Which of the following is not the environmental factor affecting job design

Job design is the process of rearranging the duties, responsibilities techniques, procedures, and relationships of a job aimed at raising productivity and job satisfaction, and reducing job dissatisfaction and employee alienation. The major focus is on increasing productivity and efficiency, and reliving boredom by avoiding repetitive and mechanistic tasks. The major elements of job design are job enlargement, job enrichment, job rotation, and job simplification.

The major factors affecting job design are environment, organizational, and behavioral factors. The environmental factors of a job design include employee availability and ability, and social and cultural expectation.

Economic Factors

Very often job design initiatives are a direct result on economic changes required by the external environment. Changes in the business environment may cause obsolesce of some products or services. Launching new products, modifying products, or changing the way of delivery or output to exploit some latent opportunities might also require redesigning jobs. The need to modify the work process might for instance require job enlargement. The answer to improve customer service might be boosting employee morale by job enlargement.

Employee Abilities

The ability and overall skill-levels of available employees to perform certain tasks greatly affects job design, especially designing for efficiency. Lack of availability of educated or trained workforce in certain areas, for instance might result in the management developing a simple job design involving only a few routine tasks whereas availability of highly skilled workforce might allow the management to design jobs that involve multi-tasking, alternating between different tasks, and the like.

When Henry Ford first established his factory, most of his workers lacked any experience in automobile manufacturing. This prompted him to establish an assembly line where each worker did only one simple and specific task. For instance, one worker kept on placing engines in their place, and the assembly line moved the product to another worker who tightened the screws. The sum of all such simple tasks, done in series produced an automobile. Highly skilled workers however find such assembly line work too monotonous, and job enrichment tries to add variety to the job, such as entrusting a single worker with both slotting the engine and tightening the screws.

The overall health of the population also affects job design. Establishments in areas with healthy and hardworking populations can hope to design jobs to ensure maximum productivity, structuring extending work hours and overtime. In contrast, establishments located in places where the general populace remains malnourished, such as in third world countries cannot aspire to attain the same level of efficiency and productivity.

Social and Cultural Expectations

Social and cultural norms and expectations play a major role in job design.

Factors such as national and religious holidays, standard hours of work and vacation rules and other similar factors can for instance affect the design of jobs across countries and states. For instance, Friday is the official weekly holiday in many Middle East countries, as opposed to the American Saturday and Sunday weekend.

In some cultures, designations and bureaucratic divisions of job roles rein supreme, whereas in other places, individuals perform any role or do any job as the situation demands. For instance, in society with high social stratification, managers and top executives do not perform tasks such as making their own coffee, delivering a file to the next person, and other basic tasks, and the company needs to deploy peons and attendants for the purpose. In open and flexible societies, designations such as peons do not exist.

Failure to consider social expectations and norms can cause social dissatisfaction and resentment, leading to low motivation levels. Ignoring local sensibilities can also make it difficult to secure workers to run operations.

Ensuring Efficiency

Environmental factors of a job design play a key role in ensuring efficiency at the workplace. Organizations that understand the implications of such factors and devise appropriate interventions stand a good chance to fully leverage the benefits of a job deisgn exercise.

References

Encarnación, Roberto. “Job Design.” https://edweb.sdsu.edu/people/arossett/pie/Interventions/jobdesign_2.htm. Retreived 14 February 2011.

Job design requires the assembly of a number of tasks into a job or a group of jobs. An individual may carry out one main task which consists of a number of interrelated elements or functions. On the other hand, task functions may be split between a team working closely together or strung a long an assembly line.

In more complex jobs, individuals may carry out a variety of connected tasks, each with a number of functions, or these tasks may be allocated to a group of workers or divided between them. Complexity in a job may be a reflection of the number and variety of tasks to be carried out, or the range and scope of the decisions that have to be made, or the difficulty of predicting the outcome of decisions.

Broadly speaking the various factors that affect a job design can classified under three heads. They are:

• Organizational Factors
• Environmental Factors
• Behavioural Factors

1. Organizational Factors

Organizational factors that affect job design can be work nature or characteristics, work flow, organizational practices and ergonomics.

(i) Work Nature

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 various tasks may be planning, executing, monitoring, controlling etc. and all these are to be taken into consideration while designing a job.

(ii) 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.

(iii) 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.

(iv) Culture

Organizational culture determines the way tasks are carried out at the work places. 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.

1. 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.

(i) 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.

(ii) 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.

1. 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:

(i) Autonomy

Employees should work in an open environment rather than one that contains fear. It promotes creativity, independence and leads to increased efficiency.

(ii) Feedback

Feedback should be an integral part of work. Each employee should receive proper feedback about his work performance.

(iii) 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.

(iv) 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.

What are the following factors affecting job design?

What are the environmental factors that affect job satisfaction?

Which are the factors by which the process of job design can be affected Mcq?

How many types of factors mainly affect the job design?