Job design & Flexibility Learning Outcomes By the end of

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Job design Flexibility
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Learning Outcomes

• By the end of this session you will be able to
  gain an understanding of
• The approaches to job design
• Task depth and scope of job design
• The four job design profiles
• Flexible working drivers
• Forms of flexibility and the flexible firm
• Flexible working practices

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Job Design

• Guest et al (2000) suggests that job design
  should
• ensure flexibility, commitment and motivation,
  including steps to ensure that employees have the
  responsibility and autonomy to use their
  knowledge to the full.

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Guests (1997) Model of HRM

• Linked to the strategic management of an
  organisation.
• Seeks commitment to organisational goals
• Focuses on the individual needs rather than the
  collective workforce.
• Enables organisations to devolve power and become
  more flexible
• Emphasises people as an asset to be positively
  utilised by the organisation.

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Guests Model of HRM
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The Changing Nature of Jobs

• Shifting away from the idea of jobs for life and
  a move towards employing people on short term
  contracts or fixed term contracts.
• Shift towards using contract workers for certain
  functions, such as cleaning or catering.
• (Bloisi,2007)

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CIPD (2001) identifies the main features of a
high commitment organisation as

• The development of career ladders to encourage
  commitment.
• Emphasis on training at all levels of the
  organisation.
• A high level of functional flexibility with the
  abandonment of potentially rigid job
  descriptions.
• The reduction of hierarchies and the ending of
  status differentials.

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CIPD (2001) continued

• A policy of no compulsory lay-offs or
  redundancies and permanent employment guarantees
  with the possible use of temporary workers to
  cushion fluctuations in the demand for labour.
• New forms of assessment and payment systems and,
  more specifically, merit pay and profit sharing.
• Involving employees in quality management.
• Develop strategies to show staff they are valued

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CIPD (2001) continued

• A heavy reliance on team structure for
• disseminating information (team briefing)
• structuring work (team working)
• problem solving (quality circles)
• Job design as something management consciously
  does in order to provide jobs which have a
  considerable level of intrinsic satisfaction.

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Job Analysis vs job design

• Job analysis focuses on existing jobs and is used
  for gathering information for other human
  resource management practices such as
  recruitment, selection, training, development
  and remuneration.
• (Bloisi, 2007)

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Job Design

• Job design focuses instead on redesigning
  existing jobs to make them more efficient or more
  interesting.
• However, to do this, jobs still have to undergo
  some form of analysis.
• Blosis chapter 3 explains how this can happen.
• (Bloisi, 2007)

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Organisational Structure

• The structure of an organisation provides an
  overview of how the organisation fits together.
  It is often displayed through the use of
  organisational charts.
• (Bloisi, 2007)

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Organisation Structure by Function
Chief executive officer
Director finance
Directormarketing
Director human resources
Auditor
Accountant
Sales manager
Advertising manager
Market research manager
Office manager
Admin
Admin
Admin
Admin
Admin
Admin
(Bloisi, 2007, p79)
Exhibit 3 2 Organisational chart by function
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Organisation Structure by Division
Chief executive officer
Property sales
Property development
Estates purchase
Technical
Chief surveyor
Architect
Structural engineer
Quantity surveyor
Admin
Admin
(Bloisi, 2007, p 79)
Exhibit 3 Organisational structure by division
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The Changing Nature of Jobs

• During the 1980s and 90s there was a move away
  from the idea of jobs for life and a move towards
  employing people on short term contracts or fixed
  term contracts.
• Organisations also moved towards using contract
  workers for certain functions, such as cleaning
  or catering.
• Job design is the practical process of deciding
  how the job will be done and the tasks needed as
  part of the job.
• (Bloisi, 2007)

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Approaches to Job Design

• the mechanistic approach
• the motivational approach

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Mechanistic Approach to Job Design

• Has its roots in the scientific school of
  management.
• Focuses on the most efficient way of doing a job.
  
• The scientific approach believed that the
  scientific observation of people at work would
  identify the "one best way" to do a task.
• Problem - too preoccupied with productivity that
  it ignores the worker's social needs.

(Bloisi, 2007)
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Motivational Approach to Job Design

• Stems from human relations approach to management
  where the focus shifted from a rational economic
  picture of employees to a social behavioural
  perspective.
• Assumes that jobs can be designed to stimulate
  employee motivation and increase job
  satisfaction.
• (Bloisi, 2007)

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Hackman and Oldham (1980) Job characteristics
model
Identified the motivational factors of a job from
the following aspects
Core jobcharacteristics
Critical psychologicalstates
Outcomes
Skill varietyJob identityJob significance Job
autonomy Feedback from job
Meaningfulnessof workResponsibiliy for work
outcomesKnowing the actual results of the work
activities
Less absenteeismLess turnoverHigh
satisfactionHigh motivationHigh-quality work
performance
Exhibit 3 4 Job characteristics model
(Bloisi, 200783)
Source Adapted from Hackman and Oldham (1980
77).
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Making Work more Meaningful

• job enlargement, where the job is broadened to
  include different types of tasks.
• job enrichment, where workers are empowered by
  being more involved in the decision making
  process
• Job rotation here workers are moved from one job
  to another over time.

(Bloisi, 2007)
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Defining flexibilisation

• Flexible at work
• .. the ability of the organisation to adapt the
  size, composition, responsiveness and cost of
  people inputs required to achieve organisational
  objectives.
• (Pilbeam Corbridge, 2006)

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What is driving organisational flexibility?

• The pursuit of competitive advantage through
  organisational differentiation the lean
  organisation
• A shift to flexible specialisation in production
  processes.
• Demographic and social changes.
• Globalisation.
• The deregulation of labour markets.
• Changes in technology.
• The search for economic efficiency.
• Increasing number of service sector jobs and
  escalating customer aspirations and power.

(Pilbeam Corbridge, 2006)
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Flexible working practices
(CIPD, June 20087)
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Current issues with flexible working practices
in organisations

• (CIPD, June 200818)

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Possible solutions?

• (CIPD, June 200820)

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Seminar Reading

• Seminar My notebook , The National Crime Squad
  Case study Bloisi page 74
• Reading Bloisi chapter 3
• Web search print job description Persons
  specification for an HR graduate traineeship for
  next week

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Have the following lecture objectives been met?

• The approaches to job design
• Task depth and scope of job design
• The four job design profiles
• Flexible working drivers
• Forms of flexibility and the flexible firm
• Flexible working practices