efficiency
Reading: Fundamentals of Human Resource Management
CH. 4
Job Analysis LO 4-3 Define the elements of a job analysis, and discuss their significance for human resource management. To achieve high-quality performance, organizations have to understand and match job requirements and people. This understanding requires job analysis, the process of getting detailed information about jobs. Analyzing jobs and understanding what is required to carry out a job provide essential knowledge for staffing, training, performance appraisal, and many other HR activities. For instance, a supervisor’s evaluation of an employee’s work should be based on performance relative to job requirements. In very small organizations, line managers may perform a job analysis, but usually the work is done by a human resource professional. A large company may have a compensation management department that includes job analysts (also called personnel analysts). Organizations may also contract with firms that provide this service. Job Analysis The process of getting detailed information about jobs. Job Descriptions An essential part of job analysis is the creation of job descriptions. A job description is a list of the tasks, duties, and responsibilities (TDRs) that a job entails. TDRs are observable actions. For example, a news photographer’s job requires the jobholder to use a camera to take photographs. If you were to observe someone in that position for a day, you would almost certainly see some pictures being taken. When a manager attempts to evaluate job performance, it is most important to have detailed information about the work performed in the job (that is, the TDRs). This information makes it possible to determine how well an individual is meeting each job requirement. Job Description A list of the tasks, duties, and responsibilities (TDRs) that a particular job entails. A job description typically has the format shown in Figure 4.2. It includes the job title, a brief description of the TDRs, and a list of the essential duties with detailed specifications of the tasks involved in carrying out each duty. Although organizations may modify this format according to their particular needs, all job descriptions within an organization should follow the same format. This helps the organization make consistent decisions about such matters as pay and promotions. It also helps the organization show that it makes human resource decisions fairly. Whenever the organization creates a new job, it needs a new job description. Preparation of a job description begins with gathering information about the job from people already performing the task, the position’s supervisor, or the managers creating the position. Based on that information, the writer of the job description identifies the essential duties of the job, including mental and physical tasks and any methods and resources required. Job descriptions should then be reviewed periodically (say, once a year) and updated if necessary. Performance appraisals can provide a good opportunity for updating job descriptions, as the employee and supervisor compare what the employee has been doing against the details of the job description. Organizations should give each newly hired employee a copy of his or her job description. This helps the employee to understand what is expected, but it shouldn’t be presented as limiting the employee’s commitment to quality and customer satisfaction. Ideally, employees will want to go above and beyond the listed duties when the situation and their abilities call for that. Many job descriptions include the phrase and other duties as requested as a way to remind employees not to tell their supervisor, “But that’s not part of my job.” Job Specifications Whereas the job description focuses on the activities involved in carrying out a job, a job specification looks at the qualities or requirements the person performing the job must possess. It is a list of the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics
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(KSAOs) that an individual must have to perform the job. Knowledge refers to factual or procedural information that is necessary for successfully performing a task. For example, this course is providing you with knowledge in how to manage human resources. A skill is an individual’s level of proficiency at performing a particular task—that is, the capability to perform it well. With knowledge and experience, you could acquire skill in the task of preparing job specifications. Ability, in contrast to skill, refers to a more general enduring capability that an individual possesses. A person might have the ability to cooperate with others or to write clearly and precisely. Finally, other characteristics might be personality traits such as someone’s persistence or motivation to achieve. Some jobs also have legal requirements, such as licensing or certification. Figure 4.3 is a set of sample job specifications for the job description in Figure 4.2. Job Specification A list of the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) that an individual must have to perform a particular job. In developing job specifications, it is important to consider all of the elements of KSAOs. As with writing a job description, the information can come from a combination of people performing the job, people supervising or planning for the job, and trained job analysts. A study by ACT’s Workforce Development Division interviewed manufacturing supervisors to learn what they do each day and what skills they rely on. The researchers learned that the supervisors spend much of their day monitoring their employees to make sure the workplace is safe, product quality is maintained, and
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work processes are optimal. Also, they rely heavily on their technical knowledge of the work processes they supervise.4 Based on this information, job specifications for a manufacturing supervisor would include skill in observing how people work, as well as in-depth knowledge of manufacturing processes and tools. In contrast to tasks, duties, and responsibilities, KSAOs are characteristics of people and are not directly observable. They are observable only when individuals are carrying out the TDRs of the job—and afterward, if they can show the product of their labor. Thus, if someone applied for a job as a news photographer, you could not simply look at the individual to determine whether he or she can spot and take effective photographs. However, you could draw conclusions later about the person’s skills by looking at examples of his or her photographs. Similarly, as illustrated in the “Did You Know?” box, many employers specify educational requirements. Meeting these requirements is treated as an indication that a person has some desired level of knowledge and skills. Accurate information about KSAOs is especially important for making decisions about who will fill a job. A manager attempting to fill a position needs information about the characteristics required and about the characteristics of each applicant. Interviews and selection decisions should therefore focus on KSAOs.
