1st Assignment - Job Redesign

R&S Assignment 1

ASSIGNMENT #1

by

Nguyen Vu Van Anh

7445433

Presented to

Lecturer Beverley Ballantyne

As Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the

BOH200V - Recruitment and Selection

Swinburne University of Technology

Submission Date: 05/11/2010

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R&S Assignment 1

Why Should Organization Conduct Job Redesign?

Organizations today are depending more on their human resources. They will be at risk if

failing to have a proper match between work and employee capabilities as well as employee’s

expectation. If organizations can provide satisfying work, then they are more likely to have happy and

highly motivated employees. That is why it is so important to design work so that people’s jobs are as

satisfying as possible. However, some organizations still view job design and redesign as a dead waste

of time. This essay will examine the significance of job design and redesign in response to changes in

today business environment, improvements in technology, statutory requirements and global

competition.

Job design involves the planning of including its contents, the methods of performing the job

and hot it relates to other jobs in the organization (Rahim 2001) and job redesign is the process of

rearranging task and duties to make job more meaningful to employees (Compton, Morrissey &

Nankervis 2009). The goal of these activities aims to provide individuals with meaningful work that

fits effectively into the flow of the organization.

In the good old days when employees just did their jobs without the job redesign strategies, it

is easy to recognize that employees often perform fragmented jobs without autonomy or with very

limited autonomy and may have to repeat the same tasks days by days. The creation of jobs that lack

diversity, autonomy and have similar characteristics causes feelings of tediousness and dissatisfaction

in their occupants (McCormick & Tiffin 1975). In addition, such jobs often fail to motivate employee

to high levels of performance and may indeed contribute to such phenomena as absenteeism and

turnover (Herberg, Mausner & Snyderman 1959). Therefore, jobs should be redesigned so that

employee can possess the task variety and wholeness and exercise autonomy and responsibility.

In recent decades, the Job Characteristic Model of Hackman and Oldham (1976) has been

considered as a major fundamental initiative of why job redesign should be conducted. The basic

conception is that redesigned jobs not only led to the increases in productivity and quality but also

more empowered employees in the workplace. In this theory, it has been emphasized that the five

characteristics that can lead to job satisfaction, performance and motivation are skills variety referring

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R&S Assignment 1

to the need to use a number of different abilities and skills to accomplish a task, task identity referring

to the ability of the employee to see his or her task as whole and complete action with an end product

instead of just one small piece, task significance referring to the way the task has an effect on, or is

useful to, the other people in the organization, autonomy referring to the extent of individual freedom

and discretion in the work and its scheduling, and feedback referring to the extent to which an

employee given information about the quality of his or her performance.

As linking this theory with the current practice, the job redesign exercise of a local

commercial bank in Vietnam can be a good example for this. In 2007, DongA Bank formulated a

strategy that aimed at providing its retail banking customers with superior financial services. One of

the main objectives was to ensure that all staffs are committed to deliver excellence customer service.

In order to achieve this objective, the bank decided to reengineer all its processes and decentralize

decision making. As the result of that, most of the jobs were redesigned by drastically increasing the

levels of skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback. This can be recognized

clearly through the job redesign for tellers. Before conducting the exercise, tellers used to be

responsible only in saving account transactions and the bank would like to apply the “one stop”

transaction model which enabled customers to interact with one teller for all requirements and

transactions relating to retail banking. As applying this model, tellers focused more on satisfying all

backing needs and requirements relating to retail banking of a customer (task identity) and take

responsibility for whole transaction processes (autonomy). They needed to upgrade knowledge in

retail banking products and services as well as related procedures to perform a wider variety of

transactions and have organization skills to be able to handle multitasks and competently take care of

the customer when they have two or three requirements (task variety). By performing those, tellers

supported the bank’s board of management to achieve their strategies and significantly improved the

service quality for customers (task significance). The bank also designed a performance appraisal

system to provide a continuous feedback on what tellers performed well and what they should

improve every 6 months period (feedback).

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R&S Assignment 1

After conducting the job redesign exercise, some assessment sessions were organized to

evaluate the effectiveness of this activity and it was recognized that employees actually exercised

more control over their work, enjoyed a greater variety of tasks and had responsibility for their own

work. The result also showed that employees, who perceive changes have actually occurred in their

jobs as a result of job redesign, express higher levels of motivation, satisfaction or both.

Based on the above theories and evidences, it is recognized that job redesign is an activity that

satisfies the mutual interest of both employers and employees. Employers that have successfully

completed job redesign will experience higher productivity, have happier and more motivated staff

and then have enhanced ability to attract and retain talents from both internal and external. Employees

too, stand to gain from successful job redesign by having more interesting and value adding jobs and

better opportunities for career progression. In today business environment, job redesign might not be

at the top of employers’ to-do list but it will be always the must-do activity in response to changes.

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R&S Assignment 1

References

Compton, R, Morrisey, W &Nankervis, A 2009, Effective recruitment and selection practices, 5th edn,

CCH Australia Limited.

Hackman, R, Oldham,G 1976, “Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory”,

Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, vol. 16, pp. 250-279.

Herzberg, F, Mausner, B & Snyderman, BB 1959, The motivation to work, 2nd edn, New York: John

Wiley & Sons.

McCormick, EJ & Tiffin,J 1975, Industrial psychology, 6th edn, London: Allen & Unwin.

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1st Assignment - Job Redesign

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