The impact of job design on employee motivation

As stated the topic for my research is the Impact of job design on employee motivation. This research was carried out to identify factors which play an important role in job design which motivates the employees to give the best of their performance. Apart from that this research answers such questions like what motivates the employees. How do they perceive their job? This research is carried out to judge the impact of employee motivation in the banking sector of Pakistan. The research conducted is a primary one and data was generated by floating questioners in different banks. The employees of the banks which were mainly under consideration for this research were from Faysal Bank, Standard Chartered and Citi Bank. A sample size of about 30 respondents was taken from mainly these banks and it was analyzed that job design plays a vital role in the motivation of employees which gives them the confidence to perform better. Job design also reflects the performance of an employee as it guides the behavior of an individual. So in order to be competitive in the global era employees’ job must be designed in all round manner. The multiple regression carried out also showed a positive relationship of independent variables with the dependent variable (Motivation).

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Introduction

The topic under consideration of my research is the impact of job design on employee motivation. The strength of an organization lies in its employees. Employees are the greatest assets that an organization possess therefore it is important for the organization to know that how happy are the employees in their roles. The more organized and efficient the employees better are the chances of the organization to succeed. This is how the concept of job design is important for organizations. Employees are motivated from several aspects; job design is one of them. Employee motivation is a key factor in employee performance which adds up to performance of the whole organization.

Job design is a concept that refers to the achievement of goals and objectives through the organization of tasks and duties to be performed into a unit of work. It also portrays the content of job and the effect of job on employees. It is through job design that a job can be made highly specialized and such well designed jobs are very important in achieving a motivated management of employees. According to Michael Armstrong, “Job Design is the process of deciding on the contents of a job in terms of its duties and responsibilities, on the methods to be used in carrying out the job, in terms of techniques, systems and procedures, and on the relationships that should exist between the job holder and his superior subordinates and colleagues.”

Job deign came about with swift scientific and industrial advancements at the turn of the 20th century when mass production and assembly line operations emerged. As jobs have been more specialized the need for a motivated management of employees has become essential. It is also important for the HR departments of organizations to understand the importance of job design because better is the job design more will be the motivation there for the employee to perform better.

Problem development

The reason why I am conducting this research is to judge the impact of job design on employee motivation. As we know that the concepts of job design that include job enrichment, job enlargement and other variables mentioned are not widely used in Pakistan, therefore this research will give a proper perspective on how job design impacts employee motivation.

Apart from this a major chunk of research that has been carried out in the field of motivation keeping employees in mind has been carried out from a physiological and a theoretical perspective. This research is quantitatively directed to analyze that whether such tools like a good job design have any significant impact on employee motivation. The idea behind this research is to identify factors which play an important role in job design and secondly to know that whether these concepts of job design will be helpful to motivate employees, increase employee performance and productivity.

Literature review

I have carried out the literature review of several articles regarding various aspects of job design in order to find out those motivation factors that affect employee performance.

Job design and its approaches are usually considered to have begun with scientific management in the year 1900, Pioneering different scientific managers who systematically examined jobs with different techniques. It was suggested that in scientific management the most prominent element is task design.

Eaton H. Conant and Maurice D. Kilbridge mention in their article “an interdisciplinary analysis of job enlargement: technology, costs and behavioral implications” which was published in 1965 the economic and technological aspects of job enlargement which forms the basis of job design. This study also examines the implications of job enlargement and the study of worker’s attitudes. This article reports a study of a job enlargement program that is being carried out in a Midwestern manufacturing company, which is the company under consideration of this article. The study sought to identify the circumstances that caused the company to adopt and extend the job enlargement program. This focus led initially to examination of technical, production, and cost circumstances that were associated with the decision to modify jobs. By including this focus, the investigation obtained original observations about job enlargement technology and cost factors, and sought to redress the deficiency of available knowledge pertaining to organizational economic goals in job enlargement. The data collected for technical comparison of line and enlarged jobs summarizes that physical and technical differences provide some basis for inferences about the extent to which workers would perceive these differences. The workers from assembly lines and those with enlarged jobs were analyzed on terms of average opportunity for social interactions and it was summarized that for the enlarged job, the distances to the operator’s nearest and next nearest neighbor are about twice what they had been on the line. Add to this relative isolation the fact that their work is in no way interdependent, and it would seem that the occasion for the formation of groups is reduced. Therefore it was noticed that social interactions were reduced by one half in an enlarged job. Workers responses in the company were also taken under consideration regarding specialized and enlarged work and it was analyzed that a major chunk of workers expressed preference for job enlargement. From a sample size of 61 from within the company, primary data was gathered regarding preference factors by workers preferring bench or line work and it was analyzed that 40 workers preferred bench work and the correlation of responses to the questions asked from them were also more correlated for the bench workers. Hence the detailed analysis portrayed that workers strongly favored bench work and most of the specific attributes of this work. They especially endorsed the self pacing and quality contribution attributes of enlarged work. Workers did not respond as strongly for the increased task attribute of job enlargement, and in general their responses for the counter specialization attributes of bench work were outranked in intensity by the pacing and qualitative responses. Although this study could not find that workers who preferred either kind of work, when asked to choose could be distinguished according to personal characteristics. Lastly it can be concluded that job enlargement has the advantage of permitting a redefinition of pace, quality, and effort standards under circumstances where workers may, nevertheless respond positively because they favor intrinsic attributes of bench work.

