Designing Work

Well-designed jobs lead to high motivation, high-quality performance, high satisfaction, and low absenteeism and turnover.

Job design refers to the way tasks are combined to form complete jobs. It involves trying to shape the right jobs to conform to the right people, taking into account both the organization's goals and the employees' satisfaction. Well-designed jobs lead to high motivation, high-quality performance, high satisfaction, and low absenteeism and turnover.

Jobs vary considerably however any job can be described in terms of five core job dimensions:

• Skill variety; the degree to which a job requires a variety of different activities so that the worker can employ a number of different skills and talents.
• Task identity: the degree to which a job requires completion of a whole and identifiable piece of work.
• Task significance: the degree to which a job has an impact on the lives of other people.
• Autonomy: the degree to which a job provides freedom and discretion to the worker in scheduling their tasks and in determining how the work will be carried out.
• Feedback: the degree to which the worker gets direct and clear information about the effectiveness of his or her performance.

As a manager you can maximize your team's performance by enhancing these five dimensions. Skill, variety, task identity, and task significance combine to create meaningful work. Jobs with these characteristics will be perceived as important, valuable, and worthwhile. Jobs that possess autonomy give workers a sense of responsibility for their results. Jobs that provide feedback indicate to the employee how effectively he or she is performing.

ACTION POINT: Enhance the five dimensions, skill, variety, task identity, and task significance to maximize team performance.