorming cont’
Keep in mind your solutions as we go through
the rest of the presentation.
At the end of the session we will compare your
solutions with some of the Job Design topics that
follow.
16. Nuts and Bolts
Job enlargement involves adding more
tasks(variety), ideally the worker could do all
the tasks involved. This keeps thing
interesting.
Job rotation is exactly that. It requires skill
variety.
17. Nuts and Bolts cont’
Job enrichment gives the employee more
responsibility, thus creating a greater level of
freedom or autonomy.
Compensation doesn’t play as large of a part in job
satisfaction as we might think, but it does play a part.
We want to be paid fairly, whether it is profit
sharing, salary, commission, or piece rate.
18. How It Works
Plain and simple
A happy employee is a productive employee, satisfaction
equals production.
It works by
Balancing the organization’s goal(s) with the employees
wants and needs, thereby designing a job that creates job
satisfaction, which should increase production (companies
goal) and satisfy the employee.
19. A Real World Example
Visioneering LLC is a new computer animation
company with three employees. Each employee
knows his or her specific job, however, they have
been running into a few problems.
20. Visioneering LLC
The problem
They all speak a different computer language, the language of their
software.
Each employee is trained to use a particular piece of software. Jason
knows how to do computer modeling using 3D studio. Ted knows
how to use adobe premier. Christa knows a little of both, but most of
her time is spent running the business.
Lack of concise communication stalls the work process.
21. Visioneering LLC
The solution
Have everyone trained on all the software, job enlargement.
What changed?
The first noticeable change wasn’t clearer communication, although
that was solved. What really took them by surprise was how much
quicker they could get a project done.
They now had more immediate access to information.
22. Visioneering LLC
If Jason couldn’t figure out how to do something with the software he
could easily ask Christa or Ted; between the three of them they rarely
had to take the time to search reference books, or the internet, which
takes considerable amounts of time.
If a project needed more computer animation they could all work on
it.
This balanced the work load, and kept one person from feeling like
they are doing all the work.
23. Visioneering LLC
Now they each have a greater appreciation for what
the others do, job enrichment.
Collaboration has helped move from one part of a
project to another with greater efficiency.
Due to their greater efficiency they no longer have as
much stress about deadlines.
24. An Exercise
• Find one thing in your life that you wish you could do better
or more often then apply one or two of the job design tools to
it.
• For example, Sarah likes the idea of being able to play the
guitar. She has tried teaching herself in the past, now her
guitar has become a dust collecting device.
• A few things she didn’t have in the past were variety,
feedback, and enrichment.
25. Exercise
A few simple changes and she was on her
way again.
First, she joined with a few friends who play the
guitar; They get together every Thursday evening.
Second, her friends show her new things to try;
This variety keeps things fresh and exciting.
26. Exercise
Third, she has more motivation to practice throughout the
week because she wants to share her improvements with
her friends.
Fourth, their feedback as well as her feedback make
learning the guitar that much more enriching, enrichment
through praise and results.
• Take this exercise home and put it to work; Try it for
yourself.
• What does it all get back to?
– Employee satisfaction…
– Successful job design will take into account:
27. Summary
How do these job design tools fit in with your
brainstorming solutions?
Discuss…
Editor's Notes
Job Design by Amy Medica, for Operation Management class 345 at Boise State University, Idaho.
There are many theories on job design, from Taylor to Deming to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Gilberths, and Gantt, and many more, all of which seem to have been synthesized, into what we have today, bleeding into each other. Fitting all these theories into a 30 slide show would only come up short of what we are trying to achieve.
Good job design should curb absenteeism and turnover while increasing productivity and employee satisfaction; The organization should become more efficient. If the job’s design is poor, which would be evident by lack of job satisfaction, production will be adversely affected that is why everything is contingent on job satisfaction.
Job design sounds great but there are things such as the cons of adding additional tasks, for example, this may demotivate specialists; there is also a learning curve to worry about and training costs, which means less production in the short term, however we must be aware of the pros. They are after all the reasons behind the reasoning of our Job Design in the first place. We must always try to have hindsight before we have seen.
The theories, like the job design tools, all bleed into each other creating an ever changing experiment whose goal is that of perfection.
The theories, like the job design tools, all bleed into each other creating an ever changing experiment whose goal is that of perfection.
For our purposes I will assume that I’m teaching a group of five. If there are five or fewer people than that is a group, if there are more than five people than groups of 3 will work too, use your judgment.
The idea is to recognize and be aware of past and present work experiences so as to learn from them; these firsthand experiences are great ways to get a better grip on job design.
When brainstorming you should let everything come out; don’t censor your own thoughts. It is important to let things flow. The reasoning behind this is that we never know where a good idea may come from; the last thing we want to happen is to let a great idea be smothered because we think it is stupid, or worry about what others may think, nonsense.
Skill variety, task variety, task significance, autonomy are all included in job enlargement, enrichment, and rotation; I chose not to be redundant by repeating them in the Inner workings slide. Many of these tools are closely related if not nearly the same, i.e. job enlargement creates more task variety, which means the worker can rotate jobs, which of course would mean they have greater skill variety, which creates a great sense of empowerment and autonomy. Job rotation can help create greater self-worth because it involves learning new skills and becoming more educated, which are two things to feel good about. Our book has job enrichment as part of job Enlargement, as I said above they actually bleed into each other.
Job design, as I see it, is a way to create harmony between, what some times seem to be opposing forces, namely upper management and everyone else. In theory, job design, when it works, should give us the best opportunity to satisfy all parties involved.
Visioneering LLC is a computer animation company that operates out of Maryland. The owners are friends of mine.
There is a different dictionary of terms that pertains to each type of software. It is difficult to communicate when everyone speaks a different language.
Having everyone trained on all the software made a huge difference for this three person business. Not only did it allow for streamlined work, but it also meant that one person could do the job of another, so if some one was sick or had to take the kids to the doctor work would not come to a halt.
One of the greatest benefits of the change was their ability to share in the excitement of the process. In the past when they wanted to share something that took them forever to create, the response was less than motivating, but now they really get excited for each other’s success.
One of the problems with something like job design is that it requires change; people often fear change. However, if they can experience the change firsthand than they too will believe in it. Here is an exercise that can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be; the choice is yours. I want the people I’m teaching quality improvement concepts to believe in what I’m teaching. That is why I want them to see how job design can be used on a personal level.
While these changes may not appear to relate to an actual “job” they are actually very applicable. Her job is to learn how to play the guitar. The company she works for is the Thursday group. Her success is the groups success. This exercise should help us get a better understanding of job design in theory and practice.
As I said in the previous notes, job design can be used outside of the work a day world, indeed, it can help substantially in everyday affairs.
Let’s finish up by taking five minutes or so to discuss job design tools and your solutions.