Specialization in Workers Job Design - Essay Example

Specialization in workers job design Name; The Name of the Class Professor The Name of the School The Date Introduction Specialization in workers job design is an important method that most managers in organizations use in order to motivate and enhance the performance of their employees. Job design is a foundation of management and refers to how organizations structure and define different lines of jobs that are undertaken by their employees. Properly and effectively designing jobs can lead to positive influence on the impulse, achievement, and job satisfaction of those employees who perform those tasks. On the other hand, poorly designed jobs can impair motivation, performance, and job satisfaction. Many people make the assumption that the most important motivator at work is paying employees big salaries (Armstrong & Cummins, 2011). Studies by different experts point to a different circumstance as the major power over employee motivation—job design. the design of a job has a major impact on employee motivation, job satisfaction, and commitment to an organization, absenteeism, and turnover. A job that is designed well will motivate the employee to work well, smart and hard to ensure that the organizations goals and aims are met. A job that is designed poorly will demoralize the employee, making them lose morale in working for the organization (Allen, 2002). Scientific management and job designing The era of scientific management presented the earliest attempt by experts in the process of designing jobs. Most experts felt that if each employee in the organization performed a part of the whole process, they would be motivated to do more within less time as opposed to working as a group. The philosophy of scientific management is based on Frederick tailor's book titled "Principles of scientific management". The ideas presented in Taylor's book had a major impact on how jobs were designed at that time and later on as managers began seeing that job designing acted as a motivator in the work place. Working as an engineer in a mechanical department in the manufacturing industry, Fredrick Taylor saw that work was being done haphazardly, with only workers in charge of them. He argued that the work was done had many inefficiencies hence they needed a manager who would guide them to perform their work, as well as correcting them when they were on the wrong side. As an experiment, Fredrick Taylor found that instead of permitting employees to make use of their own working tools, as was the custom at the time in the organization, providing specially designed tools improved their productivity levels. In addition, by an organization providing training and specific instructions to the employees of the firm, he realized that he could reduce the number of workers needed to perform a certain task. The era scientific management projected a number of concepts that have been influential in job design in the many years that followed (Cooper, 1974). An important idea of job specialization was to minimize misuse by pointing out the most efficient system to perform the job effectively. With the use of time–motion studies, the management of a company could calculate how much time each assigned tasks would require and make a plan for the operations so that the job tasks could be taken care of as efficiently as possible. Therefore, standardized job performance methods were an important element of scientific management techniques. Under the concept of scientific management, each job in the organization was carefully planned in advance, and each employee was paid to perform a job as it was assigned by the management (Henderson & Clarke, 1981). Specialization in job design. Frederick W. Taylor, who was the main proponent of concept of job specialization, explains that jobs in an organization should be scientifically studied, broken down into small component tasks, and then standardized across all workers doing the jobs. Taylor's view was in line with the premises of labor division as discussed by Smith and Babbage. In and experiment, the concept of specializing in jobs generally came up with the most, if not all, of the advantages its proponents claimed. the concept of Specialization paved the way for large-scale production methods and was said to be partly responsible for the effective gains in output US production industry achieved for several decades after the turn of the century (Taylor, 1999). Job specialization was one of the major developments of the scientific management approach that advocated for job designing as well. The concept of job specialization entails that the organization breaks down all jobs into various different positions, and assigning those positions to candidates who can perform them to the best of their abilities. The workers assigned are expected to perform the jobs in a repetitive manner in order to increase their motivation and morale as well as increasing the production of the organization (Glykas, 2013). There are a number of advantages that can occur to an organization due to practicing job specialization. The process of Breaking and disintegrating tasks into simple workings and making them repeat each time diminishes the skill requirements of the jobs and decreases the effort and cost of staffing. This works to the advantage of the organization because the costs of operations are reduced in the process. Training times for modest, recurring jobs tend to be shorter in length as well. Over time, experts have pointed out that from a motivational point of view, the process of job specialization is boring and repetitive to the employees and therefore associated with negative outcomes such as absenteeism (Hall & Gotz, 2013). Alternatives to job specialization After sometime of using the process of specialization the job designing in organizations, managers began to see that the process was not effective because soon workers were bored due to doing the same thing over and over again. Experts came up with three alternatives to the process of job specialization; job rotation, job enlargement and job enrichment. The three alternatives are discussed below in detail (Robertson & Smith, 1985). Job rotation The process of rotating jobs includes methodically interchanging workers from a one job to another different job in order to ensure that their motivation and interests are maintained. There is a major difference between job specialization and job rotation, for example the process of assembling and manufacturing pens might involve four different phases: trying the cartridge carrying the ink, putting the cartridge into the container of the biro pen, opening the cap onto the container, and inserting the assembled pen into a box. One worker performs each of these four tasks. When job rotation is introduced, the tasks themselves stay the same. However, the workers who perform the mare systematically rotated across the various tasks. Jones, for example, starts out with job 1 (testing ink cartridges). On a regular basis-perhaps daily, monthly or weekly she is methodolicaly rotated to job 2, to job 3, to job 4, and back to job 1. Gonzalez, who starts out on job 3 or 2(puttin g cartridges into containers), rotates ahead of Jones to jobs 3, 4, 1, and back to 2. This example illustrates how the process of job rotation works to ensure that workers are not bored or lose their morale in the process (Wilson, 1991). Job enlargement Job enlargement is also another process that is used in job designing and it involves expanding the workers job to include other jobs that were undertaken by other workers. The main idea behind the concept of job enlargement is to ensure that boredom does not affect how the workers are performing their duties due to performing the same task repeatedly. Job enlargement has the same effects as job rotation because it involves the process of teaching employees new tasks in order to enable them performs new tasks in the organization. Evidence shows that the concept of job enlargement is beneficial both to the employee and the organization also, because it is positively related to staff satisfaction and better quality customer services, and it increases the ways of seeing mistakes (Rush, 1971). Job enrichment The concept of job enrichment means that the employees have more voice and authority regarding how they performed there assigned tasks, whether there is supervision or no supervision (Wilson, 1991). The concept of job enrichment is mostly used by many different organizations that allow workers of the organization to be responsible for the tasks that they perform because they will be held accountable. Most organizations using enlargement job experience positive outcomes such as increased productivity, reduced turn over, reduced absenteeism and many more others. The success associated with the enlargement job model can be attributed to the way employees are given additional autonomy and responsibility, hence tending to be more efficient and increasing their overall performances. The disadvantage with job enlargement is that it may only be suitable for certain people while failing when used by other people too (Wilson, 1991). Conclusion Managers use the concept of job designing in order to enhance and improve the performances o their employees. The organizations success in its operations depends on a great deal on how to designs and structures its jobs. When an organization properly designs its jobs well, it can have a positive impact on the motivation of the employees as well as going a long way in improving their performance. Poor designing of an organization's jobs often leads to poor performance because the employees do not know what it is expected of them. Managers in many different organizations encourage specialization of workers job design because of the advantages that are associated with the process. Despite these advantages, many experts point out that the concept of job specialization is outdated since it leads to boredom and monotony for the workers involved in the process (Zeleny, 2005). References Allen, M. (2002). 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