Forum; Job Redesign

That's it. From the Center for Telecommunication Services, the University of Texas at Austin, I'm Eileen Rennman, and welcome to Forum. What are the options available to you if you don't like your job? Just keep your mouth shut and put up with it the way it is or make your decision to leave and start looking for another job. We usually don't consider that there's a third option. That we can actually assist in a process of changing or redesigning our jobs

to more suit our talents and needs. Job redesign is a viable, workable alternative that can move a dissatisfied employee into a position of greater fulfillment. There are general steps involved in making this change, and this week we examine the concept and outline the steps necessary for job redesign on forum. Dr. Victor Appell is Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. He's written on and specializes in career choice and decision making. He's conducted workshops designed to teach participants realistic job redesign strategies and tools necessary to enact and use the plans they've created. Properly constructed, job redesign plans can upgrade productivity,

but usually they're born out of a need for increased jobs fulfillment. Basically, job redesign means any kind of purposeful effort to change or restructure a job usually with the intent to increase the intrinsic satisfaction for the job incumbent. Typically, the person who is a job incumbent has not been the person who has redesigned the job. Typically, someone in management, in personnel or some other individual, has made a decision that the job needs to be redesigned and then typically imposes that kind of change. Of course, the person does have some participation, but usually that secondary. It's my feeling that perhaps we can increase the effectiveness of job redesign if we can make the incumbent the initiator and a more active partner in the process.

There are probably several reasons why a job would need to be redesigned. Yes, but I think by far the greatest one is that we have lots of indication that many people holding many different jobs at many different levels are in significant measure unhappy with the quality of the job they have and their job satisfaction is far from optimal. And your main concern in job redesign is job dissatisfaction, really? Yeah, it really is, but I want to say that in many ways it's hard for me to separate that from productivity. I feel that if you increase the job satisfaction, there is a high likelihood, although it is certainly not always the case, but there's a high likelihood that it will be linked to increased productivity.

Let me go back and say that for at least the last 25 years, persons who are organizational psychologists, persons in the area of management, have been concerned with two things. The whole issue of productivity, the whole issue of job satisfaction, the whole notion of quality of work life has concerned many people. And in an effort to improve that for the past 25 years, a variety of job redesign efforts have been attempted. And job redesign is sort of a garbage category because it implies a number of quite different things. There have been efforts made to simplify jobs so that the focus of the job is reduced. Usually that's in the interest of increasing the level of skill of the incumbent, so he does just one thing over and over, and he may be very bored with it, but he certainly learns to do it very effectively and efficiently.

And so that is sort of the prototype for the assembly line situation. There is job enlargement where there is a deliberate effort to increase the variety of the tasks which someone does. So the scope of the job is broadened, and so the person feels that it isn't so boring and monotonous to do it. Similarly, then there has been other kinds of efforts, but the type of job redesign that I'm most concerned with and interested in is what some people have called job enrichment. And that is the specific subtype of job redesign where the effort is made to maximize the intrinsic satisfaction felt by the job incumbent, and of course because the job incumbent has the greatest awareness of what it is that he's dissatisfied with. It seems to me that the job incumbent therefore has to take the lead in determining the kinds of things that fit the kind of person that he or she is.

Does the process start with the job incumbent? Well, yes and no. The person is aware usually that they are in significant ways wishing they could modify their job. Frankly, most employees, particularly working in larger organizations, feel relatively impotent in this whole area. Most people sort of feel that it is there's something that is a fixedness about their job. Their job is their job and they feel relatively impotent to do anything to alter it. And I guess what is to me so encouraging is the prospect that as more people would begin thinking in terms of how they could make their job more satisfying to them, and incidentally I think more productive for their employer, that they could begin to feel a greater sense of capability to do something about their situation.

