Reference no: EM133334259
Question: Please provide a conclusion to the following set of information. It should sum up what was written as well as provide insight.
Case Study: Job analysis and job design are key functions used by human resource managers in managing motivation and job satisfaction. This is particularly important today because society is currently going through a job satisfaction and motivation crisis. Employees of all ages and levels of experience are unsatisfied and unmotivated in their current occupations.
To dive deeper into how job analysis and job design relate to motivation and job satisfaction, this executive brief will explain what job analysis and job design is and why they are important to motivation and job satisfaction. It will then introduce what factors influence job analysis and job design. These factors will then lead to some contemporary concepts in job analysis and job design which will be followed by statistical examples of the motivation and job satisfaction crisis that is currently unfolding. Finally flowing into how human resources managers can implement job analysis and job design to better the work experience for their employees.
Before going into why job analysis and job design are important, they must be defined and their use understood. First of all, job analysis is defined as the procedure a company uses to determine the tasks, duties, and responsibilities of each job; along with the human capital,which refers to the knowledge, skills, and abilities,necessary to do it. Through this procedure many companies ranging from the largest conglomerates to the simplest small businesses create job descriptions and job specifications. Companies use job descriptions and job specifications to determine what tasks, duties, and responsibilities the described job will entail as well as what knowledge, skills, and abilities are required for an employee will need for a specific job. Without job descriptions and job specifications hiring managers would have very little useful information to use during the hiring process. With a lack of information, they would likely hire inexperienced or incapable employees while also training and developing them improperly causing the business to run inefficiently or in the worst case fail.
Next, through the use of job descriptions and job specifications from job analysis comes job design which is the process of organizing work into a number of tasks that are needed to complete a specific job. This process is broken down into the four functions of job design. These functions are known as work simplification, industrial engineering, business process reengineering, and job redesign. Job redesign in itself includes job enlargement, job rotation, and job enrichment. Job enlargement also known as horizontal expansion refers to adding more tasks of the same level to a job, in the example of home construction framers would have drywall added to their job. Job rotation is very self-explanatory in that it means rotating between jobs, sticking with the home example workers would rotate between painting walls, installing flooring, and installing kitchen cabinets. Job enrichment can often include aspects of job enlargement and job rotation but focuses on making the job more interesting and rewarding for the employee. Job enrichment could look like framers working alongside electricians and/or plumbers so they can increase their skills and knowledge, making them more accomplished and valuable. With the use of all of these functions of job design, human resource managers have the tools at their disposal to make jobs that are more interesting and challenging to increase job motivation and job satisfaction.
What Factors Influence Job Analysis
There are two driving factors that influence a company to conduct a job analysis. The first factor being when an organization needs help with the recruitment and hiring process. A company can analyze a certain job which they are trying to hire new employees for. Doing so will show the company the necessary skills, education, and prior work experience required by a potential candidate to excel in that position. A job analysis will also help the company determine the required number of employees needed for certain tasks. Say if a company needs to hire multiple people for a team to complete an assignment, the company wants to know the correct number of people needed to complete that assignment with maximum efficiency and productivity. A company does not want to be understaffed or overstaffed. Another thing that conducting a job analysis can show is the culture needed for certain positions. When a company is interviewing candidates for a position, they will want to see if the candidate will be able to adapt and fit in with the culture that comes with that position.
The second factor that can influence a company to conduct a job analysis is when they are trying to determine the proper salary and benefits for certain positions. A job analysis will show a company the difficulty of a job and the required amount of work needed for a job. When a company has this information available to them it will allow them to determine what they should pay an employee in that role. Companies want to make sure they are compensating employees properly. If you have a job that is very difficult, with long days, and may cause a lot of stress you do not want to be under paying that position. This may lead to people not wanting to work for your company, and potential lawsuits due to wage miscalculation. However, on the other hand if you have a job that is not difficult, with short hours and low stress working conditions, you do not want to be overpaying these positions. Overpaying the employees in these positions can be bad for the company since it may lead to financial problems down the line.
What Factors Influence Job Design
There are three driving factors that influence the designing of new jobs. The first factor being physical data. When you are designing a new job, you will want to look at similar jobs to get an understanding of how to structure the new one that is being designed. Similar jobs will show you what aspects could potentially work for the new job and what aspects you will want to avoid implementing in this new job. You may also look at job analysis of similar jobs to help get an understanding of certain employees that would be needed for the new job.
The second factor that influences job design is how the organization operates. When designing a job, you must take into account what product or service the company is involved in. You want to make sure that the job you are designing can operate and maximize productivity under the specific product or service that is unique to the company. You also need to ensure that the job you are designing can fit in with the workflow of the company. This means that the job must be able to complete tasks in a manner that is in sync with the flow of the rest of the company.
