Motivating Employees through Effective Job Design

This essay discusses the importance of motivation in employee performance and productivity, and how effective job design can lead to creating motivating jobs in an organisational context. It highlights the principles and key factors that managers must consider to create meaningful and motivating jobs, and the different approaches to job design.

Running Head: ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR 0
Organizational Behaviour
9/26/2018

ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR 1
The essay brings about the description of the concepts in the field of organisational
behaviour in business organisations. The topic in the essay states that elements essential for
organisational and employee performance are built up over time, leading to bigger success.
Motivation is the vital element in employee performance and productivity, and drives for
organisational success. It drives people towards contributing and showing commitment
towards organisational goals and objectives. The topic highlighted for the analysis is
“Motivating employees through effective Job design” (Albrecht et al., 2015).
Job design is the important or core function of human resource management in every
organisations. It is the responsibility of every manager to clearly define the job to be
performed by employees to satisfy their goals. The essay includes thesis/argument of the
topic, supported with a number of arguments from multiple perspectives. Thus, in the later
part, the reader gains an understanding about how managers can create effective job design,
to facilitate creation of motivational jobs (Parker, 2014).
Motivating employees through Job Description
The thesis statement of the essay focuses on the topic mentioned above “Motivating
employees through effective job design”; describes about the importance of the motivation
leading to creation of motivating jobs in an organisational context. Employee motivation
represents the level of energy and commitment that the workers or employees in an
organisation bring to attain organisational goals. In the terms of human resource
management, concern for employee motivation is found to be very important by the managers
of the organisation. Managers define employee motivation as factors, which induce
employees to achieve work-related tasks or goals. It includes two aspects of motivation, i.e.
extrinsic and intrinsic motivation (Van de Walle, Steijn & Jilke, 2015).
Intrinsic motivation leads to higher employee performance in the organisations.
Intrinsic motivation to employees explains about the internal factors of the organisation
(Breevaart et al., 2016). It represents the behaviour of the individual, influenced positively by
the internal rewards in the organisation. Intrinsic rewards or benefits to employees lead to
satisfaction amongst employees, as they feel motivated to work more when rewarded for
work. Intrinsic motivation acts as stimulator for employees, and they become more
committed towards their work. Extrinsic rewards motivate employees in financial terms,
whereas intrinsic motivation focuses on abstract terms. It includes aspects such as gaining

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recognition, title, and appraisal/promotion, involvement in the decision-making process,
flexible working hours, effective work-design, positive feedback from managers, and other
related aspects (Menges et al., 2017).
An effective work-design or job design policy is the main factor highlighted through
this essay. Managers must focus on designing jobs encouraging their employees to create
motivating jobs. The way the function of job-design is performed, will influence the
performance, commitment towards organisation, absenteeism, and rate of turnover in the
longer term (Cummings & Worley, 2014).
Job design is a psychological theory of motivation, which states that a manager should
emphasize on systematic and purposeful allocation of tasks or jobs to the individuals in an
organisation. Manager defines about various jobs stating the purpose of job design, which
further leads to job analysis. Job analysis aims at determining and organising tasks, duties,
and responsibilities into a single unit of work in organisation. The process of job design, vary
with the nature of organisation and operations performed. The basic structure of job design is
similar to every organisation, as it includes certain elements and components which manager
in every organisation follows to achieve goals and objectives (Petrou, Demerouti &
Schaufeli, 2018).
Principles or the key factors, which managers must consider implementing effective
job, design in the organisation. These factors include variety, responsibility, autonomy, task
identity, feedback, employee involvement in decision-making, and working environment and
so on. Managers can help employees to create meaningful and motivating jobs in the
organisation by creating variety in their jobs as it improves the interest, challenge, and
commitment of the jobholder of the task. Repetitive tasks may create dissatisfaction, and
employees may lose interest in the job; variety means adding something more to the duty.
Responsibility is the major factor in every job, so it should be clearly defined by the
managers or job-providers. Appropriate description of jobs to the employees will help them
determine their responsibilities and accountabilities. It also helps them to understand
significance of their work and how work done by them accomplishes purpose of the
organisation. Responsibility is followed by factor of autonomy given to the employees to
regulate or control their own work in the organisation. Employees are at discretion within the
set parameters of performance. For an instance when a manager provides discretion at the
decision –making processes to determine the methods of working is one of the factors, which

ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR 3
represents the individual’s autonomy. Other two factors include identifying and distributing
the task, clarifying the person’s with their role in the beginning and in the end. Giving
feedback to the employees is another principle, which managers must follow to lead them
towards creating meaningful jobs (Oldham & Fried, 2016).
Managers and organisation must ensure maintaining positive organisational culture, as
it will motivate employees to bring with positivity and enthusiasm. Organisation must
comply with the ethical rules, moral values and CSR (corporate social responsibility)
practices, which gives a real image of the organisational practices. In a specific manner, a
manager while performing the function of job design in the organisation may consider an
approach of scientific management. The philosophy of scientific management is oriented
towards ensuring that the employees in an organisation acquire maximum possible benefits.
Scientific management proposed number of aspects, which affects the process of job design.
The idea behind this approach was to identify one best method to efficiently perform the job
and reduce the wastage in the processes. Manager may focus on applying time-motion
studies, which helps them to ascertain the time required by each task to be performed by
individuals. After ascertaining the required time, planning is to be done regarding tasks/duties
accordingly. Thus, standardized job performance is the key element of the scientific
management approach for job design. Following standardized job performance approach will
lead to effective planning of the tasks or duties in the job. Employees will be able to
understand their work in the manner they are expected to perform; they will feel motivated
towards their duties, because of effective job design (Shin & Konrad, 2017).
Considering all the factors, principles, and the necessary elements, a manager must
focus on conducting the process of effective job design, to motivate employees to create
efficient and value-creating jobs. Steps to effective job design includes, assessing the skills,
abilities, needs and motivation of employees and organisation, and then constructing job
design. After constructing job design, implementation process is carried on in the
organisation. Implementing new job design and action to evaluate the effectiveness of the
process in the organisation. Managers must take necessary steps to take measures in case of
any deviations found in the process of job design (Herzberg, 2017).
Approaches to job design must be taken into consideration by managers to encourage
employees to work with commitment and create purposeful jobs. Job design approaches
affect the motivation level of employees indirectly, thus they play a vital role in shaping

