In this article, we shall study about job design approaches. To ensure efficient and effective working in any organization, it becomes necessary to make the best and most justifiable use of people in their respective jobs along with taking care of their needs. Here comes into the role the concept of job design.

In reality, the work, organization and job design, all these three processes work simultaneously as the work system explains how the work to be organized through developing the organization structure which in turn defines the nature of jobs involved and the manner they should be done. Determining an appropriate design for each job form the basis for organizational success as it helps in securing employees maximum involvement and commitment to their respective jobs. After studying this article, you shall be able to understand about the concept of job design, learn the meaning and the definition of job design, evaluate the objectives of job design, identify the major approaches of it, comprehend the rationale behind these approaches.

Meaning of job design:

The job design is a systematic and orderly process of work or task arrangement.

It is the formal system of determining the contents of the job, discovering the methods to carry out the job and establishing its relations with other jobs of the organization. It is the manner in which specific work or task are allocated to the employees as per their competence to offer them maximum satisfaction and avoid duplication of work. Its aim is to match the requirements of the job with human qualities required to do the job.

Job design is one of the major functions of staffing as the well-designed jobs not only act as motivation for better productivity but also assist in overcoming the problems of absenteeism, labor turnover and conflicts. Definition. According to Michael Armstrong, job design is the process of deciding on the contents of the job in terms of duties and responsibilities and the methods to be used in carrying out the job in terms of techniques, systems and procedures and the relationship that should exist between the job holder, his superior, subordinate and colleagues.

Objectives of job design:

• First, to ascertain the one best way of doing the jobs.
• Second, to design the jobs with regard to duties, demands and responsibilities etc.
• Third, to establish the motivating element in each of the jobs in the organization.
• Fourth, to decide and allocate tasks to each job.
• Fifth, to facilitate effective job analysis and evaluation.
• Sixth, to avoid duplication of work. Now, let us discuss the approaches of job design.

Jobs are designed on the basis of various techniques:

First approach is job rotation.

It is the systematic process of assigning employees to different jobs by placing them at variety of tasks over a period of time. Its purpose is to expose the employees to diverse experiences so to enable them to enhance their skills, secure more job satisfaction and get cross-trained.

It is a management approach of moving an employee from job to job. It allows the employees to learn about various types of works, the responsibilities attached and the overall understanding of their nature. It is the common approach of job designing followed in medium to large firms and is often structured as an integral feature of detailing out the jobs.

Next, advantages of job rotation. First, avoid monotony. It helps in avoiding monotony from the jobs by providing employees with an opportunity to perform different jobs.

Second, broadens knowledge. It facilitates the employees to broaden their knowledge and skills. Third, better matching.

It assists in better matching of an employee’s interest and job he is finally assigned to. Fourth, reduce chances of fraud. By not allowing an employee to be on a single job for too long, it reduces the chances of fraud or misappropriations.

Next are the disadvantages of job rotation. First, employee resistance. Many a time, employees resist to it as they do not want to leave their comfort zone and move to new job.

Second, adjustment issue. The frequent movement of employees from job to job causes adjustment problems with increased challenges and responsibilities. Third, misunderstanding.

When employees are moving from one job to another, then it results in misunderstanding among them in absence of clearly laid rules. Fourth, frequent interruptions. It results in frequent interruptions in the work as employees leaves in between and move to another job.

Second approach is job enrichment.

Job enrichment is a job design approach which intends to add new knowledge, skills, variety and responsibilities to the existing jobs to convert them into meaningful work experiences. It is the most popularly followed method of job designing leading to vertical expansion of jobs for making them more rewarding and inspiring for employees.

Its prime purpose is to provide employees with more control over their jobs by creating more variety and challenges in doing their routine tasks. Next, advantages of job enrichment. First, enhances the challenges.

It enhances the interest level of jobs by making them more challenging and inspiring. Second, greater autonomy. It provides more freedom to employees to do their job as per their wish.

Third, improves decision making. With employees having more autonomy on their respective jobs, they can take more wise decisions. Fourth, reduce work of supervisor.

By giving more work to employees, the workload of supervisor gets reduced. Next, disadvantages of job enrichment. First, creates confusion.

It leads to confusion when jobs are widened too much. Second, provides dissatisfaction. The employees might feel overburdened and dissatisfied from their jobs.

Third, opposition from supervisors. The supervisors oppose it when their control gets weakened because of increased autonomy given to their subordinates.

The third approach is job enlargement.

The job enlargement is the horizontal restructuring approach of job design where the scope of jobs is increased by adding more activities to its present level. It is done by giving added responsibilities to the employees at their existing job. The purpose of it is to secure the interest of employees by motivating them to perform multiple tasks.

It leads to making the position of employees more fulfilling and interesting by expanding the range of tasks he performs. However, jobs must be enlarged cautiously as it might result in job creep if they are continuously expanded in their scope. The concept of job enlargement can be understood.

Mr. A works as a branch manager in a bank and was handling three activities till date. But after the job enlargement, he is required to perform an additional fourth activity too. This way his scope of job has got expanded.

Next is advantages of job enlargement. First, widens the knowledge. The knowledge and skills of the employees can be widened by giving him additional work to do.

Second, motivates. It provides motivation to employees as they feel more productive and efficient. Third, reduces the monotony.

By facilitating an employee to indulge in variety of activities, it reduces the monotony from work. Next are the disadvantages of job enlargement. First, it adds to the work burden.

It increases the burden of work to be performed by the employees. Second, not favorable. In the absence of proper incentives, the additional work becomes unfavorable.

Third, against the principle of specialization and division of labor. It is often considered against the principle of specialization and division of labor as a single employee is made to do variety of tasks. Let us now recapitulate what we have learnt so far.

The job design is a system of determining the contents of the job, discovering the methods to carry out the job and establishing its relations with other jobs of the organization. The prime aim of job design is to ascertain the one best way of doing the jobs. Jobs are designed on the basis of three approaches, namely job rotation, job enrichment and job enlargement.

Job rotation is the systematic process of moving employees from one job to another with the aim of enriching work experiences. Job enrichment is the vertical expansion of jobs intending to add new knowledge, skills, variety and responsibilities to the existing jobs. Job enlargement is the horizontal restructuring of jobs to augment the scope of jobs by adding more activities to its present level.