Organizations today are depending more on their human resources. They will be at risk if failing to have a proper match between work and employee capabilities as well as employee’s expectation. If organizations can provide satisfying work, then they are more likely to have happy and highly motivated employees. That is why it is so important to design work so that people’s jobs are as satisfying as possible. However, some organizations still view job design and redesign as a dead waste of time. This essay will examine the significance of job design and redesign in response to changes in today business environment, improvements in technology, statutory requirements and global competition.
Job design involves the planning of including its contents, the methods of performing the job and hot it relates to other jobs in the organization (Rahim 2001) and job redesign is the process of rearranging task and duties to make job more meaningful to employees (Compton, Morrissey & Nankervis 2009). The goal of these activities aims to provide individuals with meaningful work that fits effectively into the flow of the organization.
In the good old days when employees just did their jobs without the job redesign strategies, it is easy to recognize that employees often perform fragmented jobs without autonomy or with very limited autonomy and may have to repeat the same tasks days by days. The creation of jobs that lack diversity, autonomy and have similar characteristics causes feelings of tediousness and dissatisfaction in their occupants (McCormick & Tiffin 1975). In addition, such jobs often fail to motivate employee to high levels of performance and may indeed contribute to such phenomena as absenteeism and turnover (Herberg, Mausner & Snyderman 1959). Therefore, jobs should be redesigned so that employee can possess the task variety and wholeness and exercise autonomy and responsibility.
In recent decades, the Job
References: Compton, R, Morrisey, W &Nankervis, A 2009, Effective recruitment and selection practices, 5th edn, CCH Australia Limited. Hackman, R, Oldham,G 1976, “Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory”, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, vol. 16, pp. 250-279. Herzberg, F, Mausner, B & Snyderman, BB 1959, The motivation to work, 2nd edn, New York: John Wiley & Sons. McCormick, EJ & Tiffin,J 1975, Industrial psychology, 6th edn, London: Allen & Unwin.