Design of Work in HRM

What is Work Design??

 Work design is how the day to day tasks, activities, responsibilities and interactions with others are organized. Good work design will affects both employees and organizational productivity & performance.one of the important aspect of good work design is tol have a positive impact on employee motivation and well-being.

What Work Design Does…..

Work design is used how each tasks or the entire workflow is organized within the specific work environment which is to be matched with the skills and strengths of the employee. Work design also includes a focus on administrative changes and requirements to improve working conditions and addressing adjustments that required to workstations, tools, and body positions to allow the maximum employees productivity. A good work design will reduce physical and mental strain while improving motivation and productivity of employees. It also helps to identifying issues such as: work overload, repetitiveness, and limited control over work, occupational safety and health within organisations.

Why work design is important to an organization….

Work design will help the organisations to match the work demand with the capacity of the employee. However, if it is not properly organizational performance, employee health and well-being will have a negative impact. Hence the work design must address border aspect such as identifying suitable facilities, allocation of resources to be compatible with workers’ attributes, strength, weaknesses, health, information-processing capacity and organizational expectations  to have a employee-environment fit, which matches the demands of the organisation  to the abilities of the employee.

Benefits of good work design………

• ·        Positive impact on employee attitude
• ·        Improves the motivational levels of employees
• ·        Improves job satisfaction
• ·        Improves employee mental & physical health
• ·        Improves employee commitment
• ·        Reduce employee turnover..
• ·        Improves overall productivity & performance of the organisation

Stages of work design……….

Source: CCOHS, 2002

Qualities of a good work design……..

§  Task variety.-to provide an optimal variety of tasks within each job.

§  Skill variety.  To maximize employees satisfaction from using a number of skill levels.

§  Feedback. Feedback aids the learning process and setting standards of quantity and quality.

§   Task identity. Sets of tasks should be separated from other sets of tasks by some clear boundary.

§   Task autonomy. to exercise some control over their work. Areas of discretion and decision making should be available to them

Summery

Work or Job design to be continuously monitored and  evolved to meet the demands of a dynamic working environment in order to ensure better organizational productivity , employee motivation , physiological and physical well-being of employees.

References:

1.   Canadian Centre for Occupational Health & Safety (2002). Job Design. Retrieved 17 May 2012, from: http://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/hsprograms/job_design.html

2.   Keyserling, W. M., ‘Occupational ergonomics. Promoting safety and health through work design’, In Levy, B. S. & Wegman, D. H. (Eds.) Occupational health: recognizing and preventing work-related disease and injury, 4th ed. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2000, Part II.

3.   De Wolff, C. J., ‘Stress Intervention at the Organizational Level’, In Gentry, W. D., Benson, H. & de Wolff, C. J., Martinus (Eds.), Behavioral Medicine: Work, Stress & Health, Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht, Netherlands, 1985.

4.   Daniels, K. & de Jonge, J., ‘Match making and match breaking: The nature of match within and around job design’, Journal of Occupational and Organisational Psychology, Vol. 83, 2010,

5.   Theorell, T., ‘How to deal with stress in organisations? – a health perspective on theory and practice’, Scandinavian Journal of Work Environmental Health, Vol. 24, No 6, 1999.

6.   Genaidy, A., Salem, S., Karwowski, W., Paez, O. & Tuncel, S., ‘The work compatibility improvement framework: an integrated perspective of the human-at-work system’, Ergonomics, Vol. 50, No 1, 2007.

7.   Lawler, E., Hackman, J. R. & Kaufman, S., ‘Effects of Job Redesign: A Field Experiment‘, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Vol. 3, No 1, 1973.

8.   Kuo, T-H., Ho, L-A., Lin, C. & L, K-K., ‘Employee empowerment in a technology advance work environment, Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 10, No 1, 2010.