Question

Think of a job you are familiar with and apply the Job Characteristics Model by Hackman and Oldham to address the following questions:

1. Describe the job you chose.

2. When contemplating your focal job, what dimensions of the job characteristics model can be changed or modified? What elements of the model cannot be changed that relate to your job?

3. How can maximizing dimensions of the job characteristics model improve worker satisfaction in this role?

Answer 1

Job description:

The job I’m familiar with is my present job of being the Production Manager of a factory dealing with FMCG. The factory makes two products one of which is a health drink and the other being an instant energy drink variant. My job usually involves allocating manpower (around 200-300 nos.) to the production lines, ensuring that the planned target of production is met with desired quality standards. The responsibility also includes maintaining the safety standards, minimizing hazards and ensuring smooth running of lines with minimal breakdowns.

Job characteristics model basically includes three categories namely Meaningfulness of work (which is characterized by Skill variety, Task identity and Task Significance), Responsibility and Knowledge of outcomes

Meaningfulness of work:

The job of a Production Manager is highly meaningful as the outcome of the production process drives the rest of the supply chain

Skill variety:

The job basically requires a defined set of skills most which deals with people management. Apart from this knowledge of handling breakdowns is also crucial in meeting the targets

Task identity:

Since the work is more whole and complete involving a mix of lots of activities, there is significant Task identity associated with the job

Task Significance:

As discussed earlier, the outcome of Production drives the rest of the organization. All other allied activities of the organization like Finance, Marketing and Sales are dependent on production. Hence there is a high level of significance associated with the task

Responsibility:

The autonomy of the job is limited though not completely. The systems and procedures to be adopted have already been defined by the organization, the targets for production are derived top-down and hence there is no say in modifying these. But within the purview of the systems in place one is free to make decisions on how best one needs to work to optimize the resources and derive the output

Knowledge of outcomes:

The knowledge of outcome is high. The machines run at set speed. Hence if the required number of manpower is provided, it is easy to predict what the production output is going to be provided there are no major breakdowns.

Maximizing dimensions of Job characteristics model:

One area of the job characteristics that can be improved from the above discussion is Responsibility which signifies the autonomy to take decisions and provide suggestions for areas of improvement in the existing system. It helps to benefit the organization too in a way that Production people are the ones who are in shop floor day in and Day out and are aware of the difficulties and problems encountered real time. Hence taking our suggestions into consideration will only help the organization to reduce redundancies in the process and maximize efficiency and output