Managing Job Design and Flexibility - Essay Example

Managing Job Design and Flexibility Abstract This paper provides insights into challenges faced and choices available to HR practitioners when managing job design and flexibility. Right from the data collection and analytics of job information to incorporating dynamics into static job design documents, several challenges mar the success of job design as a useful management tool in today’s competitive environment. Impartial ratings by supervisors and non-familiarity on the part of incumbents worsen the effectiveness of job design. As a result, HR practitioners have to rethink over the ways of job design in terms of various approaches which include all the essential components of work as well as worker characteristics. Background Flexibility and innovation have been the talk of the town lately in business. With the introduction of new activities everyday in business practices, it has become a pre-requisite to change the structure and contents of jobs so as to make them compatible with the current job demands. This feat encounters numerous challenges and hurdles in terms of analytical hiccups and consensus building between people supplying information for job designs. As such, identification and removal of such shortcomings in the inception stages of job design are crucial to the human resources and organizational success. This paper allows making an attempt into finding out what challenges or threats are posed in front of HR practitioners when job design is the task. The discussion extends further to recommend the choices which these HR practitioners can adopt in tackling those challenges. The paper will commence with an introduction of job design and its components. Factors affecting job design have also been discussed in brevity to equip the reader with a thorough understanding of the background and enable him to correlate the recommendations well with the initial problem. Challenges of job design in terms of static job analysis output documents, more emphasis of job designing on work rather than worker, behavioral challenges in job design, reliability and validity issues in data collection techniques and trade-off between generalist and specific work design have been elaborated upon in detail. The four approaches of job design will form the basis of knowledge and future comparison for recommendations. Findings Objective of the paper The objective of the assignment is to delve deep into job design aspect of human resource management by identifying and elaborating upon its probable challenges and available remedies to handle those challenges. Building upon the basic knowledge of job design, the primary task is to critically examine the topic of job design by highlighting how it has become ineffective and obsolete in today’s business scenario. Arguments made in this paper unveil the analytical as well as strategic hiccups in managing job design and flexibility in organizations with an attempt to suggest probable choices to do away with these challenges. Existing knowledge of the topic Job design is the process of defining job roles and activities to meet the work requirements. It is forerunner to the job analysis technique wherein data and information is collected from people working in jobs and activities, tasks and processes are defined and developed accordingly. The process of job design commences with identifying the requirements of work and then devising separate functions and inter-relations of job so that organizational purposes can be met (Armstrong 2006, p.466). When job activities are identified, skills and qualifications of job holders are assessed next so that fit can be achieved between work and worker. In the process of job design, job description serves as the document detailing the job activities and tasks while job specification makes up the competencies, qualifications and abilities of job holders. In order to introduce flexibility into job design, it is essential to have a backdrop of the factors which impact job design. Job design should take into account the number of tasks a job is supposed to do, autonomy and discretion allowed to the job holder and inter-relationship between different jobs and their owners. Today, when cross-functional and self-directed teams are replacing traditional work settings, role of job design gains immense significance because multi-skilling can be practiced only when proper analysis of job design data is conducted. Focus of the paper The prime focus of the paper will be on underlining challenges of job design that emerge from job ratings and failure of HR practitioners to align changing dynamics of workplace requirements with that of job design data and information. This is the biggest handicap suffered by job design today that it fails to give due attention to complexities and flexibilities that are much needed in designing cross-functional roles and responsibilities which span across team based and more boundary less jobs. Arguments In the traditional technique of designing jobs by using job description and specification documents, Robert & Brady (2003, p.57) state that underlying assumptions of concrete duties and stability hinder the entry of flexibility in job design. It emphasizes upon stable environment and mass production system where job roles and duties do not change very often. Prevalence of a more hierarchical nature of organizations and jobs further restricts the flexible movement of job design. Modern time calls for self managed and cross-functional teams where boundaries of roles are getting blurred. However, according to Maryann (2001, p.136), job design has focused on specifications of job till now and ignored the evolving nature of competencies which makes job design binded by traditional shortcomings. Anderson (2005, p.72) outlines the deficiencies of validity, reliability and accuracy in collecting and analyzing job data from supervisors and incumbents. Examples include overstatement of job features or missing out on