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Did You Know? About One in Three High School Grads Hold Middle-Class Jobs Companies filling jobs that place earners in the middle class tend to require at least an associate’s degree, according to research by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. (The center defined middle-class earnings as starting at $35,000 per year, which would place a family of four at 150% above the poverty level.) However, 36% of high school graduates with no college education land jobs paying at least $35,000 per year. These jobs are most often in the fields of manufacturing, construction, and transportation and distribution. LO 4-4 Tell how to obtain information for a job analysis. Information for analyzing an existing job often comes from incumbents, that is, people who currently hold that position in the organization. They are a logical source of information because they are most acquainted with the details of the job. Incumbents should be able to provide very accurate information. A drawback of relying solely on incumbents’ information is that they may have an incentive to exaggerate what they do in order to appear more valuable to the organization. Information from incumbents should therefore be supplemented with information from observers, such as supervisors, who look for a match between what incumbents are doing and what they are supposed to do. Research suggests that supervisors may provide the most accurate estimates of the importance of job duties, while incumbents may be more accurate in reporting information about the actual time spent performing job tasks and safety-related risk factors.5 For analyzing skill levels,
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the best source may be external job analysts who have more experience rating a wide range of jobs.6 The government also provides background information for analyzing jobs. In the 1930s, the U.S. Department of Labor created the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) as a vehicle for helping the new public employment system link the demand for skills and the supply of skills in the U.S. workforce. The DOT described over 12,000 jobs, as well as some of the requirements of successful job holders. This system served the United States well for over 60 years, but it became clear to Labor Department officials that jobs in the new economy were so different that the DOT no longer served its purpose. The Labor Department therefore introduced a new system, called the Occupational Information Network (O*NET). Instead of relying on fixed job titles and narrow task descriptions, the O*NET uses a common language that generalizes across jobs to describe the abilities, work styles, work activities, and work context required for 1,000 broadly defined occupations. Users can visit O*NET OnLine (http://www.onetonline.org) to review jobs’ tasks, work styles and context, and requirements including skills, training, and experience. ManpowerGroup, a staffing services agency, uses O*NET’s information on skills to match individuals more precisely to jobs it has been hired to fill. Piedmont Natural Gas uses O*NET to conduct job analyses and match job applicants’ skills and preferences to the requirements of available positions. The effort has helped reduce turnover among Piedmont’s entry-level workers.7 Furthermore, although the O*NET was developed to analyze jobs in the U.S. economy, research suggests that its ratings tend to be the same for jobs located in other countries.8 Manpower—A member of Manpower Group, the world leader in innovative workforce solutions—uses the O*Net to classify its jobs and track demand nationwide. Position Analysis Questionnaire After gathering information, the job analyst uses the information to analyze the job. One of the broadest and best-researched instruments for analyzing jobs is the Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ). This is a standardized job analysis questionnaire containing 194 items that represent work behaviors, work conditions, and job characteristics that apply to a wide variety of jobs. The questionnaire organizes these items into six sections concerning different aspects of the job: Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ) A standardized job analysis questionnaire containing 194 questions about work behaviors, work conditions, and job characteristics that apply to a wide variety of jobs. 1.Information input—Where and how a worker gets information needed to perform the job. 2.Mental processes—The reasoning, decision making, planning, and information-processing activities involved in performing the job. 3.Work output—The physical activities, tools, and devices used by the worker to perform the job. 4.Relationships with other persons—The relationships with other people required in performing the job. 5.Job context—The physical and social contexts where the work is performed. 6.Other characteristics—The activities, conditions, and characteristics other than those previously described that are relevant to the job. The person analyzing a job determines whether each item on the questionnaire applies to the job being analyzed. The analyst rates each item on six scales: extent of
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use, amount of time, importance to the job, possibility of occurrence, applicability, and special code (special rating scales used with a particular item). The PAQ headquarters uses a computer to score the questionnaire and generate a report that describes the scores on the job dimensions. Using the PAQ provides an organization with information that helps in comparing jobs, even when they are dissimilar. The PAQ also has the advantage that it considers the whole work process, from inputs through outputs. However, the person who fills out the questionnaire must have college-level reading skills, and the PAQ is meant to be completed only by job analysts trained in this method. In fact, the ratings of job incumbents tend to be less reliable than ratings by supervisors and trained analysts.9 Also, the descriptions in the PAQ reports are rather abstract, so the reports may not be useful for writing job descriptions or redesigning jobs. Fleishman Job Analysis System To gather information about worker requirements, the Fleishman Job Analysis System asks subject-matter experts (typically job incumbents) to evaluate a job in terms of the abilities required to perform the job.10 The survey is based on 52 categories of abilities, ranging from written comprehension to deductive reasoning, manual dexterity, stamina, and originality. As in the example in Figure 4.4, the survey items are arranged into a scale for each ability. Each begins with a description of the ability and a comparison to related abilities. Below this is a seven-point scale with phrases describing extemely high and low levels of the ability. The person completing the survey indicates which point on the scale represents the level of the ability required for performing the job being analyzed. Fleishman Job Analysis System Job analysis technique that asks subject-matter experts to evaluate a job in terms of the abilities required to perform the job. When the survey has been completed in all 52 categories, the results provide a picture of the ability requirements of a job. Such information is especially useful for employee selection, training, and career development. Importance of Job Analysis Job analysis is so important to HR managers that it has been called the building block of everything that personnel does.11 The fact is that almost every human resource management program requires some type of information that is gleaned from job analysis:12 •Work redesign—Often an organization seeks to redesign work to make it more efficient or to improve quality. The redesign requires detailed information about the existing job(s). In addition, preparing the redesign is similar to analyzing a job that does not yet exist. •Human resource planning—As planners analyze human resource needs and how to meet those needs, they must have accurate information about the levels of skill required in various jobs, so that they can tell what kinds of human resources will be needed. •Selection—To identify the most qualified applicants for various positions, decision makers need to know what tasks the individuals must perform, as well as the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities. •Training—Almost every employee hired by an organization will require training. Any training program requires knowledge of the tasks performed in a job so that the training is related to the necessary knowledge and skills.
