Research suggests that a job well designed is an effective way to motivate employees and increase job satisfaction.
The aim of this paper is to provide empirical evidence in favour of the above statement, to define job design, motivation and job satisfaction and to discuss practical ways on how job design contributes to employee’s motivation and job satisfaction.
As people in general have basic needs which are largely satisfied trough work, management can actually have a strong influence on motivation and performance by designing jobs and work processes.
What is job design? According to Torrington et al. (2001) “job design is the process of putting together a range of tasks, duties and responsibilities to create a composite for individuals to undertake in their work and to regard as their own. Not only is the basis of individual satisfaction and achievement at work, it is necessary to get the job done efficiently, economically, reliably and safely”.
Grant and Parker (2009) affirmed that job design explains how “jobs, tasks, and roles are structured, enacted, and modified and what the impact of this structures, enactments and modifications are on the individual, group and organizational outcomes”.
Pinder (1988) defined motivation as “a set of internal and external forces that initiate work related behaviour and determine its form, direction, intensity and duration”.
Locke (1976), specified that job satisfaction is "a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the
Mitchell (1982, p.82) describes motivation as “the degree to which an individual wants and chooses to engage in certain specified behaviours”. Hence, in general, behaviour is determined by certain motives, thus, Vroom and Deci (1992, p.33) considered motivation “as the causes of our behaviour”. Moreover, according to Mullins (2013, p.245) motivation is concerned with question “why do people do what they do?”, because motivation is an inner driving force which leads to particular action to achieve some aim and fulfil some need. In other words, Chartered Management Institute (cited in Mullins, 2013, p.246) observes that, “the aim of management is to give people what they really want most from work”.
Why do we need to motivate employees? The answer is survival. Motivated employees are needed in our rapidly changing workplaces. Motivated employees help organizations survive. Motivated employees are more productive. To be effective, managers need to understand what motivates employees within the context of the roles they perform. Of all the functions a manager performs, motivating employees is arguably the most complex. This is due, in part, to the fact that what motivates employees changes constantly. For example, research suggests that as employees' income increases, money becomes less of a motivator (Kovach, 1987). Also, as employees get older, interesting work becomes more of a motivator.
There are as many different methods of motivating employees today as there are companies operating in the global business environment. Still, some strategies are prevalent across all organizations striving to improve employee motivation. The best employee motivation efforts will focus on what the employees deem to be important. It may be that employees within the same department of the same organization will have different motivators. Many organizations today find that flexibility in job design and reward systems has resulted in employees ' increased longevity with the company, improved productivity, and better morale.
Job Design is one of the structural variables in organization management and a rich source of intrinsic rewards, which is the reward that comes from job content as opposed to job context. Intrinsic rewards from Job content motivates and produces behaviours that
Elizabeth demonstrates the principles of job enrichment by including employees in the HIS field in the job redesign process. This is seen through Elizabeth’s recommendations on the following: Doing Satisfaction Surveys, Job Diagnostic Survey, Job Procedure Review. She also suggests the addition of new tasks at higher levels of skill, responsibility, and accountability. This will challenge employees more and give them a greater sense of accomplishment when they are able to complete tasks that are traditionally held for people who are in superior employment positions.
He reviewed 32 studies on job satisfaction conducted prior to 1933 & observed that job satisfaction is a combination of psychological, physiological & environmental circumstances that cause a person to say. 'I am satisfied with my job'. Locke defines job satisfaction as a "pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one's job or job experiences". To the extent that a person's job fulfils his dominant need & is consistent with his expectations & values, the job will be satisfying.
Goal setting is about linking tasks to performance and it is used to establish and present counsel to employees on how much efforts are demanded and what work need to be done. In the HIS case work reflects the goals of the department. At the lowest point, which is the employee level, a job is set as task, duties, assignments and duties for a stratum of employees. The overall work would be constituted by the total aggregation of all department jobs. The role of the leaders will be to examine departments alignment in order to achieve organizational goals. Four different levels being engineering, restructuring, work redesign and job redesign are used to align organizational goals. Health information
Job design is, first, the division of an organization 's work among its employees and, second, the application of motivational theories to jobs to increase satisfaction and performance. Two approaches to job design are fitting people to jobs (the traditional approach) and fitting jobs to people.
Job satisfaction is an attitude which results from balancing & summation of many specific likes and dislikes experienced in connection with the job- their evaluation may rest largely
However, this is not the situation at MSH as employees and managers complain of dissatisfaction and alienation. Kyle, through his unconventional approach to human resource management, has failed to design an appropriate job design that can bring satisfaction to employees. Most employees are leaving the organization as they complain that their roles have been reduced and that they are not trusted to handle the operations that they previously handled so successfully. According to Cohen (2002), job design is one way of motivating employees apart from the monetary compensation and that it can significantly lead to high productivity levels. Therefore, the current situation at MSH requires that the management design a job design that will make sure that employees have more responsibility. An approximate job design can be achieved through job enlargement, job rotation, job simplification, and job
When reviewing the organizational structure of Columbus Custom Carpentry in the company’s handbook it is a structure of centralization where the decision making authority is at the top of the organizational chart (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, & Wright, 2015, p. 167). However when reviewing the job descriptions for the various company’s positions it appears there are errors when the job descriptions were developed. Job analysis is the process where Human Resources gather detailed information about jobs which is the foundation (Noe et al., 2015, p. 176). It is clear the company is in need of redesigning jobs with the company due overlapping task as well the lack of job descriptions created for active positions. The first example of overlapping tasks occurs in the marketing division; the inside sales position has some of the same tasks as the sales position such as contacting builders and architects to increase awareness and sales of our products. The task of
The job characteristics model is one of the most influential attempts to design jobs with increased motivational properties. Proposed by Hackman and Oldham, the model describes five core job dimensions leading to three critical psychological states, resulting in work-related outcomes.
In the Human Performance it states that, “Existing job design models have been criticized for being able to explain affective outcomes more consistently than they do those of task motivation and performance.” (Burr and Cordy, 2001, pp. 27.) Business dictionary defines Job Design as, “Work arrangement (or rearrangement) aimed at reducing or overcoming job dissatisfaction and employee alienation arising from repetitive and mechanistic tasks. Through job design, organizations try to raise productivity levels by offering non-monetary rewards such as greater satisfaction from a sense of personal achievement in meeting the increased challenge and responsibility of one's work. Job enlargement, job enrichment, job rotation, and job simplification are the various techniques used in a job design exercise. In my current work position as an assistant to an elementary school district strategist, I can account for many aspects leading to me being promoted to this position from an assistant teacher through the characteristics of job design. In Organizational Behavior and Management, it states that, “job design specifies three characteristics of jobs: range, depth, and relationship.” (Ivancevich, Konopaske, Matteson, pp. 147) The number of duties a jobholder or employees has is defining job range. For example, one of my jobs as an assistant teacher was to make copies for a week of work for the entire first grade class, a week ahead of
Goal setting and SMART goal setting theory was employed in this case through the proposed implementation of work reorganization tied to a reward scheme.
The relationship between job satisfaction, motivation, and efficiency or productivity is very important in the business industry as well as in personal life. Long term research has found that the single greatest predictor of longevity is work satisfaction. Work is one third to one half of a persons' lifetime, and if frustrated the mental and physical effects are very costly. Job characteristics including skill variety, task identity, and task significance lead to psychological conditions in which in turn leads to increased motivation, performance and job satisfaction. It is important to investigate this area in order to determine how much of an effect does