What is the job characteristics model?
The job characteristics model was developed by two organizational psychologists, Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham, who published the model in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, Volume 16, Issue 2, 1976. They verified their findings after testing the job characteristics theory on 658 employees across 62 different jobs in seven different organizations.
Hackman and Oldham wanted to develop the jobs characteristic theory in order to help employers better understand how to design work in a way that could encourage employee engagement and improve overall work performance. The result is five core characteristics for enriched work design: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback.
These five core job characteristics prompt three psychological states: experienced meaningfulness, experienced responsibility and knowledge of results. According to Hackman and Oldham, these psychological states lead to five work-related outcomes: internal work motivation, job satisfaction, performance quality, absenteeism and turnover .
The five core job characteristics
The job characteristics model outlines five simple principles that help illustrate how to motivate employees to perform above and beyond their basic job descriptions.
1. Skill variety
Skill variety refers to the number of various tasks involved in a job position. The JCM finds that if an employee’s role involves primarily mundane and tedious tasks, they are less likely to feel motivated in their position.
Alternatively, if an employee is offered a job in which the type of work alternates on a daily or weekly basis, they are much more likely to feel satisfied in their work. When it comes to skill sets, the primary thing to remember when structuring a new or existing position is to offer the employee a variety of different tasks as well as more independence and responsibility.
2. Task identity
Generally, a team exhibits higher morale if each employee feels they’re well informed and involved in all the moving parts of a work phase or process.
The task identity characteristic outlines the importance of empowering an employee to see a task throughout the entire work process. Rather than working on single elements of a work project or product, Hackman and Oldham found that employees gain a higher rate of satisfaction when a task has clear definitions from beginning to end.
3. Task significance
An important element of improving employee performance and increasing overall job satisfaction in the workplace depends heavily on whether your employees feel their work holds meaning.
Hackman and Oldham discovered employees had higher motivation if they felt their work made a significant impact on the well-being of others, whether internally, within the organization, or externally, on a global level.
4. Autonomy
Autonomy is a key factor for boosting engagement in the workplace. Employees who have a strong sense of independence and responsibility in their roles generally feel more motivated by their jobs.
Often, autonomy is only seen in managerial positions such as team leaders or department heads. However, if an employee feels they must follow strict procedures and tedious guidelines, they’re likely to grow increasingly frustrated and disconnected from the organization at large. For this reason, a business should take great care in not underestimating or overlooking the autonomy of entry-level or intermediate positions.
5. Feedback
This final characteristic is very important for employee performance. Providing employees with regular feedback gives them the opportunity to understand what areas of their job they’re succeeding in and what areas they can improve. Whether positive or negative, feedback is a highly motivating facet of work.
Motivating Potential Score
Using the five core job characteristics, Hackman and Oldham developed the following formula to measure an employee’s motivation:
Motivating Potential Score (MPS) = ((Skill variety + Task identity + Task significance)/3) X Autonomy X Feedback
When all five job characteristics are high, the employee will likely experience all three psychological states (experienced meaningfulness, experienced responsibility and knowledge of results), which will then result in positive work-related outcomes.
Work-related outcomes
According to Hackman and Oldham, the only way to generate the desirable outcomes on this list is to possess all five job characteristics. It’s only when all job characteristics are met that an employee can experience all three psychological states: experienced meaningfulness, experienced responsibility and knowledge of results.
1. Internal work motivation
The best type of job motivation is intrinsic, meaning it comes naturally to a worker, not from external sources.
2. Job satisfaction
When an employee finds satisfaction in their job, they can reach a state of complete contentment, resulting in higher engagement.
3. Performance quality
Overall job performance will be of higher quality the more satisfied an employee feels in their position. The standards of quality will fall the less content an employee feels.
4. Absenteeism
If an employee feels little motivation in their job, they’re less likely to look forward to working, resulting in higher absenteeism . Alternatively, if an employee feels encouraged and supported, they’ll look forward to participating, resulting in lower absenteeism.
5. Turnover
A high turnover rate is a direct indicator of poor human relations management. To foster a healthy and encouraging work environment, a business should concentrate on offering the five core job principles outlined in the job characteristics model.
Tips for applying the job characteristics model
Share feedback from stakeholders
Employees generally feel more motivated to pursue and complete tasks if they understand the quality of their performance. Encouraging stakeholders to properly prepare and provide regular feedback helps employees know where they stand in an organization. Positive feedback can motivate your employees to excel further, and constructive feedback can encourage them to improve their overall work performance.
Delegate more responsibility
Rigid guidelines and strict procedures are the antitheses of fostering a healthy, autonomous work environment. To increase employee engagement and overall work performance, it’s important to trust employees at every level with a certain level of freedom and responsibility. Delegating important tasks, even to entry-level positions, creates a job environment of equal task distribution, which in turn fosters a deeper sense of responsibility among your employees.
Assign more significant tasks
To prevent disinterest and a lack of motivation in your employees, it’s essential to avoid assigning mundane and tedious tasks. As outlined in the five core job characteristics, providing a broad variety of skills within a single job position is a highly motivating factor for employee satisfaction. Additionally, employees want to feel their day-to-day tasks have meaning. By assigning tasks that hold more significance in an organization, your employees will not only feel more motivated to complete a task but also more connected to your company’s mission at large.
