The Role of Organizational Changes and Job Redesign in Business Success - Essay Example

JOB REDESIGN Name Institution Introduction With continuously changing market trends, competition is becoming higher across all the industrial sectors. Therefore, organizational changes and job redesign are inevitable, as this would assist business entities improve the employees’ performance and increase their level of productivity. Job redesigning involves actions by businesses to review their responsibilities and re-allocate duties among the staff for improving productivity. However, it is important to note that depending on the approach used by the organization, job redesigning could lead to either success or paralysis of organization activities. Consequently, there are factors that business entities need to take into consideration while planning to redesign their enterprises. Moreover, the firms need to integrate the desired job design with the organizational objectives in order to ensure that their strategies meet the desired goals. Besides the businesses objectives, there is need to consider also the employees’ need to change and their flexibility to adjustments at the workplaces. In the past, most job redesigning have been focusing on the concept of behavioral sciences as an intervention in the workplaces; nonetheless, many approaches that incorporate various modifications have been able to surface. These approaches include the socio-technical systems, job enlargement and enrichment, and job restructuring. Socio-technical system This approach to job redesigning involves recognition of the need for employees to interact with modern technological systems within the workplaces. According to the socio-technical theorists, there is need to integrate both social and technical systems within the working environment to ensure their joint optimization. Unfortunately, according to the theorists, other approaches like rational do not consider the psychological and social needs of the employees while introducing modern technologies. In addition, the other approaches tend to over formalize the employees’ activities and interactions thus forcing them to adjust with technology (Coakes & IGI Global, 2012). Such practices while redesigning jobs often lead to failure. Hence, there is need to consider the flexibility of the employees to modern technology and technical expertise before introducing new technology. It is widely believed that adopting socio-technical approach in organizational development would deliver better values and desired objectives. Despite such beliefs, the approach is not commonly practices due to problems associated with disconnect between the two approaches and issues relating to individual level of interaction with the systems. It is important the method takes into account both social and technical factors which have the ability of influencing the functionality and application of computer-based programmes among the workers. Job attributes such as variety, required interactions, and autonomy depends on motivation of the workers and job performance. Consequently, the mediations between these attributes are the expectation of the workers and needs, that is, the management might be struggling to integrate socio-technical systems within the workplaces, which might not be the requirement of the workers to improve their performance. Unfortunately, the socio-technical approach focuses more workgroup interactions rather than the performance of individual workers. Most theories assume that properly structured work groups have the ability of providing better incentives, social support, and assistance than individual job design programmes. Socio-technical approach mostly focuses on the internal supervision and leadership within all level of the groups, hence referred to as responsible autonomy. With the ever changing and advancing technology, the employers have the responsibility of ensuring that their workers keep learning the new skills for ensuring they are up to date with modern technological applications. It is from this background that socio-technical approach recognizes the need for workers to interact more effectively with the new technologies while redesigning the jobs. Moreover, it involves combining the needs of the emplability of regulating their operations without the interference of the management. The members share the responsibility of carrying out the delegated duties; as a result, there is full participation of each employee, which ensures increased productivity for the organization. Moreover, these groups homogeneous, a feature that allows each member to perform the required tasks by the group since each person the required expertise to ensure the success of the group. Within the group, every member has equal rights; hence, there is prevalence of democracy within the group that allows members to put across their views of concern (Oldham & Hackman, 2010). Considering the use of technology, these groups are bound to succeed if properly utilized within organizations. Unfortunately, the use of technology might also encourage laziness among the workers as to some extent it compromises the scope of research conducted by the members of groups. More importantly, the organization is responsible for setting up the groups while the members elect their own leaders in a democratic manner. Fortunately, the members are able to make their own decisions jointly after incorporating the views of all members; as a result, the decisions made are of higher quality and could help improve organizational performance. There are considerations while considering the use of socio-technical method of redesigning the jobs. The organizations must consider its ability to adapt to the ever-changing technical world since so often result in higher expenses. Besides the cost of acquiring the modern technological equipment while designing job structures, it crucial to note that technological equipment are prone to hacking activities which in most cases, lead to losses within business entities. Increased rate of technological application within an organization is often directly proportional to the cost of training the employees to ensure that they positively adapt to the new technologies. These practices would ensure increased productivity and efficiency among the employees (Grandey, Diefendorff & Rupp, 2013). Globally, technology plays an important role in ensuring improved productivity; nonetheless, integrating it with