Job Characteristic Model free essay sample

The job characteristics model consists of five components which are skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback. These components affect factors such as performance, motivation, absenteeism , turnover and satisfaction of the employees. The purpose is to increase performance, motivation and satisfaction of the employees and to decrease absenteeism and turnover. The job characteristics model is one of the most important attempt models to design jobs. This model is proposed by Hackman and Oldham. Skill variety, task identity and task significance all contributes to the meaningfulness of work. Autonomy contributes to the responsibility for the work outcomes and feedback is the knowledge of the results of work. From the three psychological states, meaningfulness is the most important that affects employees attitude at work. Meaningfulness of work means that labour has meaning to you. It’s something that you can relate to and not think of it as repetitive tasks at work. We will write a custom essay sample on Job Characteristic Model or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page This builds upon self-motivation. Responsibility at work means that you as an employee have granted the opportunity to be a success or failure at work because freedom has been granted to you. This gives the ability to make changes based on what you come across on the job. Knowledge of outcomes means when the employee acknowledges their success at work and what they can do to improve and to emotionally connect with customers of what they are outputting. This adds more purpose to work. From the five core components of the characteristics model, we decided to focus on autonomy and feedback as we believe it contributes most to the model in general. Autonomy is where an employee has the freedom to choose how to perform his/her tasks. An example of autonomy is where a professor decides to teach his/her class by following the requested textbook chosen by a college/university which covers a certain list of topics from the textbook and being restricted to use specific classroom activities to teach the class. This is an example of low autonomy. An example of high autonomy which is what we want at work places is the direct opposite of the example of low autonomy. The professor being freer to choose the textbook, design and decide on the course layout and content, and using any type of activities and methods during lectures to teach the class has higher levels of autonomy. Autonomy is a major factor in the increase of motivation at work along with many other benefits. This increases job satisfaction. Autonomous employees are free to choose and decide how to do their jobs which is more effective and this is crucial to a company’s success in productivity. As job satisfaction increases, productivity will increase. The satisfaction among the employees is created through the freedom that is given to them. These types of employees are more proactive meaning that they will perform work without waiting to be told so by a higher authority and are more creative in the job. The consequence of autonomy can be higher company performance. Giving autonomy to employees is an excellent way to train them on the job. For example, this can increase an employee’s talent. Autonomy can come from workplace structures such as leadership styles, company structure, telecommuting and etc. Autonomy can help improve Feedback is when people learn how they perform at work and how they are effective at work. These feedbacks come from coworkers/peers, customers, supervisors, assistants and even the job itself through success and position of the company. Feedback is crucial when it comes to company’ productivity. Without feedbacks, employees will not know what to do to change labour productivity to increase outputs. When feedback is given to the employees, it builds on job satisfaction among the employees as employees will feel more satisfied after productivity increases. For example, a sales rep at a company who gives presentations to clients but doesn’t get anything in response from the clients has low feedback. If the person receives a report that he made a sale due to the presentation that he presented, then the feedback is high. Feedback helps the performance of the employees as a result. Feedback affects the motivations of employees as well. It all depends whether the employee was ready to get feedback, whether feedback was positive or negative and the way the feedback was given all determines motivation. The five core characteristics in Hackman and Oldham’s model do not have the same effects. Because of this, they created a formula. Formula: MPS = [(skill variety + task identity + task significance) ? 3] ? autonomy ? feedback. Autonomy and feedback characteristics are the most important in the formula in contributing to motivation for instance. If an employee is deficient in the autonomy and feedback characteristic, the motivation score will be low. For each employee in the same job, their MPS score will be different. Some employees will find the job less motivating than others. To help motivate those employees, supervisors and managers will have to change the employees’ perspective of the job. An employee’s career stage also affects the five core characteristics. When an employee is new, task significance will be more positive and autonomy will be a negative effect. Additional information about Oldham and Hackman besides the theory and model they came up with is the creation of the Job Diagnostic Survey and the Job Rating Form. The JDS measures employees’ perspective of the five core characteristics, their psychological states, their growth need strength and outcomes. The JRF was designed as an assessment from observers such as supervisors based on the core characteristics. As a conclusion, these core characteristics and components of the design of a job can be redesigned/re-modelled into: â€Å"Varying work to enable skill variety† â€Å"Assigning work to groups to increase the wholeness of the product produced and give a group to enhance significance† â€Å"Delegate tasks to their lowest possible level to create autonomy and hence responsibility† â€Å"Connect people to the outcomes of their work and the customers that receive them so as to provide feedback for learning†