Job Design - General or Specific Tasks

The process of designing the specific content and responsibilities of job and how it will interact with other jobs / employees. This depends upon job analysis; and is closely determined in partnership with Operations (Task Design).

The core elements of a well-designed job include: challenge, variety, discretion (choice), autonomy (freedom to choose), well-resourced and supported, social interaction, and possibilities to take on extra responsibilities.

There has been a push away from specialisation (narrow expertise / specific tasks) towards a  more generalised skills approach to job design. 

This creates flexibility in workplace roles, but also confusion over direct responsibilities and loss of deep knowledge / skills.

Manufacturing firms with narrowly defined jobs will find it hard to introduce flexibility compared to service firms or creative industries.

Methods to improve the design of jobs (will depend upon what firm does and the specific role within that firm—some jobs are tough to make exciting):

• Job Rotation: moving employees through different divisions of an operation to learn new skills and improve challenging nature of role.

• Job Enlargement: employees given additional tasks on top of existing work requirements to add challenge to role.

• Job Enrichment: employees given more responsibility and autonomy over certain aspects of their role.

• Semi-autonomous work groups: distributed responsibility across a core team of employees working together to establish high performance professional relationships.

• Cross-functional  team-based structures: full delegation of responsibility and full accountability to a project team (challenge and reward of success)

The purpose of Job Design is to ensure that jobs within a firm are satisfying, motivating and incorporate a variety of roles; avoiding monotony, boredom, disengagement, poor service, low productivity, and low morale.