So actually what is really needed is some green light from a given organization, enlightened enough to recognize that if members of their organization were given encouragement in working in a partnership arrangement with the management, a lot of productive change could occur. Not suggesting that in an organizational setting it's possible for individuals to have exactly what they want or do anything that they please, that would be chaos. I'm really talking about a partnership arrangement between the incumbent and appropriate representatives of management who look to see that the goals of the organization as well as the needs and objectives of the individual are served. And I'm suggesting that a win-win situation is entirely possible and indeed ought to be encouraged. My guess is that a lot of people who are dissatisfied with their jobs probably work in a big office or a big conglomerate

and really do feel very powerless. How in a situation like that could someone begin to redesign their job? Well assuming that they were working in liaison from some appropriate representative of management, it seems to me that the first thing that they want to do is to identify where's the beef. And in effort to do that, I find that it's extremely helpful to do a contrast between how people perceive significant aspects of the job on what are called core job dimensions and core situational constraint dimensions of the job and contrast the way it is with the way they think it ought to be. My own experience is that it isn't dissatisfying to have a job where you work very long hours and do very hard work near as much as it is a job where you find yourself essentially working against yourself,

doing things that feel to you inappropriate or things with which you are not in sympathy. And so when you feel that the job demands something of you that isn't appropriate, all kinds of negative problems can occur. Let me give an example of this. There are a number of very dedicated social workers who work and help lower income groups of persons. Many times such individuals find that the extent to which they can be helpful to such persons to whom they are very sympathetic by and large is extremely limited. Indeed, there are times that some social workers have complained that they find themselves being more in forces of rules and regulations that have been provided by those who need to be assured that the welfare monies are not being wasted. And so instead of being a helping person, they find themselves being a policeman or a police woman.

And it's at that point that I think you have an example of how someone feels the job ought to be diverges markedly from what it is. And that kind of thing causes intense job dissatisfaction. Well, there's a perfect example then. What can that person, what can that social worker do to make it a better situation for him and herself? Well, I think one of the first points that is crucial here is that that individual who may have some very strong feelings about the importance of working in a helpful way with regard to the clientele that he or she serves has got to do one of several things. One, that person either has to see that some change is affected so that that task is no longer required of anyone or is that the least deleted from the aspects of the job that he or she occupies. Because what we have here is a clear point at which there is a antagonism between what's demanded and what the person who is the incumbent feels should happen.

So some negotiating is going to have to take place with regard to the nature of the job that person has so that that aversive aspect of the job is no longer a part of that job, either for that particular individual or possibly the thing can be altered in such a way that a policy makes it possible for that aversive aspect to be deleted from all the jobs for all persons in that category. That actually sounds like more than just job redesign, but that sounds more like system redesign. Well, you see, a job often is within a system and you cannot deal with the part without seeing the implications of it as a part embedded within a system. And yes, that's probably one of the difficulties. The more complex the system, the more changes in one part has spillover effects to the rest.

And if indeed you are trying to do change, which is compatible both to the system as well as to the incumbent individual, then you've got to be concerned at the system level. Okay, most people that would like to redesign their jobs will probably have to enact a change that will reach a lot further than their own jobs. I think so, I think so. Clearly, for example, it will affect the first line supervisor and possibly the supervisor supervisor at the very least. It certainly would probably have some spillover effects to the coworkers. So a job redesign effort, as you can see, is best undertaken, not just by the individual incumbent of a single position within an organization, but hopefully would be undertaken by a whole section or unit. Inactive collaboration with management or personnel, whoever represents the firm at that point.

Okay, so someone has been working at a job for maybe a few months or a few years and has decided that it's an okay job, but there are some things that I'm doing or not doing that I really need to be changing. What are the steps? What is the process? Well, the process is one to diagnose and see where those areas of dissatisfaction lie. Two, one, in effect, attempts to do what I call a force field analysis, where you say, what are the factors that are keeping the situation that we're in, operating and continuing in that direction? What are the forces pushing things to stay where they are? Maybe those are things like the person who dreamed up the system in the first place feels very keenly that he wants to be in control. Maybe it is that other folks, because the system is as it is, makes it easier for other people who have less work because of it.

