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W4 Performance & Job Design

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3 views22 pages

W4 Performance & Job Design

Uploaded by

hanyuan2079
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
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Organizational Behavior:

Understanding People at Work


MBA B610
Week 4: Performance & Job
Design

Fall 2024
Professor Meena Andiappan
Agenda
• Performance & Job Design Interactive
Lecture
• Break

• OBHR innovation presentation


• Case Study: Ottawa Voyagers
• Flight Crews Exercise
• Wrap up & next class
2
Job Design Theory
• Focuses on how context shapes the individual

• Suggeststhat the way the parts of a job are


organized increases or decreases one’s effort

• Examinescomponents of a job that can be


changed to increase work meaningfulness
Job Design Theory: Job
characteristics
Hackman & Oldham, model
1975

1. Skill Variety

• Do you believe that you create something from


2. Task Identity beginning to end, with a visible outcome?

3. Task • Do you feel that your job actually matters?


Significance

4. Autonomy • Do you make your own decisions

5. Feedback (from
job not supervisor)
3 common
applications Job rotation (rotate
of job design employees through diff
theory: jobs)

Job enlargement
(increase number of
Job Design tasks—more breadth)

Job enrichment (more


depth—more
responsibility, etc. w/
same tasks)
Redesign a job to make it more
satisfying
Form a group of 4-6 people

Choose one person’s (old) job, and rate it according to the


job characteristics model

For each characteristic, try to suggest improvements that


would make it a more satisfying job

Be prepared to report back to the class


Today: Some bigger picture
issues in job design
1. Changing structure of employment
relations
 Rising use of temporary, nonpermanent
workers
 “Gig” economy

2. Structuring work for work-life


balance
 Connected to #1
 Also driven by technology
Changing structure of
employment relations
• The“standard” work arrangement
during the 20th century was:
 full-time employment
 continued indefinitely
 performed at the employer’s
location
 employer-supervised

• This
is also our cultural image of
work
Changing structure of
employment relations
How many of you…
• Have held an internship?
• Have held a contract position?
• Have used Uber or Lyft?
• Have used Air B&B?
Changing structure of employment
relationships
• These are all related to the rise of
“contingent” or “precarious” work: work
that is short-term, part-time, without
benefits and insecure
 Temporary staffing agencies
 Independent contractors (“freelance”
workers)
 Direct-hire temporary arrangements
 Seasonal workers (e.g., farm labourers)
Spread of contingent work
• Over 1/3 of Canadian workers are precariously employed,
working variable hours, without benefits or employment
security (Foster, 2023)

• Education typically touted as a pathway to quality


employment; but many in precarious jobs are trained
members of high-skilled occupations (Noakes, 2015)

• 80% of large US firms plan to increase the use of


contingent workers over the next 3 years (Intuit report,
2023)
• Pandemic flexible employment increased its popularity
Why employers might prefer
contingent work
 More flexibility for employers - staffing up
and down around big projects

 Cheaper
 Wages
 Benefits

 Short-termism – putting off bigger decisions


about necessary labour force
Case 1: OceanTech
You’ve been working for OceanTech, a 250-person company developing
technology to harness energy from ocean waves, for 5 years. You feel lucky to work
at such a cutting-edge firm. You are now paid $82,000 a year, have a good defined
contribution pension plan and extended health benefits – the same benefits package
as everyone you work with.

You’ve recently been assigned to work on an exciting new design project that
extends some of the technology’s key benefits. OceanTech has decided to hire three
people on contract to join a team of seven engineers. These new people will work
with you as direct colleagues, but be paid $65,000 a year, no benefits, and work on
8-month contracts that are renewable based on internal need and the individual’s
performance. Your manager has explained privately to you that the firm can’t afford
to hire them on permanently with the same package you have. Yet, it is well-known
that the company’s president has recently received a generous salary increase, and
the office is being renovated.

What are the potential benefits and costs of adding to the team in this way?
Case 2: Bloodwork inc
You’ve been working for Bloodwork Inc, a laboratory that provides blood testing and analysis, for 10
years. You started out as a lab technician and have recently been promoted to manager. You are now
paid $90,000 a year, have a good pension plan & benefits. Your role is to oversee the Hamilton lab,
employing 2 assistant managers and 15 lab techs—folks who draw blood samples and process the
samples.