Edward E. Lawler and Richard Hackman (1971) in their article “Effects of job redesign” analyze that a job will be motivating and essentially satisfying only if it is high in all 5 core dimensions. The core dimensions are autonomy, task identity, feedback, variety and skill. The research was carried out in a telephone company office situated in a medium sized eastern manufacturing town. There are two different telephone operator jobs in this office: the directory assistance job and the toll job. Therefore to judge the impact of job design with respect to job enrichment and job enlargement the data was collected on site during working hours. Approximately two weeks before any changes were made in the jobs, a short questionnaire was administered to as many of the operators who worked on the directory assistance job as could be scheduled. The result of the survey showed that the job was objectively changed on two of the four core dimensions: variety and autonomy. Significant changes on the other job dimensions were not obtained, and the absolute level of the job on variety and autonomy remained rather low. The research also showed that some employees do not have the motivation that is receptive to the enriched job. This results in less satisfaction and lower work output. The job design program did affect the directory assistance job of the telephone company on two of five core dimensions. Despite the fact that the job was significantly improved on two of the five core dimensions, neither satisfaction nor motivation improved. One explanation for this is that even after the change, the job remained very low on both variety and autonomy. The Hackman-Lawler theory postulates that a job must be made high on all five dimensions for increases in motivation and satisfaction to be realized. Because the changes made in the directory assistance job did not reach this principle, the data reported here are consistent with the theory. Hence it was concluded that “employees who have strong desire for higher order need satisfaction will respond to jobs that are high on all core dimensions”. That is unless employees value feeling of accomplishment and growth they will be unlikely to respond positively to a job which is structured to provide opportunities for their attainment through hard work. It was also found that when jobs were high on all core dimensions employees who were desirous of higher order need satisfaction tended to have high morale, high work motivation, few absences from work and be rated by their supervisors doing high quality work. Thus this theory emphasized a job high on all core dimensions will result in higher motivation and better results in terms of performance.

Robert A. Karasek (1971) described some implications of job redesign. He explained that job enrichment and job enlargement helps employees to develop new skills and face new challenges. Job enrichment specially is the major driving force for the employees that motivate them to perform much better. It was also observed that well designed jobs have a positive impact on employee satisfaction and quality performance. Another important factor stressed upon by Robert A. Karasek was that some employees do not have the motivation that is repetitive to the enriched job. This results in less satisfaction and lower work output.

Denis D. Umstot (1976) investigated the effect of job enrichment and goal setting on employee productivity through a two phase research conducted in job environment. 1st phase produced two conditions of job enrichment and they were enriched vs. unriched. It was tested on four experimental situations in which 42 different part time workers took part. The result of this investigation was as such that Job enrichment had a substantial impact on job satisfaction but little effect on productivity.

Kae H. Chung and Monica F. Ross (1977) examine differences in motivational properties between two of the most important aspects of job design (job enrichment and job enlargement). Some attributes of job enlargement are highlighted such as task variety, meaningful work module and performance feedback. As the authors try to find out motivational effects of job enlargement it is analyzed that a number of studies have attempted to measure the effects of new work systems on employee job satisfaction and performance, relatively few have used only one type of work system based on either horizontal or vertical job loading. Thus it is difficult to test any performance prediction that one work system is superior to another in arousing employee motivation.

