JOB DESIGN

Job design follows job analysis i.e. it is the next step after job analysis. It aims at outlining and organising tasks, duties and responsibilities into a single unit of work for the achievement of certain objectives. It also outlines the methods and relationships that are essential for the success of a certain job. In simpler terms it refers to the what, how much, how many and the order of the tasks for a job. Job design essentially involves integrating job responsibilities or content and certain qualifications that are required to perform the same. It outlines the job responsibilities very clearly and also helps in attracting the right candidates to the right job. Further it also makes the job look interesting and specialised. There are various steps involved in job design that follow a logical sequence: What tasks are required to e done or what tasks is part of the job? How are the tasks performed? What amount are tasks are required to be done? What is the sequence of performing these tasks? All these questions are aimed at arriving upon a clear definition of a specific job and thereby make it less risky for the one performing the same. A well defined job encourages feeling of achievement among the employees and a sense of high self esteem. The whole process of job design is aimed to address various problems within the organisational setup, those that pertain to ones description of a job and the associated relationships. More specifically the following areas are fine tuned: Checking the work overload. Checking upon the work under load. Ensuring tasks are not repetitive in nature. Ensuring that employees don not remain isolated. Defining working hours clearly. Defining the work processes clearly.

BENEFITS OF JOB DESIGN

The following are the benefits of a good job design:
1. EMPLOYEE INPUT: A good job design enables a good job feedback. Employees have the option to vary tasks as per their personal and social needs, habits and circumstances in the workplace. 2. EMPLOYEE TRAINING: Training is an integral part of job design. Contrary to the philosophy of leave them alone job design lays due emphasis on training people so that are well aware of what their job demands and how it is to be done. 3. WORK / REST SCHEDULES: Job design offers good work and rest schedule by clearly defining the number of hours an individual has to spend in his/her job. 4. ADJUSTMENTS: A good job designs allows for adjustments for physically demanding jobs by minimizing the energy spent doing the job and by aligning the manpower requirements for the same. 5. Job design is a continuous and ever evolving process that is aimed at helping employees make adjustments with the changes in the workplace. The end goal is reducing dissatisfaction, enhancing motivation and employee engagement at the workplace.

FACTORS AFFECTING JOB DESIGN

1. Organizational Factors
Organizational factors that affect job design can be characteristics of Tasks, work flow, ergonomics and work practices Characteristics of tasks: There are various elements of a job and job design is required to classify various tasks into a job or a coherent set of jobs. The structure of each task consists of three elements: 1. Planning(deciding the course of action, timing and the resources required ) 2. Executing(carrying out the plan),and 3. Controlling, monitoring performance and taking corrective action when required) and all these are to be taken into consideration while designing a job. Workflow: Product and service type often determines the sequence of work flow. A balance is required between various product or service processes and a job design ensures this Ergonomics: Ergonomics aims at designing jobs in such a way that the physical abilities and individual traits of employees are taken into consideration so as to ensure efficiency and productivity. Work Practices: Work practices are set ways of performing works. Practices are methods or standards laid out for carrying out a certain task. These practices often affect the job design especially when the practices are not aligned to the interests of the unions.

2. Environmental Factors
Environmental factors affect the job design to a considerable extent. These factors include both the internal as well as external factors. They include factors like employee skills and abilities, their availability, and their socio economic and cultural prospects. Employee availability and abilities: Employee skills, abilities and time of availability play a crucial role while designing of the jobs. The above mentioned factors of employees who will actually perform the job are taken into

consideration. Designing a job that is more demanding and above their skill set will lead to decreased productivity and employee satisfaction. Socio economic and cultural expectations: Jobs are nowadays becoming more employee centered rather than process centered. They are therefore designed keeping the employees into consideration. In addition the literacy level among the employees is also on the rise. They now demand jobs that are to their liking and competency and which they can perform the best.

