Raising skills through routine problem solving Able to control quality Task variety Job discretion Accessing information Inclusion in decisions
Building workplaces in which employees can develop and deploy their competencies and creative potential begins with job design. Well-designed jobs that provide constructive challenges, opportunities for day-to-day problem solving, variety and collaboration help people manage the demands placed on them and avoid the psychological stress and disengagement associated with repetitive and disempowering work. It also helps them perform their jobs well because they make on-the-spot decisions based on background knowledge and experience of ‘what works’. They avoid delays caused by unnecessary referral to managers or manuals. They make time to learn and to reflect on what is working well and what should be changed. This generates steady flows of improvement and innovation.
Moreover in exercising discretion employees acquire skills that are transferable, increasing their adaptability and resilience within the organisation and their employability outside it, even in quite different occupations. Such employees may also enjoy discretion in scheduling their own work and in controlling its pace, minimising physical strain and psychological stress.
How Good Job Design Works
Individual performance and well-being, and especially the ability to manage pressure, depends on multiple factors, for example:
Time pressures. Sufficient time must be allocated to deliver the task properly, including opportunities for productive reflection and improvement.
The interruption rate. There should be sufficient opportunity to concentrate on the task in hand without distraction.
Conflicting demands. Management must be clear about priorities in terms of time scheduling, and employees should enjoy sufficient discretion in balancing different priorities.
Dependence on others. An individual’s ability to do their job in an effective and timely manner is likely to be dependent on others, so it is important that necessary decisions are made in an open and timely manner, and that delays or quality issues at earlier stages in production or service delivery are regularly reviewed and minimised.
Knowledge, skills and experience. Individual employees must be in possession of the competencies required to perform allocated tasks properly.
The quality of the task. The pace and complexity of the work must be manageable without causing stress and burnout.
Karasek’s Demand-Control model has had a large influence because it is straightforward and practical. Workplace stress is a function of how demanding a person’s job is and how much control the person has over their own responsibilities. Control includes the ability to make decisions about your own job, move between a variety of tasks, minimise repetitiveness, experience opportunities for creativity, learning and problem solving, and influence decisions made at team and organisational levels.
In countries such as Denmark and The Netherlands, prevention of job related stress has been an important part of “work environment” legislation since at least the early 1990s. Job design has therefore achieved a high profile. For example TNO (the Dutch national research organisation) developed the WEBA Model as a practical resource to help practitioners introduce better job design – in part to support compliance with the legislation but more broadly to promote convergence between high performance and high quality of working life. In the UK, Acas and NICE have both published guidelines relating to mental health and the workplace, both of which emphasise the importance of positive mental well-being for productivity.
Drawing on such sources, the principle dimensions of productive and healthy job design can be summarised under seven headings:
A job is occupationally complete if it contains a logical and coherent sequence of preparatory, executive and supportive tasks, offering clear opportunities for problem solving, learning and self-regulation, thereby leading to stress reduction. This requires the removal of traditional assumptions about the need to separate conceptual and manual tasks.
The employee should therefore enjoy some control over the planning of the process, the way in which the task is performed, and the setting and completion of targets. Some autonomy should be demonstrated over the method of working in terms of speed, method, sequence, the working environment. External factors on which the job depends such as the supply of materials should be open to negotiation by the worker. Job roles should also be extended to include support tasks such as routine maintenance and should also provide discretion to call in specialist assistance as appropriate.
Employees should be able to assume responsibility for day-to-day decisions about planning and work methods through co-operation and communication with others. Systematic opportunities should exist for problem solving through horizontal contact with peers.
Short cycle times offer limited possibilities for autonomy and can induce stress and repetitive strain injury. It is certainly hard to engage people in improvement or innovation activities if their experience of the product or service is limited to the continual repetition of a single task representing only a small part of the whole.
