Chapter 5

Job Design
and
Work Measurement
5.1 Job Design

• Job design can be defined as the function of specifying the work activities of an
individual or group in an organizational setting.

• Its objective is to develop job structures that meet the requirements of the
organization and its technology and that satisfy the job holder’s personal and
individual requirements.

• The decisions involved in job design are summarized in the following figure.
5.1 Job Design Decisions
These decisions are affected by the following trends:

1. Quality control as part of the worker’s job

2. Cross-training of workers to perform multiskilled jobs

3. Employee involvement and team approaches to designing and organizing work

4. Extensive use of temporary workers

5. Creation of alternative workplaces such as shared offices, telecommuting and virtual

offices to supplement or replace traditional office settings

6. Automation of heavy manual work

7. Organizational commitment to provide meaningful and rewarding jobs for all

5.2 Behavioral Considerations in Job Design
 Degree of Labor Specialization

• The term specialization describes jobs that have a very narrow scope. Examples
range from assembly lines to medical specialties.

• College professors often specialize in teaching certain courses, some auto

mechanics specialize in transmission repair, and some bakers specialize in
wedding cakes.

• The main rationale for specialization is the ability to concentrate one’s efforts
and thereby become proficient at that type of work.
• Specialization of labor is the two-edged sword of job design.

• On one hand, specialization has made possible high speed, low-cost production,
and enhanced standard of living.

• On the other hand, extreme specialization (as with the case of mass-production
industries) often has serious adverse effects on workers, which in turn are passed
on to management.

• Thus, the basic questions are: How much specialization is enough? At what point
do the disadvantages outweigh the advantages?

• Recent research suggests that the disadvantages dominate the advantages much
 Job Enlargement and Enrichment
• Job enlargement generally entails adjusting a specialized job to make it more interesting to the job
holder.

• A job is said to be enlarged horizontally if the worker performs a greater number or variety of tasks.

• Horizontal job enlargement is intended to counteract oversimplification and to permit the worker to
perform a “whole unit of work”.

• A job is said to be enriched if the worker is involved in planning, organizing, and inspecting his/her
own work.

• Job enrichment attempts to broaden workers’ influence in the transformation process by giving
them certain managerial powers over their own activities.

• At present, the common practice is to apply both horizontal and vertical enlargement to a given job
and refer to as the total approach as job enrichment.
 Sociotechnical Systems

• Sociotechnical systems approach attempts to develop jobs that adjust the needs
of the production process technology to the needs of the worker and work group.

• Studies revealed that work groups could effectively handle production problems
better than management if they are permitted to make their own decisions on
scheduling, work allocation among members, bonus sharing, and so forth.

• Work groups require a logically integrated pattern of work activities that

incorporates the following job design principles:
1. Task variety: Provide an optimum variety of tasks within each job.

2. Skill variety: Employees derive satisfaction from using a number of skill levels.

3. Feedback: The means for informing employees quickly when they have
achieved their targets.

4. Task identity: Sets of tasks should be separated from other sets of task by some
clear boundary.

5. Task autonomy: Employees should be able to exercise some control over their
work.
 Job rotation

• Job rotation means having workers periodically exchange jobs.

• This allows workers to broaden their learning experience and enables them to fill
in for others in the event of sickness or absenteeism.
5.3 Physical Considerations in Job Design
• Beyond the behavioral components of job design, another aspect warrants
consideration: the physical side.

• One approach to incorporating the physical costs of moderate to heavy work in

job design is work physiology.

• Work physiology sets work-rest cycles according to the energy expended in

various parts of the job.

• The harder the work the more frequent and longer the rest periods.
• Ergonomics (or human factors) is the scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of

interactions among humans and other elements of a system, and the profession that applies

theory, principles, data, and methods to design in order to optimize human well-being and

overall system performance.

• In applying ergonomics, the effort is to fit the work to the body rather than forcing the body

to conform the work.

• Ergonomists contribute to the design and evaluation of tasks, jobs, products, environments and

systems in order to make them compatible with the needs, abilities and limitations of people.

• In the work environment, ergonomics also helps to increase productivity by reducing worker

discomfort and fatigue.

5.4 Work Methods
• The principal approach to the study of work methods is the construction of
charts, such as operations charts, Simo (Simultaneous motion) charts, and activity
charts, in conjunction with time study or standard time data.

• The choice of which charting method to use depends on the task’s activity level –
that is, whether the focus is on:

1. A production process

2. The worker at a fixed workplace, or

3. A worker interacting with equipment

1. A Production Process
• The objective in studying a production process is to identify delays, transport distances,
processes, and processing time requirements to simplify the entire operation.

• The underlying philosophy is to eliminate any step in the process that does not add value to
the product.

• The approach is to flowchart the process and then ask the following questions:

 What is done? Must it be done? What would happen if it were not done?

 Where is the task done?

 How is the task done? Why is it done this way? Is there another way?

 Who does the task? Can someone else do it? Should the worker be of a higher or lower skill
2. Worker at a Fixed Workplace
• Many jobs require the worker to remain at a specified workstation.

• When the nature of the work is primarily manual such as sorting, inspecting, making entries, or
assembly operations), the focus of work design is on simplifying the work method and making the
required operator motions as few and as easy as possible.

• There are two basic ways to determine the best method when a methods analyst studies a single
worker performing an essentially manual task.

• The first is to search among the workers and find the one who performs the job best. That person’s
method is then accepted as the standard, and others are trained to perform it in the same way.

• The second way is to observe the performance of a number of workers, analyze in detail each step
of their work and pick out the superior features of each worker’s performance.
3. Worker Interacting with Equipment
• When a person and equipment operate together to perform a productive
process, interest focuses on the efficient use of the person’s time and equipment
time.

• When the operator’s working time is less than the equipment run time, a worker
machine chart is a useful device in analysis.

• If the operator can operate several pieces of equipment, the problem is to find
the most economical combination of operator and equipment, when the
combined cost of the idle time of a particular combination of equipment and the
idle time for the worker is at a minimum.
The basic procedure in methods analysis is as follows:

1. Identify the operation to be studied, and gather all pertinent facts about tools,
equipment, materials, and so on.

2. For existing jobs, discuss the job with the operator and supervisor to get their input.

3. Study and document the present method of an existing job using process charts. For
new jobs, develop charts based on information about the activities involved.

4. Analyze the job.

5. Propose new methods.

6. Install the new methods.

7. Follow up implementation to assure that improvements have been achieved.

5.5 Work Measurement and Standards
• The fundamental purpose of work measurement is to set time standards for a job.

• Such standards are necessary for four reasons:

1. To schedule work and allocate capacity.

2. To provide an objective bases for motivating the workforce and measuring workers’
performance.

3. To bid for new contracts and to evaluate performance on existing ones.

4. To provide bench marks for improvement.

• Work measurement and its resulting work standards have been controversial since Taylo’s
time.
Work Measurement Techniques

• There are four basic techniques for measuring work and setting standards.

• These consist of two direct observational methods and two indirect methods.

• The direct methods are time study (which uses a stop watch to time the work)
and work sampling (which entails recording random observations of a person or
teams at work).

• The two indirect methods are predetermined motion-time data systems (PMTS)
(which sum data from tables of generic movement times developed in the
laboratory to arrive at a time for the job), and elemental data (which sums times
CHAPTER END