3. Behavioural Factors
Behavioural factors or human factors are those that pertain to the human need and that need to be satisfied for ensuring productivity at workplace. They include the elements like autonomy, diversity, feedback etc. A brief explanation of some is given below: Autonomy: Employees should work in an open environment rather than one that contains fear. It promotes creativity, independence and leads to increased efficiency. Feedback: Feedback should be an integral part of work. Each employee should receive proper feedback about his work performance. Diversity: Repetitive jobs often make work monotonous which leads to boredom. A job should carry sufficient diversity and variety so that it remains as interesting with every passing day. Job variety / diversity should be given due importance while designing a job. Use of Skills and abilities: Jobs should be employee rather than process centered. Though due emphasis needs to be given to the latter but jobs should be designed in a manner such that an employee is able to make full use of his abilities and perform the job effectively.

JOB DESIGN APPROACHES

There are five popular approaches to job design1. Job Rotation 2. Job Engineering 3. Job Enlargement 4. Job Enrichment 5. Socio-technical System

1. JOB ROTATION:Job Rotation is a management approach where employees are shifted between two or more assignments or jobs at regular intervals of time in order to expose them to all verticals of an organization. It is a pre-planned approach with an objective to test the employee skills and competencies in order to place him or her at the right place. In addition to it, it reduces the monotony of the job and gives them a wider experience and helps them gain more insights. Job rotation is a well-planned practice to reduce the boredom of doing same type of job everyday and explore the hidden potential of an employee. The process

serves the purpose of both the management and the employees. It helps management in discovering the talent of employees and determining what he or she is best at. On the other hand, it gives an individual a chance to explore his or her own interests and gain experience in different fields or operations.

OBJECTIVES JOB ROTATION

Reducing Monotony of the Job: The first and foremost objective of job rotation is to reduce the monotony and repetitiveness involved in a job. It allows employees to experience different type of jobs and motivates them to perform well at each stage of job replacement. Succession Planning: The concept of succession planning is Who will replace whom. Its main function of job rotation is to develop a pool of employees who can be placed at a senior level when someone gets retired or leaves the organization. The idea is to create an immediate replacement of a high-worth employee from within the organization. Creating Right-Employee Job Fit: The success of an organization depends on the on-job productivity of its employees. If theyre rightly placed, they will be able to give the maximum output. In case, they are not assigned the job that they are good at, it creates a real big problem for both employee as well as organization. Therefore, fitting a right person in right vacancy is one of the main objectives of job rotation. Exposing Workers to All Verticals of the Company: Another main function of job rotation process is to exposing workers to all verticals or operations of the organization in order to make them aware how company operates and how tasks are performed. It gives them a chance to understand the working of the organization and different issues that crop up while working. Testing Employee Skills and Competencies: Testing and analyzing employee skills and competencies and then assigning them the work that they excel at is one of the major functions of job rotation process. It is done by moving them to different jobs and assignments and determining their proficiency and aptitude. Placing them what they are best at increases their on-job productivity.

 Developing a Wider Range of Work Experience: Employees, usually dont want to change their area of operations. Once they start performing a specific task, they dont want to shift from their comfort zone. Through job rotation, managers prepare them in advance to have a wider range of work experience and develop different skills and competencies. It is necessary for an overall development of an individual. Along with this, they understand the problems of various departments and try to adjust or adapt accordingly.

BENEFITS OF JOB ROTATION

Helps Managers Explore the Hidden Talent: Job Rotation is designed to expose employees to a wider range of operations in order to assist managers in exploring their hidden talent. In the process, they are moved through a variety of assignments so that they can gain awareness about the actual working style of the organization and understand the problems that crop up at every stage. Through this process, managers identify what a particular employee is good at and accordingly he or she is assigned a specific task. Helps Individuals Explore Their Interests: Sometimes, employees are not aware of what would like to do until they have their hands on some specific job. If their job is rotated or they are exposed to different operations, they can identify what they are good at and what they enjoy doing. They get a chance to explore their interests and hidden potential. Identifies Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes: Job Rotation helps managers as well as individuals identify their KSA (Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes). It can be used in determining who needs to improve or upgrade his or skills in order to perform better. This helps in analyzing training and development needs of employees so that they can produce more output. Motivates Employees to Deal with New Challenges: When employees are exposed to different jobs or assigned new tasks, they try to give their best while effectively dealing with the challenges coming their way. It encourages them to perform better at every stage and prove that they are