But studies like Kilbridge (1965) and Hackman and Lawler (1971) portrays the effects of job enlargement on employee motivation. It was notified that job enlargement is more likely to improve employee satisfaction and product quality and, to a certain extent, to reduce costs and increase productivity. But a situation may be created in which workers have to exert more energy and effort to produce the same rate of production as before the jobs were enlarged. Enlarged jobs usually involve worker paced production methods that may reduce production speed and prevent optimal human movements.

Several attributes of job enrichment were also highlighted in the article were employee participation, goal internalization and autonomy. It was observed that motivational effects of job enrichment indicate that participation in decision making leads to greater acceptance of decisions by workers and thus increases employee motivation. But other studies indicate that participation does not necessarily lead to high motivation and productivity unless it results in high performance goals set by the participants themselves. Individual and organizational constraints may prevent effective utilization of goal-setting systems, including workers’ technical and psychological readiness to perform demanding jobs, pay, job security, and organizational climate. Further, employees will not set high performance goals unless their jobs have been horizontally enlarged to make their tasks psychologically meaningful. Thus, it is doubtful whether job enrichment alone can have a strong motivational impact on employee behavior. When these two types of work systems are jointly applied under favorable circumstances, job enrichment can exert more influence on employee motivation than can job enlargement because it gives workers more opportunities to utilize their abilities and exert control over their work environment. It was predicted that job satisfaction and productivity will be highest when both job enlargement and job enrichment are jointly applied to redesigning work systems.

Therefore it was concluded that job enrichment may not be applicable to all employees in an organization. “It can have a strong motivational value for employees who prefer challenge in performing demanding jobs, have abilities to perform, and are motivated to satisfy higher-order needs. It may have little or even a negative effect on workers who prefer lower task difficulty, are unskilled, and are primarily motivated by lower-order needs. Second, job enlargement with a limited degree of job enrichment is recommended for most skilled workers who are reasonably satisfied with lower-order needs and yet who are not ready to undertake highly challenging jobs”. Finally, job enlargement is more suitable to workers at lower levels of organizational level who are primarily motivated by lower order needs. Enlarged jobs with opportunities for socialization may better satisfy their needs. Since no one particular job design is a cure, management should carefully study the differences in employees technical and psychological readiness before any specific job design is implemented.

With respect to the design of individual jobs, the first major theory was that of Herzberg and his colleagues (Herzberg 1959). Their two-factor theory differentiated between two types of factors, namely motivators, which are intrinsic to the work itself they included factors like achievement, recognition, and responsibility, and hygiene factors, which are extrinsic to the work included factors like work conditions, pay, and supervision. The proposition was that the hygiene factors are absolutely necessary to maintain the human resources of an organization. According to Hertzberg’s theory, only a challenging job has the opportunity for achievement, recognition, advancement and growth that will motivate personnel.

According to Podsakoff (1996) enriched jobs have been found to provide fundamentally satisfying tasks and job enrichment is positively related to a wide variety of employee attitudes and performance.

As stated by John R. Cook (1997) the objective of good job design is to design jobs which allow people to perform tasks in a safe, efficient and economical manner which facilitate the realization of various organizational goals such as profit and increased production. The goal of job enrichment is to improve employee satisfaction and performance by increasing job scope vertically allowing opportunities for personal achievement, recognition and growth. Job enrichment principles were largely associated with the phenomena that enriching a job is proposed to increase positive work outcomes that is motivation and performance and decrease negative outcomes which included stress and boredom.

Research Methodology

My topic for the research thesis is “the impact of job design on employee motivation”. I intend to find the factors which play an important role in Job design which is constituted of job enrichment and job enlargement so that they could best motivate employees and in turn enables them to give their best performance. Job design is the intentionally planned structuring of work effort performed by an individual. There is increasing evidence that poorly designed jobs now days are a persistent social problem affecting the performance of employees. It has been observed in many different sectors of Pakistan that poorly designed jobs are persistent problems especially in the services sector of Pakistan. I have carried out my research in the banking sector of Pakistan to judge the impact of job design on employee motivation. I have targeted the working population of Pakistan. The sector under consideration is the banking sector. I have analyzed the job design of employees in Faysal Bank, Standard chartered and Citi bank. Hence the population from which a sample was taken was from the working employees in the banking sector of Pakistan. The sample taken under consideration was 30 and the sector on which I have focused on is the banking sector of Pakistan. The type of regression used for the statistical analysis of my project is multi variable linear regression. The sample time for the research is from March-2011 to April-2011. Data was gathered through floating questionnaires in the named Banks. The questionnaire consisted of 22 questions which measured each variable significantly. The questionnaire is given in the appendix.

