Designing Jobs

Job design is the process of determining what procedures and operations are to be performed by the employees in each position.
The basis for all design job activities is job specialization which involves a definition of the tasks that distinguish one job from others. Jobs are broken into small simple and separate operations in which each work can specialize.

Because no one person is physically able to perform all the operations in most complex tasks, and no one person is able to acquire all the needed skills for a job, there is need to specialize and divide work according to the areas of specialization. Job specialization therefore has certain advantages: People are able to become experts in their areas of function, simplified tasks can be learned in a relatively short time and can be completed quickly, the availability of a variety of jobs makes it possible to choose. Managers are able to exercise greater control over workers, as they can easily observe and monitor employees doing simple jobs. However it is possible to overspecialise and this has various disadvantages: It can lead to boredom and dissatisfaction, and staff may look for more exciting work elsewhere, too much time may be spent passing the work from one person to another so that efficiency is actually reduced.

The limitations of job specialization can however be overcome by using other alternatives to specialization. These include:
•    Job rotation: where employees are rotated across several narrowly defined and standardized jobs.
•    Job enrichment: where there is more discretion or freedom how jobs may be completed.
•    Job enlargement: where the job is changed to include more activities