In your 1st month, your district manager tells you that Bloodwork has been paying lab techs too much
relative to its competitors -- $25/hour instead of the industry average of $22/hour. Bloodwork has
decided to lay off all techs who make more than $22/hour. They will then hire new people into the role,
in renewable 1-year contracts with a starting wage of $20/hour. The laid off techs are eligible to
reapply for the jobs, and you are encouraged to rehire them, as you’d save on training costs. Indeed,
Bloodwork Inc’s US locations recently did this layoff and rehire, and 85% of those hired into the lower
paid positions had previously occupied the better paid positions.

What do you do?

What are the potential benefits and drawbacks of managing wage costs in this way?
OB consequences of using
contingent workers Connelly & Gallagher, 2004; PEPSO, 2015;
Lane, 2009; Fisher and Connelly, 2016

• Effects for contingent workers:


 Commitment issues  torn between feeling committed to their temp
agency & to their employing organization
 Reduced job satisfaction
 Greater psychological stress

• Effects on ”standard” employees who work with them:


 Reduced perceived job security & workplace attachment
 Poorer relationships with managers & coworkers
 Lower trust between coworkers

• For employers: ultimately more costly due to increased turnover &


lower performance
Benefits of creating “good” jobs (Ton, 2012):

• Bad jobs: low pay, poor benefits, little schedule control, little
advancement opportunity
• Assumption that this is necessary to compete on low prices (e.g.
retail)
 Labor  largest controllable expense
 $ benefits of cutting employees clear in short-term

• But having well-paid employees pays off -


 Quantity: At Borders, a one-SD increase in labor levels in a
store increased profit margins by 10% over a year
 Job quality: better wages & opportunities for advancement 
reduce turnover & produce better customer service
 E.g., Trader Joe’s - employees start at $40k/year
Ton
(2012):
Good
jobs
Research primarily
done in retail industry
but likely applicable
broadly
Work-life balance

• How many of you…


 Have your work email on your phone?
 Check it at night?
 Check it on the weekends?
 Have canceled doctor’s appointments
because something came up at work?
 Have felt burnt out?
 Leave earned vacation time in the bank at
the end of the year?
Work-life balance
• Work pressures on employees’ time exacerbated by
new technology
• People believe email gives them more control
(“autonomy”) over how & when they work– but
people with most perceived autonomy take fewest
vacations & work the most (Michel, 2015)
• In “knowledge work” - difficult to measure output
quality  time spent working easier metric to judge
(Reid & Ramarajan, 2016)
• Work-life balance long viewed as an issue for
women, especially mothers, but increasingly an
issue for men too (Galinsky, Aumann & Bond, 2009)
Summary
• Jobs are constantly evolving – where, when, and how we
work have changed significantly in the last decade &
post-pandemic

• When considering hiring contingent workers, think


carefully about benefits and costs
 Including effects on your existing/ permanent workforce

• Is this the seemingly easy way to avoid more difficult


decisions?
For Next class
• Topic:
Ethical decision making &
Organizational Justice
• OBHR innovation presentation
• Case Study: Nike #metoo

21
Flight Crews Ex (Robbins & Judge, 2013)

You’ve been hired by Ajet, a startup airline in Calgary. Your team has been
formed to consider the pros & cons of using variable flight crews and to arrive
at a recommendation on whether to follow this industry practice at Ajet. Variable
flights crews are crews formed when pilots, copilots, & attendants bid for
schedules on specific planes based on seniority. Then they’re given a monthly
schedule made up of 1- to 4-day trips. Thus, any given flight crew is rarely
together for more than a few days. A complicated system is required to complete
the schedules. In this system, it’s not unusual for a senior pilot to fly with a
different copilot on every trip in a month. In contrast, fixed flight crews consist
of the same group of people who fly together for a period of time.
1. What are the primary advantages and disadvantages of variable flight crews?
2. What considerations do you need to keep in mind?
3. If you were to recommend some version of fixed flight crews, on what criteria
would you assign Ajet crews?
4. How would you evaluate worker performance? Individually, by team? Which
model is easier to evaluate?

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