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•Performance appraisal—An accurate performance appraisal requires information about how well each employee is performing in order to reward employees who perform well and to improve their performance if it is below standard. Job analysis helps in identifying the behaviors and the results associated with effective performance. •Career planning—Matching an individual’s skills and aspirations with career opportunities requires that those in charge of career planning know the skill requirements of the various jobs. This allows them to guide individuals into jobs in which they will succeed and be satisfied. •Job evaluation—The process of job evaluation involves assessing the relative dollar value of each job to the organization in order to set up fair pay structures. If employees do not believe pay structures are fair, they will become dissatisfied and may quit, or they will not see much benefit in striving for promotions. To put dollar values on jobs, it is necessary to get information about different jobs and compare them.
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Job analysis is also important from a legal standpoint. As we saw in Chapter 3, the government imposes requirements related to equal employment opportunity. Detailed, accurate, objective job specifications help decision makers comply with these regulations by keeping the focus on tasks and abilities. These documents also provide evidence of efforts made to engage in fair employment practices. For example, to enforce the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission may look at job descriptions to identify the essential functions of a job and determine whether a disabled person could have performed those functions with reasonable accommodations. Likewise, lists of duties in different jobs could be compared to evaluate claims under the Equal Pay Act. However, job descriptions and job specifications are not a substitute for fair employment practices. Besides helping human resource professionals, job analysis helps supervisors and other managers carry out their duties. Data from job analysis can help managers identify the types of work in their units, as well as provide information about the work flow process, so that managers can evaluate whether work is done in the most efficient way. Job analysis information also supports managers as they make hiring decisions, review performance, and recommend rewards. Competency Models LO 4-5 Summarize recent trends in job analysis. These traditional approaches to job analysis are too limited for some HRM needs, however. When human resource management is actively engaged in talent management as a way to support strategy, organizations need to think beyond skills for particular jobs. They must identify the capabilities they need to acquire and develop in order to promote the organization’s success. For this purpose, organizations develop competency models. A competency is an area of personal capability that enables employees to perform their work successfully.13 For example, success in a job or career path might require leadership strength, skill in coaching others, and the ability to bring out the best in each member of a diverse team of employees. A competency model identifies and describes all the competencies required for success in a particular occupation or set of jobs. Organizations may create competency models for occupational groups, levels of the organization, or even the entire organization. A competency model might require that all middle managers or all members of the organization be able to act with integrity, value diversity, and commit themselves to delighting customers. Table 4.1 shows an example of a competency model for a project manager. The left side of the table lists competencies required for a project manager (organizational & planning skills; communications; and financial & quantitative skills). The right side of the table shows behaviors that might be used to determine a project manager’s level of proficiency for each competency. As in these examples, competency models focus more on how people work, whereas job analysis focuses more on work tasks and outcomes. Competency An area of personal capability that enables employees to perform their work successfully. Competency models help HR professionals ensure that all aspects of talent management are aligned with the organization’s strategy. Looking at the competencies needed for a particular occupational group, department, or the organization as a whole shows which candidate will be the best to fill open positions. Not only can the organization select those who can carry out a particular job today, but it can spot those with competencies they can develop further to assume greater responsibility in the future. Competency models for a career path or for success
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in management show the organization which competencies to emphasize in plans for development of high-potential employees. And competency models identify the important capabilities to measure in performance evaluations and to reward with pay and promotions. Table 4.1 Example of Competencies and a Competency Model PROJECT MANAGER COMPETENCIES PROFICIENCY RATINGS Organizational & Planning Skills Ability to establish priorities on projects and schedule activities to achieve results. 1—Below Expectations: Unable to perform basic tasks. 2—Meets Expectations: Understands basic principles and performs routine tasks with reliable results; works with minimal supervision or assistance. 3—Exceeds Expectations: Performs complex and multiple tasks; can coach, teach, or lead others. Communications Ability to build credibility and trust through open and direct communications with internal and external customers. 1—Below Expectations: Unable to perform basic tasks. 2—Meets Expectations: Understands basic principles and performs routine tasks with reliable results; works with minimal supervision or assistance. 3—Exceeds Expectations: Performs complex and multiple tasks; can coach, teach, or lead others. Financial & Quantitative Skills Ability to analyze financial information accurately and set financial goals that have a positive impact on company’s bottom line and fiscal objectives. 1—Below Expectations: Unable to perform basic tasks. 2—Meets Expectations: Understands basic principles and performs routine tasks with reliable results; works with minimal supervision or assistance. 