Independent variables include:

Job enrichment: job enrichment increases the amount of employee control or responsibility by addition of certain tasks of more or less similar nature to a job. It is also known as vertical expansion of job.

Job enlargement: job enlargement is the expansion of job context to include a wider variety of tasks, and to increase the workers freedom of pace and responsibility. It involves addition of tasks at the same level of skill and responsibility.

Job benefits (intrinsic rewards): job benefits refer to the rewards that an employee gets from his organization. It also reflects that whether the employee is satisfied with the appraisal system prevailing in the organization. Job benefits are very important in terms of job design.

Job context: job context refers to the environment with in which the job is carried out or performed. It also portrays the working relationship amongst employees.

Job rotation: job rotation is also a job design technique in which an employee is exposed to different experiences and scenarios with a wider variety of skills to improve job satisfaction. In job rotation employees are moved between the jobs in a planned manner.

The dependent variable: Motivation.

With the competition growing day by day in different services sectors especially in banking it is very important for firms to keep their employees motivated so that they perform well. Motivation refers to the factors which energize, direct and sustain employee behavior. Motivation also reflects the level of energy and commitment an employee shows towards his job.

Theoretical justification of variables:

Job enrichment and job enlargement are the most important aspects of job design in order to motivate employees so that they give better performance. The variables mentioned basically represent that why job design is there and what are its implications. All variables are directed towards increasing employee motivation and performance. It has been shown that through job enrichment and job enlargement a job can be made more interesting with reduced levels of boredom and repetitive movements which will in turn motivate employees to perform exceedingly well than anticipated. Job enrichment also intellectually stimulates employees as they think out of the box, thus motivating them towards better performance. Job context refers to the environment with in which the job is performed it also emphasizes on the working relationship of one with other employees and it is positively related towards motivation and performance of an employee.

Job rotation refers to a job design technique in which an employee is exposed to different experiences and scenarios with a wider variety of skills to improve job satisfaction. In job rotation employees are moved between the jobs in a planned manner.

Job rotation is also positively related towards motivation and performance of employees. Many employees feel that through job rotation one increases knowledge base of an organization and help the employee to become more competitive.

Job benefits are also in integral component of job design which shows a positive relation towards the dependent variable that is motivation.

Theoretical framework

Job context

Job benefits

Job Rotation

Motivation

Job enrichment

Job enlargement

Hypothesis

Ho: Job benefits have an insignificant impact on employee motivation.

H1: Job benefits have a significant impact on employee motivation.

Ho: Job context has an insignificant impact on employee motivation.

H1: Job context has a significant impact on employee motivation.

Ho: Job rotation has an insignificant impact on employee motivation.

H1: Job rotation has a significant impact on employee motivation.

Ho: Job enrichment has an insignificant impact on employee motivation.

H1: Job enrichment has a significant on employee motivation.

Ho: Job enlargement has an insignificant impact on employee motivation.

H1: Job enlargement has a significant impact on employee motivation.

Regression results

Out of the total of 30 respondents from the banking sector of Pakistan 21 were male and 9 were female. The banks included Faysal bank, standard chartered and Citi bank. Most of the respondent’s income lied between Rs 40,000-Rs 70,000.

The output shows the results of fitting a multiple linear regression model to describe the relationship between Motivation and 5 independent variables. The equation of the fitted model is

Motivation = 2.62945 – 0.630129*Job Benefits + 0.35586*Job Context + 0.146587*Job Rotation – 0.397471*Job Enrichment + 0.392549*Job Enlargement

Since the P-value in the ANOVA table is less than 0.05, there is a statistically significant relationship between the variables at the 95.0% confidence level.

The R-Squared statistic indicates that the model as fitted explains 74.1264% of the variability in Motivation. The adjusted R-squared statistic, which is more suitable for comparing models with different numbers of independent variables, is 66.9393%. The standard error of the estimate shows the standard deviation of the residuals to be 0.280699. This value can be used to construct prediction limits for new observations by selecting the Reports option from the text menu. The mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.190049 is the average value of the residuals. The Durbin-Watson (DW) statistic tests the residuals to determine if there is any significant correlation based on the order in which they occur in your data file. Since the P-value is greater than 0.05, there is no indication of serial autocorrelation in the residuals at the 95.0% confidence level.

