JOB DESIGN
Overview
Most reported correlational and experimental studies in the area of Job
Design support the conclusion that jobs which offer variety, and require the
individual to exercise discretion over his work activities, lead to enhanced
well-being and mental health. Furthermore, the evidence shows how even
extremely routine, machine paced jobs can be re-designed to include greater
variety and responsibility. Such changes are sometimes accompanied by
economic benefits to the firm (through reduced labour turnover, for instance),
although the smaller claim, that in simple economic terms the company is not
worse off, may be more often correct.
Many large and prosperous
organisations have developed their own approaches to job design with such
persistence that we must infer that in practical terms they have recognised its
value to them and to their employees.
Job Design procedures cannot serve as a universal medicine to cure any
organisational illness. It is apparent for example that some jobs cannot
readily be changed to increase operator well-being, perhaps because of
technological constraints or because the working conditions are inalterably
awful. Job-design principles of a different kind may here be more appropriate
- elimination of the employee's task through automation, for instance.
The fact that payment changes will be required to most job-design exercises
should also be stressed. Job enrichment requires an individual to take over
additional responsibility; the discretionary element of his work is being
increased relative to its prescribed content. Additional discretion is usually
seen to merit an increase in pay. The obverse of this fact presents difficulties
for attempts to operate an enrichment programme in a piecework department;
in order to introduce piecework in the first place, much of the employee's
potential discretion had to be taken away from him, and it cannot now easily
be restored. For this reason many of the more successful job-design
schemes have tended to incorporate some form of performance related pay.
Just as there are differences between jobs in their potential for enrichment, so
are there major variations between people. There is little doubt that many
manual workers take a largely instrumental view of their work, valuing it
primarily in terms of its financial return and assessing possible improvements
mainly in cash terms; the phrase `job enrichment' may have a hollow ring to
them. Others are stretched by the requirements of their work as it is, and
cannot easily face an additional load, while some are simply unwilling to
consider seriously any alterations to a system with which they have become
comfortably familiar.
We should however draw attention to the fallacy of accepting people's initial
responses to such proposals as the last word in the matter. Job re-design
involves a continuing process of learning and opinion change. Several
reports of altered work systems have stressed how employees influence
developments, so that they may gradually come to terms with quite
considerable changes in their jobs. Den Hertog (1976) summarises a study in
Philips as follows: "One of the most important things is that work-structuring
itself is a learning process in which people learn to control their own work
situation, to see the way". He notes how people's expectations and values
alter in these learning situations. One group of married women employees
had been loath to change from their repetitive jobs, but after a year of
autonomous group-working they found it difficult to understand how they
could have been satisfied with their previous arrangements. Such a change
of aspiration level is regularly observed by practitioners in this field.
One practical feature which can affect the appropriateness of attempts to
redesign jobs is the breadth of variation within the group which is performing
a job. If the people involved range in age from their teens to their sixties and
are of widely differing intelligence, then they are unlikely to be uniformly able
to accept a programme of enrichment. This suggests that varying workmethods will ultimately be required within the prescribed set of tasks whereas
others producing the same item will prefer greater discretion.
The attitudes of the trade unions involved are additional factors influencing
the likely success of job-design attempts. It is clear that many shop stewards
and full-time union officials have reservations about the philosophy behind the
approach. They see that in some respects workers are being asked to take
over managerial functions, a step which could threaten the traditional union
role. Within parts of the engineering, mining and other industries there is still
a strong feeling that working-indirect encroachments by management. In so
far as the acceptance of job design by subordinates presupposes their
willingness to become in some respects their own managers, there exists a
clear conflict of roles for many trade unionists.
Finally, the industrial relations climate with an organisation crucially
determines the outcome of attempts to re-design jobs. In a sense this point
subsumes all the others: if the atmosphere has traditionally been one of usversus-them, where every move by management is viewed with deep
suspicion among the workforce and where managers have little respect for
their subordinates, proposals for job re-design are unlikely to get off the
ground. This does not mean, however, that both management and unions
should not set them up as objectives to be attained after sometime: they may
first work together to minimise job dissatisfaction and later cooperate on the
more positive aspects of well-being.