3—Exceeds Expectations: Performs complex and multiple tasks; can coach, teach, or lead others. Trends in Job Analysis As we noted in the earlier discussion of work flow analysis, organizations have been appreciating the need to analyze jobs in the context of the organization’s structure and strategy. In addition, organizations are recognizing that today’s workplace must be adaptable and is constantly subject to change. Thus, although we tend to think of “jobs” as something stable, they actually tend to change and evolve over time. Those who occupy or manage jobs often make minor adjustments to match personal preferences or changing conditions.14 Indeed, although errors in job analysis can have many sources, most inaccuracy is likely to result from job descriptions being outdated. For this reason, job analysis must not only define jobs when they are created, but also detect changes in jobs as time passes. With global competitive pressure and economic downturns, one corporate change that has affected many organizations is downsizing. Research suggests that successful downsizing efforts almost always entail changes in the nature of jobs, not just their number. Jobs that have survived the downsizing of the most recent recession tend to have a broader scope of responsibilities coupled with less supervision.15 These changes in the nature of work and the expanded use of “project-based” organizational structures require the type of broader understanding that comes from an analysis of work flows. Because the work can change rapidly and it is impossible to rewrite job descriptions every week, job descriptions and specifications need to be flexible. At the same time, legal requirements (as discussed in Chapter 3) may discourage organizations from writing flexible job descriptions. This means organizations must
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balance the need for flexibility with the need for legal documentation. This presents one of the major challenges to be faced by HRM departments in the next decade. Many professionals are meeting this challenge with a greater emphasis on careful job design. Job Design LO 4-6 Describe methods for designing a job so that it can be done efficiently. Although job analysis, as just described, is important for an understanding of existing jobs, organizations also must plan for new jobs and periodically consider whether they should revise existing jobs. When an organization is expanding, supervisors and human resource professionals must help plan for new or growing work units. When an organization is trying to improve quality or efficiency, a review of work units and processes may require a fresh look at how jobs are designed. These situations call for job design, the process of defining how work will be performed and what tasks will be required in a given job, or job redesign, a similar process that involves changing an existing job design. To design jobs effectively, a person must thoroughly understand the job itself (through job analysis) and its place in the larger work unit’s work flow process (through work flow analysis). Having a detailed knowledge of the tasks performed in the work unit and in the job, a manager then has many alternative ways to design a job. As shown in Figure 4.5, the available approaches emphasize different aspects of the job: the mechanics of doing a job efficiently, the job’s impact on motivation, the use of safe work practices, and the mental demands of the job. Job Design The process of defining how work will be performed and what tasks will be required in a given job. Designing Efficient Jobs If workers perform tasks as efficiently as possible, not only does the organization benefit from lower costs and greater output per worker, but workers should be less fatigued. This point of view has for years formed the basis of classical industrial engineering, which looks for the simplest way to structure work in order to maximize efficiency. Typically, applying industrial engineering to a job reduces the complexity of the work, making it so simple that almost anyone can be trained quickly and easily to perform the job. Such jobs tend to be highly specialized and repetitive. Industrial Engineering The study of jobs to find the simplest way to structure work in order to maximize efficiency. Figure 4.5 Approaches to Job Design
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In practice, the scientific method traditionally seeks the “one best way” to perform a job by performing time-and-motion studies to identify the most efficient movements for workers to make. Once the engineers have identified the most efficient sequence of motions, the organization should select workers based on their ability to do the job, then train them in the details of the “one best way” to perform that job. The company also should offer pay structured to motivate workers to do their best. (Chapters 11 and 12 discuss pay and pay structures.) Industrial engineering provides measurable and practical benefits. However, a focus on efficiency alone can create jobs that are so simple and repetitive that workers get bored. Workers performing these jobs may feel their work is meaningless. Hence, most organizations combine industrial engineering with other approaches to job design. Designing Jobs That Motivate LO 4-7 Identify approaches to designing a job to make it motivating. Especially when organizations must compete for employees, depend on skilled knowledge workers, or need a workforce that cares about customer satisfaction, a pure focus on efficiency will not achieve human resource objectives. Employers also need to ensure that workers have a positive attitude toward their jobs so that they show up at work with enthusiasm, commitment, and creativity. To improve job satisfaction, organizations need to design jobs that take into account factors that make jobs motivating and satisfying for employees. A model that shows how to make jobs more motivating is the Job Characteristics Model, developed by Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham. This model describes jobs in terms of five characteristics:16 1.Skill variety—The extent to which a job requires a variety of skills to carry out the tasks involved. 2.Task identity—The degree to which a job requires completing a “whole” piece of work from beginning to end (for example, building an entire component or resolving a customer’s complaint). 3.Task significance—The extent to which the job has an important impact on the lives of other people. 4.Autonomy—The degree to which the job allows an individual to make decisions about the way the work will be carried out. 5.Feedback—The extent to which a person receives clear information about performance effectiveness from the work itself. As shown in Figure 4.6, the more of each of these characteristics a job has, the more motivating the job will be, according to the Job Characteristics Model. The model predicts that a person with such a job will be more satisfied and will produce more and better work. Some of these factors are behind the satisfaction of workers at Continuum Practical Nursing, which assigns nurses to provide at-home care to children who have been discharged from the hospital. Offering nursing care to children who are disabled or suffer from severe illnesses enables them to stay at home instead of in an institution. Although the nurses tend to earn less than they could in a hospital job, they enjoy flexible schedules and, even more, appreciate the privilege to improve children’s quality of life. Continuum’s operations director told a reporter, “I have a purpose every day.” Jane Bocek, assistant director of nursing, echoed that sentiment: “I’ve helped change lives.”17 In contrast to their experience, employees in a job that rates low on these characteristics would not find it very motivating. At the extreme are jobs like those described in the “HR Oops!” box.