The third factor that influences job design is the work environment of the company. The job that you are designing must be able to give and receive feedback. With anything in the early stages of development, it will not be perfect. The new job will need feedback so that it can be further developed through time eventually getting it to a permanent position in the company. The job you are designing will need to be diverse. Companies do not want to pay a bunch of people to do the same job, they want people doing different tasks so that they can maximize efficiency and productivity. When designing a job, you will also need to consider the level of difficulty and required skills needed for that job. You need to be realistic when designing a job and not make it too difficult for people to excel in that position.
Contemporary Examples
Effective use of job design and analysis techniques can help employees feel happier and more motivated on the job, resulting in a healthier work environment overall. Knowing this, it seems enticing for organizations to improve their implementations of job analysis and job design in order to enjoy the benefits and provide enrichment to their employees' lives. There are a multitude of methods by which job analysis and design can be leveraged to improve employee motivation and satisfaction, and no one method alone can serve as a complete fix in all situations.
One often-cited example of an organization that has achieved great employee satisfaction and motivation is Google. Google is a unique company that makes use of some interesting and sometimes seemingly counter-intuitive methods to boost employee morale, but nonetheless their employees often report being very satisfied with their work, meaning that Google's approaches are usually successful. Although Google's specific methods may not be suitable for every work environment, the broader ideas behind them can be used more universally and in a wide number of scenarios and can serve as inspiration for many organizations to improve their implementations of job analysis and job design.
One contemporary job design concept is employee empowerment. Empowerment is the process of giving employees more autonomy in things such as decision-making and individual approaches to work, as well as giving employees a higher level of power and influence within their organizations. When employee empowerment is emphasized in organizations, managers take more of a "back seat", resulting in more democratic leadership and self-management by employees. In certain individuals, giving more freedom and autonomy can lead to favorable outcomes such increased motivation and a stronger employee-employer bond, as well as things such as increased capability for innovation and a higher quality of work overall. Empowering employees is not always an ideal approach, however. In individuals who lack ambition and don't feel a particular passion or interest toward their work, giving them increased autonomy and freedom may not be of much use at all.
Google's method of employee empowerment is rather straightforward, as employees are given freedom over when and how their tasks are completed. Google employees are also given a voice throughout the company and are given a degree of influence over company activities. This approach to employee empowerment has proven useful to Google, as is made evident by the degrees of motivation and satisfaction seen in their employees.
Another contemporary concept in job analysis and design is task significance. Task significance is a subjective measure of the outcome of an employee's work. More specifically, task significance refers to the amount of perceived good that results from an employee's work tasks, or more broadly, how important an employee feels their work is. An example of a job with low task significance may be a line cook position at a fast-food restaurant, or a grocery store worker who stocks shelves. Inversely, engineering positions or public service roles could be examples of jobs with a higher degree of task significance.
Task significance is correlated with desirable outcomes such as increased job performance. However, there is an issue with discussions of task significance, that being that a higher level of perceived task significance may not be of benefit to all employees. Task significance is linked to increases in performance in individuals with strong prosocial values, in other words those who get great satisfaction and joy from seeing others succeed and do well. Higher levels of task significance may not be of benefit in individuals who have a strong work ethic or find their work especially satisfying in itself, as they would not need the support from seeing the results of their work in order to gain satisfaction from their jobs.
Google gives their employees task significance through the input and influence they are afforded, however they also have a unqiue approach to task significance that may seemunintuitive at a glance. Google allows their employees to take 20% of their working time, or one day in a week, to do whatever they'd like. This free time can be used to work on passion projects or simply for leisure. While boosting productivity by letting employees work less may seem odd, Google has seen some great benefits from this practice. Some notable services such as Gmail started as employee passion projects. By allowing employees to express themselves creatively and without restrictions, they are given higher levels of task significance through the opportunity to pursue their own interests and even possibly influence the company in ways that they uniquely see fit.
Another contemporary concept in job analysis and design is freedom of employee workplace. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic
Recommendations
We strongly recommend that human resources management implement job analysis and job design into their organizations. A job analysis will help management with recruitment and hiring process of companies. As stated earlier a job analysis will show necessary skills, required education, and prior work experience needed for certain positions. A job analysis can also help a company discover productivity issues within certain positions. This issue could be rooted from an employee not doing what is required of them or maybe there is a flaw in the way the job is designed. If the job is designed poorly, then a company could use job design to redesign the job to fix the issue and implement new strategies. A job analysis may show a company potential health and safety concerns within certain positions. These hazards could be ergonomically, physically, or mentally. Finally, job analysis and job design could possibly increase motivation and job satisfaction within companies. If an HR manager finds that employees are not unmotivated and not satisfied with the job, you could do a job analysis to find what factors may be causing this. Then you could redesign the job and try to make it more satisfying for your employees so that they are motivated to work harder.