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What’s it: Job redesign is the act of rearranging and restructuring the roles, tasks, and responsibilities attached to a particular job. It can involve job rotation, job enrichment, and job enlargement. It aims to make work more interesting, challenging, and satisfying.
This approach requires employee involvement and agreement to be successful. Thus, the new job design can match the employee’s interests with the company’s needs. Finally, the company can put the right people in the right jobs.
Why is job redesign important?
Job redesign is important to increase job satisfaction and motivate employees. By making work more interesting and challenging, employees are excited to do it. They have the opportunity to be self-actualized, flexible in managing their work-life, and have more control over their work.
The company evaluates and rethinks the roles and responsibilities inherent in the existing job. Then, the company redesigns its content, perhaps by adding assignments, rotating employees, varying challenges, or giving it more authority and autonomy.
As a result, new jobs become more interesting and rewarding for employees. It also matches their capacity and competence. And the new design of the job allows them to develop career advancement. Finally, they are more productive and enjoy their work.
How does job redesign work?
Redesigning work may involve several processes. First, the company analyzes existing jobs. It involves reviewing and evaluating existing work, including mapping out motivating or demotivating factors.
Second, the company redesigned the content attached to each job. It takes into account the identified motivating or demotivating factors.
A redesign may involve:
- Moving employees to different roles.
- Adding or removing tasks.
- Varying challenges.
- Introducing authority and autonomy.
Thus, the new job design promotes higher satisfaction and motivation and prevents employees from being demotivated.
Third, the company updates the job description. The company specifies roles, responsibilities, duties, and authorities in each job and then communicates and allocates them to employees.
Three job redesign techniques
Job redesign may involve job rotation,
Job rotation – moving employees to different tasks and jobs than they are currently working on. For example, the company rotates employees in the research and development department to the marketing department.
Job rotation is important to reduce boredom caused by daily routines. Moreover, it allows employees to learn new skills required in different roles. Lastly, employees understand business operations more deeply, which is important when making business decisions when occupying a higher position.
Job enlargement – adds tasks performed by employees. It focuses on quantity, i.e., by assigning more work to employees without changing the challenge. It aims to reduce boredom due to repetitive, monotonous work. With new assignments, employees have more activities to do.
Job enrichment – adding tasks and varying challenges. The company also gives employees more autonomy and flexibility over their work. Thus, employees have more control over their work and work life. For example, they are more flexible in determining when and how work should be completed.
Factors to consider
Good job design not only motivates and increases employee satisfaction. But, it also supports increased performance, reduced absenteeism, and increased retention. And, it requires companies to consider dimensions such as:
Skill variety. Jobs allow employees to develop new skills and knowledge and use what they already have. Therefore, it was more motivating than just relying on one skill repeatedly.
Task identity. A new job has clear parameters to measure its results and success for the whole or its parts. Employees are motivated because they know how far they progress in achieving results.
Task significance. Work has a huge impact on employees and the organization. For example, when work contributes significantly to the company, they are more likely to be motivated to do well.
Autonomy. Work provides freedom, flexibility, and independence to employees. Thus, they have control over their work. As a result, they feel freer to organize their work life.
Job feedback. Jobs allow employees to self-evaluate and get immediate feedback on their performance. Constructive feedback opens up more insights and is important for them to improve.
What are the benefits of job redesign?
Job redesign is one way to increase employee satisfaction and motivate employees. It allows work to be more interesting and challenging, reducing the boredom due to working on a monotonous task.
Other advantages of job redesign are:
Higher productivity. The company puts the right people into the right jobs. Combined with strong intrinsic motivation, employees can perform better and be more productive.
Effective and efficient job design. By redesigning, the company may remove overlapping jobs or add new ones according to the organization’s demands. As a result, the company can be more flexible when changes in company strategy or goals.
Higher employee accountability. For example, say your company is redesigning through
Increase retention. Employees have higher engagement with their work. They also have the opportunity to develop abilities and skills to support
Reduce absenteeism. By making work more interesting, employees are motivated to keep coming to work. In addition, job redesign enables a better work-life. So employees have a compelling reason to keep coming into the office.