no less than others. This gives rise to a healthy competition within the organization where everyone wants to perform better than others. Increases Satisfaction and Decreases Attrition Rate: Exposing employees to different tasks and functions increase their satisfaction level. Job variation reduces the boredom of doing same task everyday. Moreover, it decreases attrition rate of the organization. Employees develop a sense of belongingness towards the organization and stick to it till long. Helps Align Competencies with Requirements: Alignment of competencies with requirements means directing the resources when and where they are required. It assesses the employees and places them at a place where their skills, competencies and caliber are used to the highest possible extent. Job rotation is an alternative to reduce the boredom caused due to repetitiveness of tasks and revive their willingness to handle a job and challenges involved in it with same excitement and zeal.

2. JOB ENGINEERING:Job engineering focuses on the tasks to be performed, methods to be used, layout of the work place, performance standards, and interdependencies among people and machines. Job engineering remains an important job design approach because the resulting cost savings can be measured immediately and easily.

3. JOB ENLARGEMENT:Job enlargement is a job design technique wherein there is an increase in the number of tasks associated with a certain job. In other words, it means increasing the scope of ones duties and responsibilities. The increase in scope is quantitative in nature and not qualitative and at the same level.

BENEFITS OF JOB ENLARGEMENT

The following are the major benefits of Job enlargement: Reduced Monotony: Howsoever interesting the job may appear in the beginning, sooner or later people complain of boredom and monotony. Job

enlargement if planned carefully can help reduce boredom and make it more satisfying and fulfilling for the employees. Increased Work Flexibility: There is an addition to the number of tasks an individual performs. There is thus an increased scope of carrying out tasks that are versatile and yet very similar in certain aspects. No Skills Training Required: Since the individual has already been performing the task in the past, there is no great requirement for imparting of new skills. However people and time management interventions may be required. The job thus gets more motivational for the one performing it.

4.

JOB ENRICHMENT:-

Organizations are increasingly facing the heat of attrition, which is not good to health of the same. Lots of time, money and resources are spent into training an individual for a particular job and when he / she leaves the return on that investment equals null. Often it is not for the money that people leave; that may be the reason with the frontline staff but as we move towards the upper levels of organisational hierarchy, other reasons gain prominence. Many of those who quit their jobs complain of their jobs as uninteresting! All this has compelled organisations to think of ways to make the job they offer interesting. Lots of efforts are made to keep monotony at bay; job enrichment is one of them. It is the process of making a job more interesting, challenging and satisfying for the employees. It can either be in the form of up gradation of responsibilities, increase in the range of influence and the challenges. BENEFITS OF JOB ENRICHMENT Research studies on job enrichment found out decreased levels of absenteeism among the employees, reduced employee turnover and a manifold increase in job satisfaction. There are certain cases however where job enrichment can lead to a decrease in productivity, especially when the employees have not been trained properly. Even after the

training the process may not show results immediately, it takes time to reflect in the profit line.

5. SOCIO-TECHNICAL SYSTEM:The socio-technical systemapproches focuses on organizations as being made up of people wuth various competencies(the social system) who use tools,machines and technics to create goods or services valued by customers and another stakeholders.Thus,the social and technical system need to be designed with respect to the demands of customers,suppliers, and other stakeholders in the external environment.Because of their impact,socio-technical system are complex and influence the way work is performed throughout the organization.

