Job Design and Flexibility - Essay Example

?Job Design & Flexibility Table of Contents Job Design & Flexibility Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 Job Design and Flexibility 3 Common Approaches to the Job Designs 6 Conclusion 7 Reflective study 7 Introduction In today’s contemporary world, the organizations are facing enough challenges. The organizations face a wide range of people management challenges; one of them is in managing job design and flexibility. This report would look into the job design and flexibility. Job Design and Flexibility One of the important things is to understand regarding job design can take varied perspectives from different point of views. For an instance, a conventional study practitioner may look at the job design from a much diversified way from a specialist or an ergonomist in the group working. It would be wrong to say that any of these perspectives are not correct. However, it can be said that they put stress on different features of the job design. So, for an instance, it would not be necessarily unsuited for a manager to utilize the techniques of the work study to estimate the performance of the each element of any job, while at same time bearing in mind the ergonomic features of the way in which the working environment is required to be managed and also zeroing down on relevant autonomy level to design a work group. There are many alternative job designs available. For any reason, a perception of the job design is expected to achieve is pretty much important. There are certain performance objectives which can be relevant in the decisions of the job designs. Quality The capability of any staff to develop high quality merchandises and services could be affected through the job design. This would include avoiding the errors in this short term. However, designing jobs would encourage the staffs to enhance job leading to less amount of errors. Speed Very often, response speed is a prominent objective which is expected to be attained in the job designs. For an instance, the organizing way of the jobs of personnel in the emergency service would go long way which would determine the employees’ ability to give prompt respond to the emergencies as well as save the lives. The job designs of them would include the range of activities which they are trained on, the appropriate sequence of these activities and procedures and the autonomy in which they would decide on the appropriate action and such other activities. Dependability Job design can influence the dependable supply of services and goods. For an instance, in postal services, the working arrangements of the same, multi skilling, proper usage of the sorting equipment, good interface design of the staff machine as well as staff design of the postal clothes could contribute to the dependable parcels and letters delivery. Flexibility The design of any job can put an impact on the capability of any operation to alter nature of job activities. The flexibility in new service or product, the flexibility in the mix, volume and delivery of the same are more or less dependent on the job designs. For an instance, the staffs, who would have been provided with the training on several tasks, may easily cope with a broad range of relevant models as well as introductions to the new service or product. Cost All the components of the job design can be articulated in the above would put an impact on productivity and hence on the cost of the job. In this specific context, the productivity would mean the output ratio to labor input. For an instance, number of the consumers served in any hour or products manufactured per worker. Adding to it, the job design is expected to influence two specific significant objectives. Health & Safety Apart from the achievements of any job design, one factor, which is more important, is well being of any employee. The design of any job must not jeopardize the well being of any person or some other person, or the stakeholders including the customers who may have presence in the operational process or the people who would utilize the products manufactured by operation. Quality of Job Life The design job should consider the impact on the job security, inherent value, and wide range of opportunities for the development, the level of stress as well as attitude of any employee carrying out with the job. Division of Labor The labor division has earliest effect on the job designs and still it is one of the most important ones. The major issue in this category is the way in which jobs are divided in. Although there exist some highly segmented as well as repetitive jobs, there is a common trend in a number of jobs for the labor division which could be somewhat reversed but not entirely eliminated. There is still some extent of specialization existing in each of the jobs. The significant objective is balancing the flexibility as well as enhanced job satisfaction (Pearson Education, 2010). Common Approaches to the Job Designs Job Design would refer to goals as well as tasks which are required to be achieved by the managers as well as the employees which would include expected task and interpersonal relationships. Job design would occur each time any individual would be assigned work with attached instructions or is empowered to carry out tasks as well as pursue the goals. Either informally or formally, the managers, customers, individual employees or groups can alter the tasks which are required to be accepted and the ways to operate. Both the means and tasks for performing the tasks change and the managers are required to know the