So you need to check out where is the spillover, and then you start asking yourself, what are alternatives that might make it possible to achieve the same ends, but with different means. So in effect, you go up the line to those forces that are impinging on the specific job and see if there aren't alternate ways to get that same intent accomplished. This is something to do by yourself or with your supervisor. No, it's something you must do with your supervisor if you are in an organizational setting. I don't think you can do it alone. Of course there are many people who are essentially self-employed, and of course that's a little different story. This process, though, sounds like one that really includes just about everybody involved. I'm just picturing myself going to my supervisor. I would probably like to have an open-minded supervisor if I was doing this, and I would also probably consider every one of my co-workers and how what I was saying was affecting each one of them, because it probably would.

Of course it wouldn't. And as a matter of fact, I think you're putting your finger on why it is that so little gets done actually, because there are very few individuals who have the audacity to go to their supervisor and make such a statement as I suggested. What I think is, however, operating to change that situation is that in our society we're seeing a very definite increase in the concern for the quality of work life, as we are seeing that a increasing and rising concern with the quality of life generally. But what this means is that I think folks are more and more thinking about the nature of their job and saying, hey, don't I have a right to expect more than just a paycheck or even generous benefits? It's simply in the enlightened self-interest of management to allow an increased amount of this to go on, because it will have a payoff in outcomes that the organization is very much concerned with.

I'm talking specifically about productivity. I'm talking specifically about turnover rates. I'm talking specifically about attendance and tardiness rates. I'm talking about the quality of the product or service that the job incumbent delivers. And I'm simply saying that it comes down to, it is good business to allow your job incumbents to be active partners with management. I mean, shaping the job in ways that take into account the idiosyncrasies of the person. And I think you've got to understand that in the past we've used models that were sort of a prototype of the production line, you know how we've always visualized a production line that turns out products that are carbon copies of each other. I think we've gone one step further and assumed that the people who are turning out the products are themselves carbon copies of one another.

Therefore, we come up with job descriptions for the positions and the very nature of our personnel practices are of a sort that assume that we've got irreplaceable, that we've got replaceable parts. And if Mary quits her job, then Susan, who will replace her, is a clone of Mary and that we can just interchange these people. Well, people are not that way. Each person has his or her own qualities, his or her own style of working. And it seems to me that attending to that and taking that into account in at least limited ways are as entirely feasible, entirely practicable and should result in a better working situation for everyone. I'm just starting to visualize what you're saying and it's a really exciting concept. What kind of model could you offer now to listeners, especially supervisors, as to a way to enact something like this and to get something like this started? Well, what I would say would be that it would help greatly if the impetus might start at the management side and there are a whole array of personnel, persons of what are called human resource development personnel, management consultant types are very sensitive to this whole area of job redesign.

And if there were a initiation of an effort that said in effect, hey, we're going to have a meeting for all of those who would like to participate in an experimental effort to see whether or not we might be able to initiate some changes within our company or within our firm that might be mutually beneficial. It is beneficial to the company, but result in increased job satisfaction for the job holders and any members of this section who would like to shop for the meeting, welcome to come. Okay, so you're limiting it right away by making a voluntary.

Very definitely should be a voluntary effort because that's the whole point. We want to build on the intrinsic motivation of the persons. Maybe that's the sort of thing that I find so limited in so many cases. It's typified by the person who says, you know, don't ask me, I just work here. So then out of the whole big group of 100 people that work somewhere, maybe 10 or 20 people who are really happy with just the way things are, wouldn't even attend to meeting like this. You would get the rest. Okay, so you've got them all together. I don't think we would get the rest. I think there are an awful lot of people who would be very cynical and who would say, I wonder what kind of a deal this is and other people who would say, what the heck I'm going bowling or I'm going to do something else. So you might get a small fraction of the folks who might turn out for something like this. Oh, I see. I mean, you would not do it during office hours. Yeah, sure we would. I'm just saying that I'm not sure that this would be that inviting a prospect to everyone. And there may particularly at the outset with a underlying sense of, gee, I wonder what's going on here. There may well be some suspicion.