social factors is quite difficult as most employers are shifting their emphasis on improving their profitability based on human capital and performance to technological means. In some cases, employees have been laid off, especially those without the adequate skills and too inflexible to withstand the technological changes. While redesigning jobs, it is significant to consider not only the socio-technical systems but also issues related to both behavioral and environmental factors. Behavioral Factors These factors relate to the satisfaction of the human needs upon ensuring positive productivity within the workplace. The elements of behavioral factors include autonomy, diversity, and feedback mechanisms. Under autonomy, the employers should ensure that the workers perform their duties in an open environment rather than any that fears them. As a result, there would be promotion of creativity, increased efficiency, and independence. Feedback mechanism plays an integral part of the job. Therefore, the management should ensure that employees obtain their appraisal and performance through proper channel that do not affect negatively how they perform their duties. Moreover, the employers should diversify the jobs conducted by the workers in order to eliminate boredom in work place. While redesigning the jobs, the management should consider diversifying job activities in order to allow shifting of employees. While considering behavioral factors, it is significant to take into account various components of behavioral methods of job redesigning. Job Enrichment This practice involves specializing the tasks together in order to allow the employees assigned to perform particular duties are in position to perform the whole task. It involves increasing the number of activities to be done within a particular job and the same time imparting adequate skills to the employee that allows him/her to perform the assigned duties. Even though the method has received wider publicity, it has not been able to yield the speculated desired outcomes (Greasley, 2008). The major reason behind the failure of this method is poor designs used by organizations and insufficient data required for cost-benefit analysis. Besides, this method also involves high implementation cost, changes in the payments schedules, and interference with interactions of the group members within the model used. Job Enlargement This method involves taking into consideration if the scope of the job in question could be increased through extension of duties and responsibilities. Furthermore, it involves dividing the job into smaller units in which each is performed continuously by an individual worker. To some extent, this method of redesigning the jobs would lead to specialization, hence increasing performance of the employee in that particular area. The major problem associated with job enrichment is its ability to increase the level of unemployment since many duties are allocated to a single employee. Moreover, it encourages specialization, boredom and increased redundancy as employees are only expected to performed particular jobs. Job rotation This management approach involves moving employees through a series of assignments allocated to them in order to acquire the exposure to the operations of the whole organization. It is practiced to allow skilled workers acquire insight into organizational activities leading to job satisfaction using the job variation technique. Additionally, job rotation could also mean scheduling exchange of the workers within a given (Smith & Hitt, 2005). This method has been able to reduce boredom among the employees and increasing their efficiency within organizational activities. It also increases the level of flexibility among the employees and reduction in work stress. However, it often results in low productivity since the employees have been moved to areas in which they have less experience. The Relevance of the Job Design to the Organization Before deciding on the method of redesigning organizational activities, it is important to consider whether the proposed designs is likely to solve organizational problems and increase the level of productivity. All organizational activities have both physical and mental demands on the employees, and if such activities are kept within tolerable levels, then the health and wellbeing of the employees are maintained. If the demand of the new job design exceeds the capacity of the workers, then the productivity and performance of the employees is bound to fail. With the market forces changing regularly, organizations are acting under pressure to change their job designs which in most cases yield negative results. Therefore, job designs must incorporate organizational requirements in order to ensure increased productivity and effectiveness. Psychological Needs of the Employees Employees are the greatest assets of every business entity; therefore, their welfare and psychological well-being must be taken into account while redesigning the jobs (Mortimer & O’Connor, 2014). The Critical Physiological States (CPS) that the employers should take into account are experienced meaningfulness, experienced responsibilities, and knowledge. Experienced meaningful involves taking into consideration the perception of employees about the job while experienced responsibility is the level of personal accountability that employees have towards their work outcomes, and knowledge, which relates more to how the workers feel on their performance. References Coakes, E., & IGI Global. (2012). Technological change and societal growth: Analyzing the future. Hershey, PA: IGI Global (701 E. Chocolate Avenue, Hershey, Pennsylvania, 17033, USA. Grandey, A., Diefendorff, J., & Rupp, D. E. (2013). Emotional labor in the 21st century: Diverse perspectives on the psychology of emotion regulation at work. New York: Routledge. Greasley, A. (2008). Operations management. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications. Mortimer, D., & O’Connor, C., C. (2014). Designing Jobs: Universal Principles or Strategic Choice? International Employment Relations Review, 20(2), 48-67. Oldham, G., & Hackman, J. (2010). Not what it was and not what it will be: The future of job design research. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 31(7), 463-479. Smith, K. G., & Hitt, M. A. (2005). Great minds in management: The process of theory development. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Read More