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Figure 4.6 Characteristics of a Motivating Job Applications of the job characteristics approach to job design include job enlargement, job enrichment, self-managing work teams, flexible work schedules, and telework. Job Enlargement In a job design, job enlargement refers to broadening the types of tasks performed. The objective of job enlargement is to make jobs less repetitive and more interesting. Jobs also become enlarged when organizations add new goals or ask fewer workers to accomplish work that had been spread among more people. In those situations, the challenge is to avoid crossing the line from interesting jobs into jobs that burn out employees. In Minnesota, school principals have been asked to stretch beyond their administrative tasks such as staffing, budgeting, and ensuring building security to take responsibility for student success and teacher development. These goals emphasize the basic purpose that likely drew many principals to careers in education. However, the new goals require many additional hours to observe and evaluate teachers. Schools that can afford it are adding behavior specialists and administration managers to help principals keep schools running as they focus on their new priorities.18 Job Enlargement Broadening the types of tasks performed in a job. Organizations that use job enlargement to make jobs more motivational employ techniques such as job extension and job rotation. Job extension is enlarging jobs by combining several relatively simple jobs to form a job with a wider range of tasks. An example might be combining the jobs of receptionist, typist, and file clerk into jobs containing all three kinds of work. This approach to job enlargement is relatively simple, but if all the tasks are dull, workers will not necessarily be more motivated by the redesigned job. Job Extension Enlarging jobs by combining several relatively simple jobs to form a job with a wider range of tasks. Job rotation does not actually redesign the jobs themselves, but moves employees among several different jobs. This approach to job enlargement is common among production teams. During the course of a week, a team member may carry out each of the jobs handled by the team. Team members might assemble components one day and pack products into cases another day. As with job extension, the enlarged jobs may still consist of repetitious activities, but with greater variation among those activities. Job Rotation Enlarging jobs by moving employees among several different jobs.
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HR Oops! Jobs That Literally Make People Sick While effective human resource manage ment aims to create motivating jobs, poor leadership coupled with difficult circumstances can result in jobs that are so unpleasant that workers’ mental health begins to suffer. Researchers at the Australian National University analyzed data about working conditions and mental health in more than 7,000 adults over a seven-year period. They found that the mental health of workers in the worst of these jobs was no better than—and sometimes worse than—the mental health of unemployed adults. The job characteristics that were mostly strongly associated with mental health were the job’s complexity and demands, job security, the perceived fairness of pay, and control over the job (for example, ability to decide how to perform tasks). In highly demanding jobs with low security, unfair pay, and little control, workers experienced declining mental health. Unemployment also had an impact on mental health, but it was not as severe. People differ in what kinds of work they consider unbearable, but many would have that attitude toward working in an Alabama fish-processing plant. The rooms have to be kept cold, and they are wet as well. Some people would likely object to smelling fish all day long. Workers stand for at least 10 hours a day, making repetitive cuts. For all this, they earn minimum wage and limited benefits. In spite of these conditions, employers were able until recently to fill these positions with immigrant workers. But after Alabama passed a law requiring police to question individuals who they believe could be in the United States illegally, many of those workers left the state. Employers report difficulty filling jobs such as these with U.S. workers. Job Enrichment The idea of job enrichment, or empowering workers by adding more decision-making authority to their jobs, comes from the work of Frederick Herzberg. According to Herzberg’s two-factor theory, individuals are motivated more by the intrinsic aspects of work (for example, the meaningfulness of a job) than by extrinsic rewards, such as pay. Herzberg identified five factors he associated with motivating jobs: achievement, recognition, growth, responsibility, and performance of the entire job. Thus, ways to enrich a manufacturing job might include giving employees authority to stop production when quality standards are not being met and having each employee perform several tasks to complete a particular stage of the process, rather than dividing up the tasks among the employees. For a salesperson in a store, job enrichment might involve the authority to resolve customer problems, including the authority to decide whether to issue refunds or replace merchandise. Job Enrichment Empowering workers by adding more decision-making authority to jobs. In practice, however, it is important to note that not every worker responds positively to enriched jobs. These jobs are best suited to workers who are flexible and responsive to others; for these workers, enriched jobs can dramatically improve motivation.19 Nordstrom empowers its employees to resolve customer problems, which can enhance their job experience.