When work consists solely of simple tasks, opportunities for learning are limited. However work can be excessively difficult if its execution requires frequent pauses to consider methods. The level of stress, fatigue or recuperation associated with each part of the cycle should balance out across the cycle as a whole.
The ability of the worker to adapt to changing demands, circumstances and opportunities is an essential prerequisite for learning and stress reduction. The job should contain demonstrable opportunities for productive reflection including analysis, problem solving and innovation.
A high frequency of contact is required to support problem solving, learning and innovation, and may take the form of ad hoc co-operation, formal or incidental discourse, and social contacts outside the work sphere. Employees at all levels should be able to instigate vertical or horizontal communication.
Strong social networks developing within the workplace are also an indication of high levels of cohesion and trust.
A pattern of ‘distributed intelligence’ is required in which knowledge and expertise are widely shared or readily accessible by individuals throughout the organisation. This requires a minimum of demarcation in terms of the ‘ownership’ of information within the enterprise. In addition, feedback is required to enable workers to assess the quality and effectiveness of their own work.
Few restrictions should therefore exist on access to information, and each worker should be empowered to source relevant information. Employees should also receive feedback which is accurate, prompt and delivered in a way which encourages learning.
Further explanation of the seven job design criteria can be found in our Guide and the research evidence around job design is summarised here.
As we have shown, employees do not only fulfil static roles but can engage in self-initiated activities that go beyond stipulated tasks in order to solve problems, respond to external changes or make work more meaningful. Job craftingempowers employees to make active changes to their own roles and can play an important part in making workflow leaner, streamlined and more agile. In turn can bring about numerous positive outcomes including enhanced engagement, job satisfaction and resilience. This briefing introduces the core ideas of job crafting by defining it, describing why it is important, summarising key research findings, and exploring what it means for employees, managers, and organisations.
UK retailer John Lewis is renowned for high quality customer care, and in part this reflects a key principle of good job design – trust.
Staff at John Lewis receive customer service training during their induction and at regular intervals after that. They learn that one of the key principles of good customer care is “show enterprise”. In short, it’s not always about playing by the rules.
This means that staff can resolve customer service issues on the spot – unlike other retailers where you’re kept waiting while they fetch a manager or, even worse, phone head office. Once trained, trusted and empowered staff are good for the customer and likely to be much more engaged in their work.
Gore is organised in a flat, non-hierarchical structure (a ‘lattice’), with no traditional organisation charts, ranks or job titles, or chains of command. People are recruited on the basis of cultural fit with the company. There are no rigid job descriptions, instead, associates commit to contribute individually and collectively to work areas or projects according to their skills. Individuals are encouraged to take an interest in a wide variety of job areas of projects. Providing their core responsibilities are carried out, an associate can then stretch and build on their role to suit their interests, aspirations and the business needs. The ‘lattice’ structure gives associates the opportunity to use their own judgement, take ownership or work areas and access the resources they need. Additions or stretch to roles may be one-off activities or longer-term activities that add onto existing roles. Associates choose another associate to act as their sponsor; the sponsor coaches individuals to help them maximise their contribution to the company and chart a course through the organisation to fulfil their personal objectives whilst maximising business performance.
Forum topic: People who have only experienced jobs with little or no autonomy and few opportunities for personal development are sometimes hesitant about expanding their roles. How do you help them overcome their reluctance?
The seven job design criteria outlined on this page are strongly related both to performance and wellbeing, so getting them right is important to the organisation and its employees, and is a key enabler for other positive workplace practices and outcomes. You can use these critiera as a checklist against which you can assess a key frontline job. What are the consequences of current job design and (how) can it be improved?
Tutor’s tips: Use you project experience to answer this question. Here you can use your answers from your Action Plan to elaborate on how your Project will meet these requirements and enrich the job role/design of day-to-day work.
Contextualise your answer using the workplace practices for this Theme: Raising skills through routine problem solving Able to control quality Task variety Job discretion Accessing information Inclusion in decisions