way to design as well as redesign the activities to make the jobs meaningful, motivating as much as productive. As a result, the requirements and goals of the employees as well as the organizations are required to be taken into account in the job designs. The design of any job in any organization would provide the employees with the tools and techniques which would be of their requirements and would utilize the competencies to offer products with high quality and enhanced service to customers leading to an ideal job design. However, the ideal may not be attainable at all the time, considerable improvements regarding the job designs which can be beneficial for the employees, organization and customers can be done utilizing one of the job design approaches. Job Rotation Rotation in any job would mean moving the employees from one job to another to include variety as well as to reduce the monotonousness of a single job role, allowing them to perform a wide range of activities. Job rotation has low impact as well as less complexity as it typically enables the employees from a routine job to other one. For an instance, an organization can employ a maid to clean kitchen in a house and bedroom in the other one. However, if all those tasks are routine and of similar kind, job rotation may not have the desired effect to improve the effectiveness as well as job satisfaction of the employees. At time, the job rotation may become useful as it would reduce the issue of repetitive injuries by shifting people from one job to other demanding varied physical movements. Conclusion As in this competitive work environment, when the employees are bored with their routine works and stressed enough to reduce their efficiency, job design can take a significant role to improve the productivity in any organization. The roles and responsibilities of the individual employees are required to be clearly defined and more over, enough flexibility should be present to give the required space to the employees, which would ultimately work in the favor of any organization. Reflective study It is beyond any say that this competitive business environment demands the organizations to recruit the right people as well as nurture and retain their employees. This would help the organization to build a long term relationship with the employees and in turn they would benefitted by the employees who would have long term relationship with the organizations’ stakeholders including consumers, investors and the suppliers. Furthermore, for the success of any company it is pretty much required that the employees carry out their responsibilities effectively, which demands an appropriate design of the job responsibilities. To nurture the most significant resource of any organization, human resources, a clear but flexible job design can be of great assistance. Hence is the significance of this particular study. From my previous experience, I have noticed that people get bored at their jobs and the productivity gradually decreases. Furthermore, it affects the overall organizational culture as the organization itself did not find much time to build a sustainable relationship with the employees. Furthermore, new employees would not be able to align themselves so fast with the present job environment of the companies. So, it is very important to retain the employees for the benefits of the company. It is pretty much required that the employees are nurtured in an appropriate manner to fetch the desired results. While doing this project, I learn a lot of things regarding the designing of jobs and the necessity to include flexibility in the same. Flexibility is pretty much required to encourage the employees to increase their productivity, rather than getting stuck into one single job. My first assignment was a structural glance to the entire project, while this is the project where I have incorporated the theoretical overview with the inclusion of examples to describe the extent of understanding further. In this assignment, I have worked in accordance with the feedback provided by my guide. In the last assignment, I was able to develop the ideas and arguments to carry out the entire project further. In this project, I have tried to retain the same, rather to enhance the same. In the last assignment, I was able to show the ability to apply the relevant theories and demonstrate the critical analysis of the same. In this assignment, I have out my effort forward to enhance the further as this demands comparatively more critical detailing of the entire project. In my last assignment, I was not so good to show my ability in structuring a piece of work. I released the necessity of a good structure including the introduction and conclusion parts. In this assignment, I have included those headings to enhance the structure in an enhanced manner. Lat time, I might have failed to follow the instruction properly and hence fetched only ‘good’ on it. This time, I have put more time and effort to understand the instructions of this assignment and tried to follow the same. This time, I have also put more effort to go through my paper once again after completion for the same to minimize the grammatical as well contextual errors. This time, I have put more effort to accumulate and present the report in an impressive way and I can assure you that this would be a continual process to carry out an excellent work. Reference Pearson Education. (2010). Job Design and Work. [Online]. Available at: http://wps.pearsoned.co.uk/ema_uk_he_slack_opsman_4/17/4472/1144953.cw/index.html [Accessed on May 18, 2011]. Read More