WORK MEASUREMENT
Work measurement is the application of techniques designed to establish the time for a qualified worker to carry out specified jobs at a defined level of performance We have seen how total time to manufacture a product is increased by: adding undesirable features to product, bad operation of the processes, and ineffective time added because of worker and management Work measurement may be used to determine the standard number of minutes that qualified properly trained, and experienced person should take to perform a specific task or operation when working at a normal pace. This time standard may be used for planning and scheduling work, for cost estimating, or for labor cost control or it may serve as the basis for a wage incentive plan. Although standard data, predetermined time systems and work sampling are widely used for establishing time standards. Perhaps the most common method of measuring work is stop-watch time study or electronic time study. The operation to be studied is divided into small elements each of these elements and the the times are added together to get the total selected time for performing the operation. The speed exhibited by the operator during the time study is rated or evaluated by the time study observer and the selected time is adjusted by this rating factor so that a qualifed operator working at a normal pace can easily do the work in the specified time. This adjusted time is called the normal time. To this normal time is added allowances for personal time, fatigue, and delay , the result being the standard time for the task. Method study is one of principal techniques by which work content in the product manufacture or process could be decreased. It is a systematic method of investigating and critically examining the existing methods, to develop the improved ones. Method study is, then, a technique to reduce the

work content mainly by eliminating unnecessary movements by workers and/or materials and/or equipments. However, even after that, there could be substantial unnecessary time taken for the process because of lack of management control and/or inaction of worker. Work measurement (WM) is concerned with investigating, reducing and eliminating ineffective time, whatever may be the cause. WM is the means of measuring the time taken in the performance of an operation or series of operations in such a way that the ineffective time is shown up and can be separated out. In practice, proving existence of the ineffective time is the most difficult task. After existence is proved, nature and extent is easy to see. WM is also used to set standard times to carry out the work, so that any ineffective time is not included later. Any addition the standard time would show up as excess time and thus can be brought to attention. Since, standard times are set for all the activities through WM, it has earned bad reputation amongst workers. Major reason for that has been the initial focus of the WM methods, which essentially targeted only the worker controllable ineffective times. Management controllable ineffective times were ignored traditionally.

Two critical issues in work study:1. Method study should precede the work measurement, always. 2. Elimination of management controllable ineffective time should precede the elimination of the ineffective time within the control of the workers. Purpose of WM: To reveal the nature and extent of ineffective time, from whatever cause, So that action can be taken to eliminate it; and then, To set standards of performance that are attainable only if all avoidable ineffective time is eliminated and work is performed by the best method available.

 Uses of WM: In association with man and machine multiple To compare the efficiency of alternative methods. Other conditions being equal, the method which takes the least time will be the best method. To balance the work of members of teams, in association with the multiple activity charts, so that, as far as possible, each member has tasks taking an equal time. To determine activity charts, the number of machines an worker can run. Techniques for WM 1. Time study 2. Activity sampling; and rated activity sampling 3. Synthesis from standard data 4. Pre-determined motion time system 5. Estimating 6. Analytical estimating 7. Comparative estimating.

TIME STUDY
1. Recording the times and rates of working for the elements of a specified

job carried out under specified conditions, 2. Analyzing the data so as to obtain the time necessary for carrying out the job at a defined level of performance Steps in making a time study 3. Obtaining and recording all the information about the job, the operator and the surrounding conditions, which is likely to affect the carrying out of the work. 4. Recording a complete description of the method, breaking down the operation into elements.

5. Examining the detailed breakdown to ensure that the most effective

method and motions are being used. 6. Measuring and recording the time taken by the operator to perform each element of the operation. Time study: Rating Rating is the assessment of the workers rate of working relative to the observers concept of the rate corresponding to the standard pace. It is a comparison of rate of working observed by the work-study person with a picture of some standard level. The standard level is the average rate at which qualified workers will naturally work at a job, when using the correct method and when motivated to apply themselves to their work. This rate of working is called standard rating. If the standard pace is maintained and the appropriate relaxation is taken, a worker will achieve standard performance over the working day. Standard performance is the rate of output which qualified workers will naturally achieve without over-exertion as an average over the working shift provided they know and adhere to the specified method and, they are motivated to apply themselves to their work. This performance is denoted as 100 on the standard rating and performance scales. It should be noted though that the standard pace applies to particular workers (with good physique, physical conditioning) working in appropriate environment. In practice, because of the inherent dissimilarities amongst workers, the rate of work is never the same throughout the working day. It is not uncommon for workers to work faster at some periods of the day than they do during others. So standard performance is achieved on average over a period of time with in-built standard deviation. In fact, working at the standard rate will not always mean moving the limbs with the same speed.

