Job Design in Teams
One of the more pressing current challenges for organizations is how to design jobs for employees who work in one or more teams. Teams have become very common as organizations aggressively pursue ways to lower costs, decrease product and service cycle times, increase customer responsiveness, and integrate more fully with suppliers and other external stakeholders. A work team has two or more employees who work together toward a common organizational objective or goal. For example, employees from different functional areas (e.g., sales, marketing, and customer service) may be placed on a team to develop and launch a new product or service. Or, a team of assembly-line workere may be formed to solve a recurring problem with part of the assembly process. In another instance, key personnel from several international locations of a global oil company may be brought together to develop a new and safer offshore drilling rig.