crucial facts. Also, incumbents might not be that much familiar with job aspects which allow them to provide proper and fair ratings. Evers et al. (2005, p.31) and Koppes (2007, p.235) assert that a dilemma in terms of whether to include only the standard duties or additional ones into job design challenges the HR managers in getting job design suited to the current needs. Nankervis (2005, p.323) especially talks about the evolving role of job design in services because success in services depend upon the behavioral competencies of people and inter-dependent and cross-over in roles are frequent. Challenges of managing job design affect service businesses more than others because of their reliance on personal qualities and skills of their employees. Multi-skilling and use of flexible job design is a cornerstone to success here because of their requirement to adapt to changing circumstances of handling customers and preferences. Noe (2007, p.159) discusses the four approaches of job design- mechanistic, motivational, biological and perceptual-motor; to manage job design and inherent flexibility issues. Though no one is a panaceal remedy to the ineffective job design problem, yet a mix of all four can help HR managers arrive at a solution which can provide them with the needed flexibility and innovation in devising their jobs and identification of the respective job holders. Aswathappa (2007, p.112) suggests to link the aspects and process of job design with that of Total Quality Management which features continuous improvement and revisiting every single characteristic of job regularly to achieve the much awaited results. Structure of the final individual paper The final individual paper will start the discussion with an introduction of the topic and its significance to the body of knowledge. Fundamentals of job design, affecting factors and other contents will establish the base for next sections. Introduction and content building will form section 1 of the paper. Section 2 will describe the challenges HR practitioners face in managing job design process. Such challenges arise from both inabilities of people who manage the process as well as methods deployed to prepare and design jobs. This section will form the basis for section 3 which will talk about choices that are available to HR managers in tackling those challenges and improving upon the current job design practices to make them more dynamic and suitable to the workplace environment. Section 4 will comprise of concluding remarks and suggestions for future research into the topic. It will also contain a summary of the main points covered during the course of discussion. Introduction of final individual paper With the advent of new and limitless jobs spanning across boundaries, human resource management has evolved greatly from traditional personnel management. Though demands and strategies have changed but job design still remains short of incorporating expansions and definition of new roles. Current job design practices seem inadequate to adjust new roles and growing units. In this regard, it is essential to outline the challenges which impede manager’s attempt to successfully design jobs. Primary of those challenges emanate from faulty collection and analysis of data which remains incompetent of adjusting data interpretations with that of current work and job demands. This results in inflexible and ineffective work definitions which further reduce worker motivation, innovation and creativity. Other challenges emerge from personal biases, lack of complete information and exaggerated work ratings to gain personal benefits out of job design. In order to stay ahead of competition and make optimum use of strategic human resources management, organizations need to revisit the approaches used for designing jobs and provide for more cross-functional and self-managed teams which specify core duties and leave marginal tasks on competencies and skills of job holders. Summary Talking of the challenges of job design, one thing which is obvious is that this management tool suffers from inability to evolve with the pace business scenario has evolved. Roles and competencies have changed but methods and techniques to design jobs have remained static over time. Introduction of TQM principles and mix of job design approaches involving motivational, perceptual, biological and other aspects of both work and worker traits can better the situation. References Anderson, N. (2005). Handbook of industrial, work and organizational psychology. Volume 1. London: Sage Publications. Armstrong, M. (2006). Armstrong’s handbook of human resource management. 11th Ed. London: Kogan Page. Aswathappa, K. (2007). Human Resource and Personnel Management. Noida: Tata McGraw Hill. Evers, A, Anderson, N & Voskuijil, S.O. (2005). Handbook of Personnel Selection. USA: Blackwell Publishing. Koppes, L.L. (2007). Historical perspectives in industrial and organizational psychology. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Maryann, H.A. (2001). International HRM: managing diversity in the workplace. USA: Blackwell Publishing. Nankervis, A.R. (2005). Managing Services. Cambridge University Press. Noe, R.A. (2007). Human Resource Management: Gaining a competitive advantage. 5th Ed. New York: Tata McGraw Hill. Robert, L & Brady, J.D. (2003). The job analyzer: BLR’s complete guide to analyzing, evaluating, pricing and writing jobs. USA: Business and Legal Reports. Appendices ACTION PLAN TASK DEADLINE Assessment One Submission Week 8 (Monday) Reading on the selected material to prepare for Assessment Two Week 8 (By the end) Preparing a draft of individual paper Week 9 (Monday) Submitting the draft of individual paper to the tutor for approval Week 9 (By the end) Receiving tutor’s feedback on Assessment One Week 11 Receiving tutor’s feedback on draft of Individual paper Week 12 Making suggested changes in the individual paper Week 13 Submitting the final individual paper Week 14 Submitting the reflective essay Week 14 Read More