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Self-Managing Work Teams Instead of merely enriching individual jobs, some organizations empower employees by designing work to be done by self-managing work teams. As described in Chapter 2, these teams have authority for an entire work process or segment. Team members typically have authority to schedule work, hire team members, resolve problems related to the team’s performance, and perform other duties traditionally handled by management. Teamwork can give a job such motivating characteristics as autonomy, skill variety, and task identity. Because team members’ responsibilities are great, their jobs usually are defined broadly and include sharing of work assignments. Team members may, at one time or another, perform every duty of the team. The challenge for the organization is to provide enough training so that the team members can learn the necessary skills. Another approach, when teams are responsible for particular work processes or customers, is to assign the team responsibility for the process or customer, then let the team decide which members will carry out which tasks. A study of work teams at a large financial services company found that the right job design was associated with effective teamwork.20 In particular, when teams are self-managed and team members are highly involved in decision making, teams are more productive, employees more satisfied, and managers are more pleased with performance. Teams also tend to do better when each team member performs a variety of tasks and when team members view their effort as significant. Flexible Work Schedules One way in which an organization can give employees some say in how their work is structured is to offer flexible work schedules. Depending on the requirements of the organization and the individual jobs, organizations may be able to be flexible about when employees work. As introduced in Chapter 2, types of flexibility include flextime and job sharing. Figure 4.7 illustrates alternatives to the traditional 40-hour workweek. Flextime is a scheduling policy in which full-time employees may choose starting and ending times within guidelines specified by the organization. The flextime policy may require that employees be at work between certain hours, say, 10:00 am and 3:00 pm. Employees work additional hours before or after this period in order to work the full day. One employee might arrive early in the morning in order to leave at 3:00 pm to pick up children after school. Another employee might be a night owl who prefers to arrive at 10:00 am and work until 6:00, 7:00, or even later in the evening. A flextime policy also may enable workers to adjust a particular day’s hours in order to make time for doctor’s appointments, children’s activities, hobbies, or volunteer work. A work schedule that allows time for community and family interests can be extremely motivating for some employees. Flextime A scheduling policy in which full-time employees may choose starting and ending times within guidelines specified by the organization. Job sharing is a work option in which two part-time employees carry out the tasks associated with a single job. Such arrangements can enable an organization to attract or retain valued employees who want more time to attend school or to care for family members. The job requirements in such an arrangement include the ability to work cooperatively and coordinate the details of one’s job with another person. The “HR How To” box offers ideas for using job sharing and other flexible work arrangements and career paths to make work more motivational. Job Sharing A work option in which two part-time employees carry out the tasks associated with a single job. Although not strictly a form of flexibility for all individual employees, another scheduling alternative is the compressed workweek. A compressed workweek is a schedule in which full-time workers complete their weekly hours in fewer than five days. For example, instead of working eight hours a day for five days, the employees could complete 40 hours of work in four 10-hour days. This alternative is most common,
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but some companies use other alternatives, such as scheduling 80 hours over nine days (with a three-day weekend every other week) or reducing the workweek from 40 to 38 or 36 hours. Employees may appreciate the extra days available for leisure, family, or volunteer activities. An organization might even use this schedule to offer a kind of flexibility—for example, letting workers vote whether they want a compressed workweek during the summer months. This type of schedule has a couple of drawbacks, however. One is that employees may become exhausted on the longer workdays. Another is that if the arrangement involves working more than 40 hours during a week, the Fair Labor Standards Act requires the payment of overtime wages to non-supervisory employees. Figure 4.7 Alternatives to the 8-to-5 Job Telework Flexibility can extend to work locations as well as work schedules. Before the Industrial Revolution, most people worked either close to or inside their own homes. Mass production technologies changed all this, separating work life from home life, as people began to travel to centrally located factories and offices. Today, however, skyrocketing prices for office space, combined with drastically reduced prices for portable communication and computing devices, seem ready to reverse this trend. The broad term for doing one’s work away from a centrally located office is telework, or telecommuting. For employers, advantages of telework include less need for office space and the ability to offer greater flexibility to employees who are disabled or need to be available for children or elderly relatives. The employees using telework arrangements may have less absences from work than employees with similar demands who must
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commute to work. Telecommuting can also support a strategy of corporate social responsibility because these employees do not produce the greenhouse gas emissions that result from commuting by car. Telework is easiest to implement for people in managerial, professional, or sales jobs, especially those that involve working and communicating on a computer. A telework arrangement is generally difficult to set up for manufacturing workers. A recent survey by WorldatWork found that more than half of teleworkers were men, their median age was 40, and three-quarters had at least some college education. WorldatWork sees in the demographic data evidence that teleworkers tend to be knowledge workers taking advantage of the ability to work wherever they have Internet and computer access.21 HR How To Job Flexibility Makes Work Motivational The old-fashioned static approach to defining rigid jobs and career paths misses an important reality: people aren’t static. Needs change, interests’ changes, and skills change. Workers