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organisational performance and effectiveness. An organisation or management team need to
analyse the current scenario and apply job design approaches. As every organisation is
unique, and separate identity operating with different goal and objectives, thus require
different set of approaches. Job enrichment, job engineering, Quality of work-life and socio-
technical design, social information processing approach are approaches in context to job
design. Job enrichment refers to the technique, which includes giving importance to the great
variety of content that requires a high-level of knowledge, and skills by employees. It also
states about giving autonomy to the employees in relation to the planning, directing and
controlling of their own performance. It will thus facilitate in providing them sufficient
opportunities to enhance their personal growth and work experience. Job enrichment itself
acts as motivation approach, and used by organisations as a motivational approach, to give
employees greater satisfaction in doing their work. Enrichment of job means providing an
employee with additional requirements previously reserved for acquiring a higher managerial
position in the organisation (Bailey et al., 2017).
Three psychological states of a well-defined job to an employee, including work that
is meaningful, responsibility for outcomes, and knowledge in respect to the positive
outcomes, are critical to employee motivation. Thus, it helps in creating competent and
impressive jobs in the industry. Job-design although leads to positive outcomes, motivates
employees, and creates meaningful jobs, but organisations faced number of issues while
designing and structuring jobs. Issues, which can occur in the process of job design process,
are job-insecurity, low salary or pay to employees in the organisation. These factors are
essential ensured by managers in the business organisations for effective organisational
performance and achievement of goals and objectives. Some of the issues observed recently
in the process of implementing job design important managerial functions. These include
telecommunity/work from home, job-sharing, flexible working hours, alternative work
patterns, stress related to technology and task revision. Therefore, these terms are necessary
for a manager to consider and define jobs in the organisation (Alexander & Haley‐Lock,
2015).
Organisations in the business environment implement the process of job-design
effectively, in accordance to the number of factors or conditions. These include factors such
as organisational factors, behavioural factors, and environmental factors, affecting the job-
design process. In case where an organisation fails to motivate employees through ineffective
jobs, it creates dissatisfaction among them, and job needs to be redesigned. Organisational

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factors include work nature, ergonomics, workflow, and the culture in the organisation. The
nature of work, states about various elements of the job and job design, which should be
clearly defined. Ergonomics relate to identifying physical attributes, and skills of employees
to enhance efficiency and productivity. Ensuring workflow and good organisational culture
will help in maintaining healthy relationships (Parker et al., 2017).
Other factors include environmental factors, which also affect the job-design to a
certain extent. These include both internal and external factors, such as employee skills and
abilities, availability and the socio-cultural aspects. Availability of the employee abilities
plays a crucial role in enhancing the employee’s performance. Demanding a job, which is
higher than the present skills and abilities of the employees, will lead to a decrease in their
productivity and satisfaction level (Li et al., 2014).
A manager in any organisation must focus on improving the process of job-design
process in respect to the predetermined goals and objectives. Theories of employee
motivation such as Abraham Maslow’s need hierarchy can be used to understand about
varied levels of needs of employees in the organisation. These needs ranges from low level to
higher level of needs, and when a low-level need is satisfied, then only the other needs can be
satisfied (Healy, 2016).
Job design theory of motivation is one of the important aspect and theory that can be
used to enhance the effectiveness of organisational practices. Job design approach is
effectively inter-connected to factors such as reward system, performance appraisal methods,
leadership, customer needs, working conditions, and team composition and norm. Human
resource is treated as valuable asset of every organisation; therefore, significance of effective
job design must be considered (Shahzadi et al., 2014).
Motivated employees are critical for organisations to survive and attain competitive
advantage over other business organisations. Effectiveness of organisational practices and
well-defined jobs leads to job-satisfaction that further reduces the possibilities of employee
turnover, absenteeism, and staff mobility. These factors depend upon the nature and content
of work, and helps organisations in retaining efficient employees for the longer period
(Shantz et al., 2013).
To conclude the above discussion on the process of job design, it has been analysed
that effective job design contributes to employee motivation and enhances organisational

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performance. It has been demonstrated through the above description, how important job
design play a role in increasing organisational effectiveness by motivating employees and
creating meaningful jobs. As per the thesis and analysis on the above statement that
motivation to employees drive their performance, and it has been found that there is a
positive correlation between job design, motivation, and between motivation and
productivity. Thus, the essay above mentioned about the manager’s effective role in creating
process of job design efficient to motivate employees in the organisation. Hence, the factors,
characteristics, and components of job-design process must be considered by managers to
create meaningful jobs, and attain success in the long term.

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