personal function notes

• Important elements for employers

  • Having the work done properly that will lead to organisation goals
  • Making sure that the work is logically organised into jobs that can be compensated fairly
  • Having work that people are willing (even eager) to do
• Factors important for employees

  • Having a clear understanding of what is expected in the job
  • Doing tasks they personally enjoy
  • Being rewarded appropriately for their work
  • Having a sense that what they do is important and respected
• Work


  Effort directed towards producing and accomplishing particular results
• Job


  The grouping of tasks, duties and responsibilities that constitute the total work assignment for an employee
• Workflow analysis


  1. Examine desired and actual outputs (goods and services) in terms of quantity and quality

  2. Evaluate activities (tasks and jobs) that lead to the outputs to see if they can achieve the desired outputs

  3. Assess inputs (people, material, information, data, equipment, etc.) to determine if these inputs make the outputs and activities more efficient and better
• Workflow analysis can establish if there are too many steps involving too many different jobs and the process will have to be redesigned requiring the redefining of tasks, duties and responsibilities of several jobs
• The use of an integrated workflow analysis will probably lead to increased employee involvement, increased efficiency and probably greater customer satisfaction
• The use of technology in workflow analysis can also be advantageous but sometimes employees may also use technology for personal use such as sending SMS messages, using social networks and the like and this may distract them from their work. Here a policy should be in place within the organisation to govern this
• Re-engineering business processes


  Generates the needed changes in the business processes to improve activities such as product development, customer service and service delivery
• Re-engineering may ultimately require the use of work teams, training employees to do more than one job, and reorganising operations, workflow and offices to simplify and speed up the work
• External organisation factors impacting job design

  • Environmental uncertainty
  • Availability and introduction of new technology
  • Profile of the labour market
• Internal organisation factors impacting job design

  • Management and leadership style
  • Technology available
  • Systems used
• Job design


  The manipulation of the content, functions and relationships of jobs in a way that both accomplishes organisational goals and satisfies the personal needs of individual job holders
• Job design determines how work is performed and, therefore, greatly affects how an employee feels about a job, how much authority an employee has over the work, how much decision-making the employee performs on the job and how many tasks the employee should complete
• Job design determines the nature of social relationships that exist on the job, as well as the relationship between the employee and the work
• Job design is not only the responsibility of HR managers but also involves line managers and the employees
• Job content

  Variety of tasks performed, autonomy of the job holder, routineness of tasks performed, difficulty of the tasks performed, identity of the job holder
• Job functions


  Work methods used, coordination of the work, responsibility, information flow, authority of the job
• Job relationships


  Work activities shared by the job holder and other individuals in the organisation
• Figure 5.3 provides a framework for job design at micro level
• Job design determines the way in which, and the extent to which, tasks are accomplished by a job holder
• Employee's satisfaction with the job situation


  Work itself
• Favourable reaction to job design

  Greater accomplishment, greater job satisfaction, less absenteeism, increased productivity, fewer grievances, less labour turnover
• Traditional approaches to job design have been seriously questioned in recent years
• Some job design problems in the last 25 years have been the result of employees increasing dissatisfaction with jobs designed for robots or mindless machines
• Approaches to job design

  • Specialisation-intensive/engineering approach
  • Motivation-intensive approach
  • Sociotechnical approach
• Job specialisation


  Jobs with very few tasks that are repeated often during the workday
• Specialisation-intensive jobs


  • Call centre operators
  • Data-entry positions
  • Product support representatives
  • Automobile assembly line workers
• Scientific management approach to job design

  1. Manager determines the one best way of performing the job

  2. Manager hires individuals according to their abilities

  3. Management trains employees in the one best way the job should be performed
• Benefits of specialisation-intensive jobs

  • Allows employees to learn tasks rapidly
  • Short work cycles so performance can take place with little or no mental effort
  • Reduces costs because low-skilled workers can be hired and trained easily and paid low wages
• Overspecialisation


  Going to extremes with job specialisation
• Overspecialisation hampers what people can do in several ways: repetition, mechanical pacing, no end product, little social interaction, no input
• Job scope

  How long it takes an employee to complete the total task
• Job depth

  How much planning, decision-making and controlling the employee does in the total job
• Depth refers to how much an employee can vary the methods used on the job and how many decisions they can make without supervisor approval</b>
• If various techniques and tools are determined solely by management, the job has very little depth
• A job in which an employee performs independently has great depth, or a great deal of autonomy
• Motivation-intensive jobs

  Jobs that balance employees' human needs and the employers' economic goals
• Approaches to motivation-intensive jobs

  • Job rotation
  • Job enlargement
  • Job enrichment
• Job rotation

  The process of shifting an employee from job to job