reach points in their lives when they need more time to care for elderly parents or young children. Workers pursue their educations and discover new passions. Workers gain maturity and long to take on new responsibilities. Because of these and other changes, some employees leave organizations to job-hop or to stay home and meet family obligations. In contrast, workers are motivated by jobs that give them flexibility to learn, to adjust their work hours, and to try out new interests. Here are some ideas for making work more motivational: • Offer job sharing in situations where pairs of employees are committed to making this arrangement work. Job sharing is not simply a matter of dividing one full-time job into two part-time jobs. The job sharers must work together seamlessly to meet the requirements of a single job, so they must have a strong work ethic and excellent communication skills. • Offer “job swaps” in situations where employees highly value learning and career advancement. Such employees may be inclined to engage in job hopping as a way to earn promotions and make work more interesting. Organizations can keep these talented and ambitious people onboard by allowing qualified employees to trade places with an employee in a different department or different location (even another country). Intel Corporation enables job swaps by setting up a database of temporary assignments, such as special projects or openings created when an employee takes a leave, and employees can apply to fill those temporary positions if their supervisor approves. • Consider making flexibility a policy, rather than a menu of programs. To be truly flexible, an organization is open to ideas coming from employees themselves. BDO USA, which offers tax, financial, and consulting services to businesses, makes work flexibility a matter of corporate strategy. Employees may set up any arrangement for when and where they work, as long as that arrangement meets the goals of the employee, his or her team, the firm, and its clients. • Train managers in managing a flexible workplace. Older managers especially may not be used to the idea that employers can adapt to employees’ needs and interests without sacrificing results. Managers therefore need to learn how to set up various arrangements and how to communicate and keep track of results when employees are not necessarily at the workplace during a specified set of hours. Given the possible benefits, it is not surprising that telework has been a growing trend. WorldatWork has found growth in the number of teleworkers every year between 2001 and 2008. The number dipped in 2010, but this partly reflected a decline
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in the total number of employed workers. In a 2011 survey by Telework Exchange, 60% of employees said their employers are more positive toward telework than they were the year before. Survey respondents also offered a practical reason for that support: three-quarters of those who teleworked said they accomplished more than when they were at the workplace.22 Designing Ergonomic Jobs LO 4-8 Explain how organizations apply ergonomics to design safe jobs. The way people use their bodies when they work—whether toting heavy furniture onto a moving van or sitting quietly before a computer screen—affects their physical well-being and may affect how well and how long they can work. The study of the interface between individuals’ physiology and the characteristics of the physical work environment is called ergonomics. The goal of ergonomics is to minimize physical strain on the worker by structuring the physical work environment around the way the human body works. Ergonomics therefore focuses on outcomes such as reducing physical fatigue, aches and pains, and health complaints. Ergonomic research includes the context in which work takes place, such as the lighting, space, and hours worked.23 Ergonomics The study of the interface between individuals’ physiology and the characteristics of the physical work environment. Ergonomic job design has been applied in redesigning equipment used in jobs that are physically demanding. Such redesign is often aimed at reducing the physical demands of certain jobs so that anyone can perform them. In addition, many interventions focus on redesigning machines and technology—for instance, adjusting the height of a computer keyboard to minimize occupational illnesses, such as carpal tunnel syndrome. The design of chairs and desks to fit posture requirements is very important in many office jobs. One study found that having employees participate in an ergonomic redesign effort significantly reduced the number and severity of cumulative trauma disorders (injuries that result from performing the same movement over and over), lost production time, and restricted-duty days.24 Although employers in all industries are supposed to protect workers under the “general duty” clause, shipyards, nursing homes, grocery stores, and poultry-processing plants are the only four industries for which OSHA has published ergonomic standards. A recent ergonomic challenge comes from the popularity of mobile devices. As workers find more and more uses for these devices, they are at risk from repetitive-stress injuries (RSIs). Typing with one’s thumbs to send frequent text messages on a smartphone can result in inflammation of the tendons that move the thumbs. Laptop and notebook computers are handy to carry, but because the screen and keyboard are attached in a single device, the computer can’t be positioned to the ergonomically correct standards of screen at eye level and keyboard low enough to type with arms bent at a 90-degree angle. Heavy users of these devices must therefore trade off eyestrain against physical strain to wrists, unless they can hook up their device to an extra, properly positioned keyboard or monitor. Touchscreens pose their own risks. They are typically part of a flat device such as a smartphone or tablet computer, and these are difficult to position for optimal viewing and typing. Using vertically oriented touchscreens causes even more muscle strain than tapping on a screen lying flat. In addition, because touchscreens usually lack the tactile feedback of pressing keys on a keyboard, users tend to strike them with more force than they use on real keys. Attaching a supplemental keyboard addresses this potential source of
