Work Design and Measurement
Chapter 7
Quality of Work Life
• Quality of work life affects not only workers’
overall sense of well-being and contentment,
but also their productivity
• Important aspects of quality of work life:
– Working conditions
– Compensation
– Job Design
Working Conditions
• Physical
–
–
–
–
Temperature and humidity
Ventilation
Illumination
Noise and Vibration
• Psychological
–
–
–
–
Work Time and Work Breaks
Worker Relationships
Occupational Healthcare
Safety
Compensation
• It is important for organizations to develop
suitable compensation plans for their
employees
• Compensation approaches
– Time-based systems
– Output-based systems
• Incentive programs
– Knowledge-based systems
Compensation
• Time Based System
– Compensation based on time an employee has
worked during a pay period.
• Output Based System
– Compensation based on amount of output an
employee produced during a pay period.
Discussion
• Advantages and disadvantages for
– Time-based compensation system
– Output-based compensation syste
Individual and Group Incentive Plans
• Individual incentive plans
– Straight piecework
• Worker’s pay is a direct linear function of his or her output
– Base rate + bonus
• Worker is guaranteed a base rate, tied to an output standard,
that serves as a minimum
• A bonus is paid for output above the standard
• Group incentive plans
– Tend to stress sharing of productivity gains with employees
Knowledge-Based Pay Systems
• Knowledge-based pay
– A pay system used by organizations to reward workers who undergo
training that increases their skills
• Examples?
Discussion
• Can you come up with other creatrive
incentive plans?
Job Design
• Job design
– The act of specifying the contents and methods of
jobs
• What will be done in a job
• Who will do the job
• How the job will be done
• Where the job will be done
Specialization
• Specialization
– Work that concentrates on some aspect of a
product or service
Advantages
For management:
1.Simplifies training
2.High productivity
3.Low wage costs
For employees:
1. Low education and skill requirements
2. Minimum responsibility
3. Little mental effort needed
Disadvantages
For management:
1.Difficult to motivate quality
2.Worker dissatisfaction, possibly resulting
in absenteeism, high turnover, disruptive
tactics, poor attention to quality
For employees:
1.Monotonous work
2.Limited opportunities for advancement
3.Little control over work
4.Little opportunity for self-fulfillment
Behavioral Approaches to Job Design
• Job Enlargement
–
Giving a worker a larger portion of the total task
by horizontal loading
• Job Enrichment
–
Increasing responsibility for planning and
coordination tasks, by vertical loading
• Job Rotation
–
Workers periodically exchange jobs
Work Measurement
• Work measurement is concerned with how
long it should take to complete a job.
• It is not concerned with either job content or
how the job is to be completed since these are
considered a given when considering work
measurement.
Work Measurement
• Standard time
– The amount of time it should take a qualified worker to complete a
specified task, working at a sustainable rate, using given methods,
tools and equipment, raw material inputs, and workplace arrangement.
• Commonly used work measurement techniques
–
–
–
–
Historical times
Predetermined data
Stopwatch time study
Work sampling
Work Measurement Techniques
• Historical Times
– are derived from a firm’s own historical time study data.
• Predetermined time standards
– involve the use of published data on standard elemental times.
• Stopwatch Time Study
– Used to develop a time standard based on observations of one
worker taken over a number of cycles.
• Work sampling
– a technique for estimating the proportion of time that a worker or
machine spends on various activities and idle time.
Stopwatch Time Study
• Used to develop a time standard based on observations of
one worker taken over a number of cycles.
• Basic steps in a time study:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Define the task to be studied and inform the worker who will be
studied
Determine the number of cycles to observe
Time the job, and rate the worker’s performance
Compute the standard time
Observed Time
x

OT 
i
n
where
OT  Observed time
x
i
 Sum of recorded times
n  Number of observatio ns
Normal Time
NT  OT  PR
where
NT  Normal time
PR  Performanc e rating
Assumes that a single performance rating has been made
for the entire job
Normal Time

NT   x j  PR j

where
NT  Normal time
x j  Average time for element j
PR j  Performanc e rating for element j
Assumes that performance ratings are made on an elementby-element basis
Example
1
2
A job has two steps:1 and 2. 4 cycles of
performance are observed. The observed time
for each step is shown in the table. Calculate
Normal Time.
Observation(min)
Step
Performance Rating
1
2
3
4
1
90%
2.5
3.5
3
3
2
120%
5
6
6
5
Standard Time
ST  NT  AF
where
ST  Standard time
AF  Allowance factor
and
AFjob  1  A
AFday
1

1 A
A  Allowance percentage based on job time
A  Allowance percentage based on workday
Work Sampling
• Work sampling is a technique for estimating the proportion of
time that a worker or machine spends on various activities
and the idle time.
– Work sampling does not require timing an activity or involve
continuous observation of the activity
– Uses:
1. ratio-delay studies which concern the percentage of a worker’s
time that involves unavoidable delays or the proportion of time a
machine is idle.
2. analysis of non-repetitive jobs.