Job Design

1. Job Design By: Amy Medica

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.

6. The Tools • Job enlargement • Job rotation • Job enrichment • Skill variety

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: • Skill variety/job rotation • Task variety/job enlargement • Task significance/job enrichment • Autonomy/job enrichment/freedom • Feedback/cooperation

27. Summary • How do these job design tools fit in with your brainstorming solutions? • Discuss…