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strain. When using mobile devices or any computer, workers can protect themselves by taking frequent breaks and paying attention to their posture while they work.25 The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has a “four-pronged” strategy for encouraging ergonomic job design. The first prong is to issue guidelines (rather than regulations) for specific industries. As of 2012, these guidelines have been issued for the nursing home, grocery store, poultry-processing industries, and shipyards. Second, OSHA enforces violations of its requirement that employers have a general duty to protect workers from hazards, including ergonomic hazards. Third, OSHA works with industry groups to advise employers in those industries. And finally, OSHA established a National Advisory Committee on Ergonomics to define needs for further research. You can learn more about OSHA’s guidelines at the agency’s website, www.osha.gov. Designing Jobs That Meet Mental Capabilities and Limitations LO 4-9 Discuss how organizations can plan for the mental demands of a job. Just as the human body has capabilities and limitations, addressed by ergonomics, the mind, too, has capabilities and limitations. Besides hiring people with certain mental skills, organizations can design jobs so that they can be accurately and safely performed given the way the brain processes information. Generally, this means reducing the information-processing requirements of a job. In these simpler jobs, workers may be less likely to make mistakes or have accidents. Of course, the simpler jobs also may be less motivating. Research has found that challenging jobs tend to fatigue and dissatisfy workers when they feel little control over their situation, lack social support, and feel motivated mainly to avoid errors. In contrast, they may enjoy the challenges of a difficult job where they have some control and social support, especially if they enjoy learning and are unafraid of making mistakes.26 Because of this drawback to simplifying jobs, it can be most beneficial to simplify jobs where employees will most appreciate having the mental demands reduced (as in a job that is extremely challenging) or where the costs of errors are severe (as in the job of a surgeon or air-traffic controller). There are several ways to simplify a job’s mental demands. One is to limit the amount of information and memorization that the job requires. Organizations can also provide adequate lighting, easy-to-understand gauges and displays, simple-to-operate equipment, and clear instructions. For project management, teamwork, and work done by employees in different locations, organizations may provide social-media tools to simplify information sharing, as described in the “HRM Social” box. Often, employees try to simplify some of the mental demands of their own jobs by creating checklists, charts, or other aids. Finally, every job requires some degree of thinking, remembering, and paying attention, so for every job, organizations need to evaluate whether their employees can handle the job’s mental demands. Changes in technology sometimes reduce job demands and errors, but in some cases, technology has made the problem worse. Some employees try to juggle information from several sources at once—say, talking on a cell phone while typing, surfing the web for information during a team member’s business presentation, or repeatedly stopping work on a project to check e-mail or Twitter feeds. In these cases, the cell phone, handheld computer, and e-mail or tweets are distracting the employees from their primary task. They may convey important information, but they also break the employee’s train of thought, reducing performance and increasing the likelihood of errors. Research by a firm called Basex, which specializes in the knowledge economy, found that a big part of the information overload problem is recovery time, that is,
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the time it takes a person’s thinking to switch back from an interruption to the task at hand. The Basex researchers found that recovery time is from 10 to 20 times the length of the interruption. For example, after a 30-second pause to check a Twitter feed, the recovery time could be five minutes or longer.27 HRM Social Status Updates Help West Wing Writers Stay on the Same Page West Wing Writers is a speechwriting firm founded by partners who had worked together writing speeches for Bill Clinton. Today they and the associates they hired write speeches for leaders in business, entertainment, politics, and private charities. They research topics, help generate and refine ideas, and prepare polished speeches for their clients to deliver. To complete these projects, the members of the firm work together closely, contributing ideas to one another’s projects and editing one another’s work. Yet the work of writing also requires focused thinking without constant interruptions. That makes it tricky for each writer and project leader to know when is a good time to bring in others to discuss a project, when someone might be available to assist with a new job, and how well current projects are progressing. The tools of social media have given West Wing Writers an easy way to address all those challenges. The organization bought a time-tracking system called Harvest from a company of the same name. Harvest is basically an online time-sheet with social-media features. Users keep track of their hours by clicking on Start and Stop buttons that time their work on each project. They post status updates to indicate when they are starting and finishing projects. The system is online, so writers can use it from any computer or mobile device with Internet access. Project leaders can quickly check the system to see who is in the middle of a project, who is finishing up, and how long each project is taking. Organizations probably can’t design interruption-free jobs, and few employees would want to isolate themselves entirely from the information and relationships available online. But employers can design jobs that empower workers to manage their time—for example, allowing them to schedule blocks of time when they concentrate on work and do not answer phone calls, e-mails, or text messages. Some employees set aside one or two periods during the day when they will open their e-mail programs, read messages, and respond to the messages immediately. Employers also may provide training in communicating efficiently online—for example, writing informative subject lines and avoiding the “Reply All” option in e-mail.28 Information-processing errors also are greater in situations in which one person hands off information to another. Such transmission problems have become a major concern in the field of medicine because critical information is routinely shared among nurses, doctors, and medical technicians, as well as between hospital employees changing shifts. Problems during shift changes are especially likely as a result of fatigue and burnout among employees with stressful jobs.29 A study of handoffs at Yale–New Haven Hospital found that the information conveyed was often informal, incomplete, and vague. One-fourth of the studied hand-offs led to errors in the care given to patients afterward. Pediatrician Ted Sectish has conducted a pilot program to improve information-sharing during hand-offs. After he trained young doctors in teamwork, set up computerized summaries of patients, and established a structure for what information to convey, medical errors fell by 40%.
