What is work design? What are its constituents?

What is work design? What are its constituents? Explain using a schematic diagram. What is job design? What are the behavioral aspects in job design?

Answer. Work design is concerned with the study of design of the work system in an organization or an institution. Work system design is the systematic investigation of contemplated and present work systems to formulate through the ideal system concept, the easiest and the most effective systems and methods for achieving necessary functions/goals/purpose.
Work systems involve people, machines, tools, documents, and facilities interacting in activities over time. These activities produce goods, services or scientific data. Many work systems we encounter everyday have existed over a long period of time. Improvement of such work systems is often done through business process analysis and reengineering. But managers must also design work systems de novo. One of the challenges of work system design is that work systems are often large and complex and persist over a long period of time. This makes the design process complex and non-deterministic.

EXAMPLE OF WORK SYSTEM DESIGN
Victoria is the name of a proposed long-term semiautonomous robotic mission to the South Pole region of the Moon. The primary mission objective of Victoria is to verify the presence of water ice and other volatiles within permanently shadowed regions on the Moon. This will be accomplished by gathering the necessary lunar data for analyzing the history of water and other volatiles on the Moon, and by implication in the inner solar system. The Victoria team has decided to use a high-speed semi-autonomous rover. One of the biggest constraints in any robotic mission is power consumption of the robot. In every activity the rover uses energy, therefore the sequence of activities for the rover is constrained by the amount of power available to complete the sequence. When the robot's batteries are low, it needs to return to a sun-exposed spot to recharge its batteries. During the Victoria mission the rover will traverse into permanently dark regions on the Moon. During these traverses the rover will use its neutron detector instrument to detect hydrogen and the Sample Acquisition and Transfer Mechanism (SATM) to drill into the lunar surface and take surface samples to be investigated using an array of science instruments. The work system design problem is to configure the mission operations so the robot's activities inside the permanent dark region are most efficient (i.e. consume the least amount of energy).

To develop a simulation of the Victoria work system, we used a collaborative modeling approach with the Victoria mission designers. First, we created informal static models of the activities of the people, robot, and artifacts, the communication and geography, in informal design meetings and modeling sessions. Next, we translated these descriptions into formal Brahms models, producing simulation results. The following figure shows the Victoria work system.

Job design is the consciously planned structuring of work effort performed by an individual or a team of persons. Various factors that must be addressed in job design can be grouped into various categories such as human factors, design factors, environmental factors, organisational factors, technical factors, behavioural factors, etc.

In design factors, one must consider the layout of equipment and seating arrangement. Ideally, the equipment design should start with the operator by laying out the areas for vision, for controls, for sitting, for leg room etc. by taking note of standard anthropometric data of men and women, as the case may be. Job design should consider whether the job is to be done standing or sitting or in both the ways. It is the requirements of good seating that the person while sitting should be able to maintain a good posture which will not cause overstrain of any particular group of muscles.

Environmental factors in general affect the job design significantly. For instance, if the temperature level is high one need frequent intervals of rest in between a particular job. On the contrary, if the temperature level is low, fatigue is less and human endurance to do a particular job continuously increases and thus number of intervals required for rest is reduced. Similar is the case with humidity. High level of humidity causes sweating and demands frequent intervals for rest. Hence in such situations of heat and humidity, work requires air conditioning and proper ventilation. When it is not possible, workman should be removed from the environment at appropriate times to allow him/her to cool off.

BEHAVIORAL ASPECTS IN JOB DESIGN
Traditionally jobs were designed to minimize immediate cost and maximize immediate productivity. But not behavioural factors also play a major role in job design.

Jobs are set of tasks, each task being associated with as set of stimuli-auditory, visual and or tactile. A job consisting of varied tasks provides varied stimuli; a job with routine repetitive tasks usually provides few stimuli.

Job Rotation: Job rotation moves employees from one task to another. It distributes the group tasks among a number of employees. On the positive side, it may said that job rotation is likely to increase intrinsic reward potential of a job because different skills and abilities needed to perform. On the negative side, it may stated that job rotation may not have much impact on employee enthusiasm and efficiency.

Job Enlargement: If jobs become too specialized, workers perceive their job to be monotonous and this leads to dissatisfaction. Job enlargement changes the jobs to include more and/or different tasks. Job enlargement should add interest to the work but may or may not give employees more responsibility. Job enlargement is opposite to work simplification. Job enlargement is said to contribute to employee motivation.

Job Enrichment: Job enrichment is the process redesigning work content to make the job more meaningful and enjoyable by involving employees in planning, organizing and controlling their work. Job enrichment allows employees to assume more responsibility, accountability, and independence when learning new tasks or to allow for greater participation and new opportunities.