In determining whether the model can be simplified, notice that the highest P-value on the independent variables is 0.1746, belonging to Job Rotation. Since the P-value is greater or equal to 0.05, that term is not statistically significant at the 95.0% or higher confidence level.

The T-Statistics value of Job Benefits is -4.5306 which means that the variable is significant at the 99% confidence level. The P- Value of Job Benefits is 0.0003 which confirms that Job Benefits has a significant and strong relationship with Employee Motivation. Thus we will reject the Ho.

The T statistics value of job context is 3.82825 which show that the variable is significant at the 99% confidence level. The P-value of job context is 0.0012 which confirms that job context has a significant relationship with employee motivation. Therefore we will reject Ho.

The T-statistics value of job rotation is 1.41344 which shows that the variable is not significant at the 90% confidence level. The P value of job rotation is 0.1746 which confirms that there is not a significant relationship with employee motivation. Hence we will accept Ho.

The T-statistics value of job enrichment is -2.87929 which shows that the variable is significant at the 99% confidence level. The P- value of job enrichment is 0.0100 which confirms that there is s significant relationship with employee motivation. Thus we will reject Ho.

The T-statistics value of job enlargement is 3.35815 which show that the variable is significant at the 99% confidence level. The P-value of job enlargement is 0.0035 which confirms that there is significant relationship with employee motivation. Thus we will reject the Ho.

The R sq value of the model is 74.1264 percent and the F-ratio is 10.31 and the P value is 0.0001 which shows that the model is strong.

Conclusion

It can clearly be concluded that a good job design helps a lot in motivating employees and making them able to perform better than anticipated. As the sector under consideration was the banking sector I came to analyze that the employees in Faysal Bank, Standard chartered and Citi Bank have good job designs and that is the sole reason that they are motivated and are doing exceedingly well. Most of the employees were satisfied from their work and most of them admitted that they were getting their deserving share of job benefits. With performance appraisal been done at regular basis in the named banks most of the employees were motivated to perform well. Employees at theses banks appreciate the efforts of the employer to make their job as motivating and challenging as possible. Most employees at these banks grab the opportunity to improve their job make their job more interesting as they see their own and the organizations benefit in it. It can also be seen from the output of the multiple linear regression model that the relationship between the dependent variable (motivation) and 5 independent variables (Job Benefits, Job Context, Job Rotation, Job Enrichment and Job Enlargement) is significant. Only job rotation showed an insignificant relationship with the dependent variable mainly because in these banks job rotation did not have any part to play in motivating the employees. Mainly because there was no difference what so ever in the motivation of employees with job rotation being in place. It can also be concluded from this research that if your employees are motivated and satisfied they would produce superior quality performance in optimal time and lead to growing profits.

References

Robert A. Karasek, Jr. (1979) Job Demands, Job Decision Latitude, and Mental Strain: Implications for Job Redesign. Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Jun., 1979), pp. 285-308.

Edward E Lawler, J Richard Hackman (1973) Effects of Job Redesign: A Field Experiment. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 1973, 3, 1, pp. 49-62.

J.Lee Whittington, Viki L Goodwin (2004) Transformational leadership, goal difficulty, and job design: Independent and interactive effects of employee outcome. Leadership quarterly 15 (2004) 593-606

John R. Cook (1997) Job enrichment and mental workload in computer based work: implications for adaptive job design. International journal of industrial Ergonomics 24 (1999) 13-23.

Michael J. Smith, Pascal C. Sainfort (1989) a balance theory of Job design for stress reduction. Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706 U.S.A. Received 17 October 1988; accepted 5 January 1989.  Available online 27 February 2003.

Christopher Orpen (2001) Effect of job Enrichment on employee satisfaction, motivation, involvement and performance. A field experiment. Department of Psychology, University of the Witwatersrand, 1, Jan Smuts Avenue, Johannesburg 2001, South Africa.

Eaton H. Conant, Maurice D. Killbridge (1965) an interdisciplinary analysis of job enlargement: technology: costs and behavioral implications. Industrial and labor relations review. Vol. 18 No. 3

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