What is job design?

Job design is a method of aligning job roles with the needs of a company while ensuring they’re fulfilling for employees. As opposed to simply mimicking another organization’s job positions or creating or redesigning based on familiarity, you should assign roles and responsibilities in view of maximizing productivity by making the position as enriching for the worker as possible.

While the aim of any job role is to serve a business, getting the most out of the workforce is a two-way street. As such, it’s essential that roles are engaging, motivating, meaningful and varied. The onus of creating well-designed job positions is on employers. Without them, high turnover, low job satisfaction and inefficiency are likely consequences.

Job design principles

The principles of job design vary between businesses and should be tailored to meet the specific needs of your workplace. The following objectives should be general considerations of any HR department’s or decision-maker’s job redesign process:

• All jobs should be shaped around the overall purpose of the organization to give employees a clear sense of meaning and purpose.
• If a job role compromises a person’s safety with no protective barriers in place, it’s unlikely to attract or retain top performers.
• The role should be realistic in its expectations of capability — asking people to do significantly more than they’re qualified for can be highly demotivating.
• Employees should be able to assess the quality of their own work to some extent to encourage autonomy.
• There should be sufficient time for an employee to complete expected tasks.
• The primary focus of a role should be to add value to the organization, and the worker should be aware of the specific value they add.
• There should be room for the job to develop and evolve in an ever-changing landscape.
• Jobs should strike a balance between being challenging and rewarding, not be overly stressful and provide progression opportunities.

Over time, the workplace has shown a steady move away from being authoritarian to being more people-centric. This balanced approach makes sense in view of the rise of consumer power as facilitated by the internet and global media.

Employees are the frontline ambassadors for your brand, and the more fulfilled and motivated employees are, the better they’ll take care of customers. This is true in roles that are customer-facing as well as those that aren’t.

Theories of job design

Let’s take a look at how the theory of job design in management has evolved throughout history.

Taylorism

The idea of making sure job roles are mutually beneficial dates back to the industrial revolution. Frederick Taylor started a movement known as scientific management in 1909 based on the premise that optimizing roles and responsibilities would increase productivity. He aimed to sequence and measure the input of humans alongside machinery in view of streamlining operations.

He formulated two key concepts:

• Method study, which explores how and why jobs are done in a certain way and in a specific sequence
• Work measurement, which establishes the amount of time necessary to complete core tasks in view of controlling budgets and other resources

Despite being a small step, Taylorism is largely recognized as the first stage in the history of job design definition and analysis. It mainly focused on processes and procedures as opposed to the psychology of the employee.

Self-determination theory

Self-determination theory was established in the 1970s and explores the relationship between job satisfaction, motivation and job design. While employee satisfaction was once seen as insignificant, experts started to see the benefits of meeting the needs of the worker. Researchers proposed that work should meet three fundamental human needs for an individual:

• Relatedness:This concept relates to the fact that people value feeling like they are connected to and belong to a group, which is important in the context of having meaningful interactions with colleagues and customers.
• Autonomy:Empowerment through autonomy of thought takes the pressure off management and encourages the employees to use their own judgment where appropriate.
• Competence: The job role should match up to the skill level of the employee and provide opportunities for personal development and mastery of skills.

High-performance work systems

High-performance work practices align with self-determination theory and emphasize the importance of mutually beneficial job roles. This theory is based on the AMO model, which suggests:

• Ability: Optimized job roles increase employees’ skills and abilities.
• Motivation: Increased ability leads to increased engagement and motivation.
• Opportunity: Increased motivation and skills present the direct opportunity to apply them in the workplace, completing the cycle.

Flexible working

A more recent consideration when it comes to job design is flexible working. This includes how much people work, what type of schedule they work to and how much control they have over working hours. Work-life balance has become a priority in recent years, as productivity continues to rise and automation enters the workplace.

You should consider all the above when redesigning job roles. By taking time to understand the concept and theory behind job design, you give yourself the best chance of creating job roles that are motivating for employees and deliver maximum ROI.

There’s one more theory, arguably the most influential when it comes to job design, to explore in detail: the job characteristics model.

The job characteristics model

In 1980, Hackman and Oldham developed the job characteristics model, and it’s still widely used today. Under this framework, they proposed that all job roles should incorporate five core characteristics to motivate the worker to perform at their best:

1. Skill variety: This is related to the number of skills, departments, subjects and other variables a job role includes.
2. Task identity:Employees should be aware of how their task contributes to the organization’s overall goals. It’s generally accepted that more skilled employees require more holistic roles.
3. Task significance:Significance relates to how a job role impacts other people and makes a meaningful difference to the world.
4. Autonomy:Employees should have a certain level of independence and freedom to make decisions within a job role so they feel a greater sense of ownership.
5. Feedback:Positive feedback encourages workers to continue performing at a high level and empowers them to keep improving.

Jobs that incorporate these characteristics are more meaningful and empowering and encourage progression. In turn, your company benefits from higher productivity, more skilled workers and reduced demand on management.

The motivating potential score

Motivation is an important buzzword because it defines the ideal mental state of a productive employee. A motivated worker who likes their job is more likely to push harder to get results, stay a little later to finish the job and speak nicely about the company to new starters.

Hackman and Oldman devised a system to measure how motivating a job role is, called the motivating potential score. You calculate this score by measuring each job characteristic according to a scale of one to seven. You then add together skill variety, task identity and task significance and divide by three. Finally, multiply by the numbers you get for autonomy and feedback.

Low scores for autonomy and feedback have the biggest impact on job roles while low scores for task identity, skill variety and task significance are less impactful.

Approaches to redesigning a role

If you’re considering tackling job redesign in your workplace or you’re in the process of creating roles for a new business, there are four main approaches to job design. Let’s take a look at them.

Job enrichment

Job enrichment is the process of adding additional autonomy and/or creating additional opportunities for growth. Increasing the variety of a job description, asking an employee to learn new skills and giving more autonomy are a few ways of implementing this strategy.

Job enlargement

Job enlargement is the process of adding more tasks and responsibilities to a worker’s job description. It reduces the risk of a role getting monotonous and improves worker satisfaction through upskilling . When workers are able to perform a wider range of tasks, you also improve overall operational efficiency.

Job rotation

Job rotation involves moving employees between roles in an organization. This makes it easier to cover holidays and absences while giving the employee a clearer overview of what your company does and how.

Job simplification

Job simplification solves a different problem when a position has become overloaded and nonviable. Removing tasks and streamlining a role can improve focus and accuracy for important tasks.