3.4.4 Work
Work refers to activities that add value to a company’s products and services. These activities
may be physical (doing) or mental (e.g., planning, deciding, problem-solving). They can be
bundled and assigned to individuals or teams. There are a number of ways that managers can
design work so that employees both “grow” in their jobs and, at the same time, help the company
to reach its goals. One assumption we make, based on past research, is that employees who are
satisfied, engaged, and committed will be much more valuable to the company.
One of the first goals when designing jobs should be to give people broad responsibilities that
expose them to a variety of areas within the company (i.e., cross-training). Having open job
boundaries can also help employees to help coworkers and to see the interrelatedness of tasks.
Exposing employees to a broad variety of duties and jobs gives them the opportunity to learn
from one another and be creative, coming up with totally new ideas, or even better ways of doing
the same job.
Jobs need to be challenging enough so that people are stimulated to think about their
connectedness to other jobs and are willing to improvise when useful. Similar to the formal
organization, work can also be divided into day-to-day and product development activities.
Whether you are talking about shop floor or professional employees, there are certain job
characteristics that can make jobs more satisfying to employees, which in turn leads to higher
employee productivity and customer satisfaction (Vogt, 2005). These characteristics include
skill variety, task identity and significance, autonomy and feedback (Hackman and Oldham,
1976; Katz, 2005). The following table describes each of these characteristics.
Characteristic Description
Skill variety The breadth of knowledge, skills and abilities needed to complete the job.
Task identity The extent to which the employee sees a whole job through from start to finish.
Task significance The employee’s appreciation of the job’s importance and interrelatedness to the rest
of the company.
Autonomy The employee’s freedom to perform the job independently within certain rules and
guidelines.
Feedback Constructive information about the employee’s performance on the job, intended to
help the employee learn from past experiences and improve their performance.
On the level of day-to-day operating activities, the above-mentioned characteristics can help
shop floor employees to improve operational efficiency. For instance, skill variety and task
significance can be achieved through job rotation in which employees are moved from job-to-job
in order for them to better understand each task. This can help to develop employees’
knowledge about the tasks being performed, which can stimulate idea generation and can also
help improve efficiency because employees will be able to fill-in for others when they are absent
from work. Further, research shows that employees who see the importance of their work within
the company are more likely to help promote the company’s strategy and goals (Boswell and
Boudreau, 2001).