I would hope not, but there certainly can be. And so I'm simply saying I would have very modest goals for this initial get together at which time somebody probably from management or production or something might come down and say, look, management has given us a green light to do a little experimentation, a little play around to see if there aren't ways in which we might adopt different kinds of strategies for production. There's been in recent years a very considerable interest in new production techniques with the competition of the Japanese and some of their very effective production methods. And so I think it is entirely credible for someone to say what we have in mind is that we're going to do a new kind of job redesign. In the past, we've done job redesign, which has been 80% initiated by management and 20% initiated by the incumbents.

The net result is that we've not always had the wholehearted participation of the incumbents. So what we're proposing is that we will work with you giving you time to think through what are the kinds of things that you feel you don't like about the job and what are the kinds of things that you wish you could have as a part of the job. And then what we'd like to do is to look and see what the system consequences would be of trying to accomplish that and to see whether or not those kinds of alterations in a system could be sustained. Now, that kind of collaborative effort, and I think that's the key word you want collaboration in the doing of it, would be something that could be checked with all of the interested and affected people, which would be probably everyone in that unit. And there'd be a lot of trade-offs, there may be aspects of the job that one person says they really enjoy and someone says I can't stand doing that.

Well, fine, why don't you let me do that part of yours and we'll have some trade-offs. And there's just a whole array of possibilities, not just with respect to the nature of the job, but there could be lots of changes with regard to, we just begin to scratch the surface on things like time-sharing plans. On flex time for when you work, when you work, how you work, with whom you work, all of these are ways and it seems to me there is nothing that is more exciting to me than the prospect of saying, hey, don't be limited by our creativity about what could happen to your job. You come up and initiate some suggestions and then see if we can't work with you in trying to make work them out. What has been the success rate of such efforts? Well, the success rates of such efforts is one of the main reasons that I've come to the conclusion that the strategy I've been describing is the better way to go.

It's been just about 50-50. There's been a number of studies over the past 25 years that looked at job-re-design efforts and about half of them show that various kinds of job-re-designs have significant effects with respect to things like increased productivity. On the other hand, there's been almost an equal number that show no significant change. Now, I think we could spend a whole session just talking about why that may be. Oftentimes, the interventions, frankly, have been so minuscule that they simply haven't been a significant enough change to make enough of a difference. But I think in addition, I think a significant effect is that persons who have innovation or change imposed or feel that it's being imposed have much less commitment to make it work than those who initiated. And so my strong belief is that to the degree that the incumbents would feel that they were primarily the initiators, that would increase markedly their commitment and markedly their motivation to make the new plan work.

Has it so far worked better for lower-level employees or upper-level management? That's also a more complex question than it seems, because there seems to be somehow an intuitive receptivity to allow a job executive to redesign his or her job than to allow a lower level incumbent to redesign that job. Sort of like a clerk secretary, it's not so important that there be redesign. I think that's sort of the implicit belief, or at least it would seem as if that's the way things are happening. In fact, I think it probably is easier for an executive to redesign because the executive is able to offer suggestions, and usually it's almost sort of taken for granted.

Well, yes, the executive feels this kind of change would be preferable. Well, yes, of course, we want the executive to be able to function optimally, therefore we will do whatever the executive has suggested. Well, I guess I would say that if we were talking about how to get this started and how to reduce the resistance to giving it a trial, I think probably I would also then say begin at the higher level because there will be a greater degree of self-evidentness about the fact that the executive should be able to take into account his or her idiosyncratic ways of working. Victor Appell, associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Appell specializes in career choice and decision making. I'm Eileen Remind, and you've been listening to Forum. Comments about this program are welcome, and cassette copies are available and may be purchased by writing Forum. The Center for Telecommunication Services, the University of Texas at Austin, 78712.

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