 Selected time
The selected time is the time chosen as being representative of a group of times for which an element or group of elements. These times may be either observed or basic times; and should be denoted as selected observed or selected basic times. Theoretically, the results of all the computations of the basic time for any single constant element should be same. However, because of inherent process variations, it happens rarely! It becomes necessary to select a representative time for each element from all the basic times which have been entered into the time study. Multiple ways to pick a representative selected time from the available ones. Statistics suggests.. Taking averages! There are other ways though! Before the selected time is decided, the anomalies in the sample should be noted. Exceptionally high or low points should get some attention.

Importance of work measurements

1. Motion study= eliminate nonnecessary activities 2. Work measurement= eliminate nonactive times in total time. 3. Work measurement assures some techniques for determining required time 4. Determination of standard time (nonactive times) 5. Observation and reasoning for nonactive times 6. Work measurement is a tool that shows the behaviour of management and workers. 7. There is a reaction for work measurement (labor union) 8. Actually, nonactive times are due to partial management functions. Management functions must be coped with more than worker functionss control

9. Non-active times and its amount are important. Then it is important to take necessary precautions for obtaning performance standards. This can be possible only with trained worker and removed nonnecessary activities. Application types: Two alternative method Direct work measurement (direct observation on task) for example; time study, and work sampling Indirect work measurement (indirect method not on the task) with standard times are measured by standard data and formulation. These are estimations. In addiation, synthetic time system is used for determining standard times (Predetermined time systems) Work Measurement:- Work Measurement involves the use of labor standards to measure and control the time required to perform a particular task or group of tasks. Most often labor standards are developed and applied in manufacturing operations, however labor standards can be used in estimating and managing the cost of a vast variety of activities including engineering drafting, clerical administration, and janitorial services. Work Measurement System. A Work Measurement System is a management system designed to: Analyze the touch labor content of an operation; Establish labor standards for that operation; Measure and analyze variances from those standards; and Continuously improve both the operation and the labor standards used in that operation. Plan is the firm's program for implementing, operating, and maintaining Work Measurement System Plan. A Work Measurement System work measurement in its operations. It is the key to an effective Work Measurement System with a defined system clear responsibility assignment. As a minimum, the Plan should provide guidance on: Establishing and maintaining standard accuracy;

 Conducting engineering analyses to improve operations; Revising standards and related system data; and Using labor standards as an input to budgeting, estimating, production planning, and performance evaluation.

WORK MEASUREMENT & STANDARDS

The fundamental purpose of work measurement is to set time standards for a job. Such standards are necessary for four reasons: 1 To schedule work and allocate capacity. All scheduling approaches require some estimate of how much time it takes to do the work being scheduled. 2 To provide an objective basis for motivating the workforce and measuring workersperformance. Measured standards are particularly critical where outputbased incentive plans are employed. 3 To bid for new contracts and to evaluate performance on existing ones. Questions such as Can we do it? and How are we doing? presume the existence of standards. 4 To provide benchmarks for improvement. In addition to internal evaluation, benchmarking teams regularly compare work standards in their company with those of similar jobs in other organizations. Work measurement and its resulting work standards have been controversial since Taylors time. Much of this criticism has come from unions, which argue that management often sets standards that cannot be regularly achieved. (To counter this, in some contracts, the industrial engineer who sets the standard must demonstrate that he or she can do the job over a representative period of time at the rate that was set.) There is also the argument that workers who find a better way of doing the job get penalized by having a revised rate set (This is commonly called rate cutting.) With the widespread adoption of W. Edwards Demings ideas, the subject has received renewed criticism. Deming argued that work standards and quotas inhibit process improvement and tend to focus the workers efforts on speed rather than quality. Despite these criticisms,

work measurement and standards have proved effective. Much depends on sociotechnical aspects of the work. Where the job requires work groups to function as teams and create improvements, worker-set standards often make sense. On the other hand, where the job really boils down to doing the work quickly, with little need for creativity (such as delivering packages for UPS as the box on page 136 relates), tightly engineered, professionally set standards are appropriate.