WORK DESIGN AND MEASUREMENT:

Work Design:
Work design is about planning and organizing jobs so that employees can do
their work in the best way possible. It focuses on:
 What tasks a worker needs to do
 How the tasks should be done
 Where the work will be done
 When it will be done
 Who will do it

Importance:
Work design is important because companies need people to do work to reach their goals. This
topic is also helpful for improving productivity and making things better over time.

Quality of Work Life:

People work not just to earn money, but also for self-growth, status, socializing, and mental or
physical activity. When the quality of work life is good, people feel better and work better.

Key parts of quality work life include:

1.Working Conditions

These affect how well people do their jobs. Good working conditions can improve performance
and reduce mistakes or accidents.

Temperature and Humidity: People work best in comfortable temperatures and humidity
levels, especially when doing hard work.

Ventilation: Clean air is important. Bad smells or dust can be harmful and annoying.

Lighting (Illumination): Detailed work needs more light. Too much glare or too little light can
cause mistakes and be unsafe.

Noise and Vibrations: Loud sounds and vibrations from machines or people can be distracting,
cause mistakes, and even hurt hearing. Fixes include padding and noise-reducing materials.

Work Time and Breaks:

Reasonable work hours and breaks help workers feel more in control and less tired. Breaks,
including vacations, help people stay fresh and motivated.
Occupational Health Care:

Healthy workers are more productive and feel better. Many companies support health through
exercise and healthy food programs.

Safety:

Safety is a very important part of job design.

Why safety matters: Accidents can hurt workers, damage equipment, slow work, and cost a lot.

What causes accidents: Often it's carelessness (like not wearing safety gear) or unsafe
conditions (like poor lighting or dangerous machines).

How to prevent accidents: Use proper lighting, safety signs, protective gear (like helmets and
gloves), and safety equipment. Keep the workplace clean and organized.

Teamwork is key: Workers and managers must work together to follow safety rules. If
supervisors ignore unsafe behavior, workers may do the same.

Posters help: Specific messages like “Wear your helmet” are more helpful than vague ones like
“Be careful.”

OSHA and Safety Laws

In 1970, the government created OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) to
make sure workplaces are safe. OSHA sets rules, checks workplaces, and can give warnings or
fines for unsafe conditions.
OSHA pushed many companies to improve safety, even when they had delayed making changes.

Ethical Issues:

Companies must treat workers fairly by using safe work methods, giving honest evaluations, fair
pay, chances for promotion, and keeping accurate records.

Compensation
Compensation in work design refers to the rewards or benefits that employees receive in
exchange for their work. It can include
1. Monetary Compensation:
Salary, wages, bonuses, and other financial rewards.
2. Non-Monetary Compensation:
non-financial rewards, such as health insurance, paid time off, or flexible work arrangements.

Purpose of Compensation:
1. Attract and Retain Talent: Competitive compensation packages can attract and retain top
performers.
2. Motivate Employees: Compensation can motivate employees to perform at their best and
achieve organizational goals.
3. Recognize Contributions: Compensation can recognize and reward employees' contributions
to the organization.

Organizational approaches
organization use a variety of approaches to compensate employees, including time-based
systems, output-based systems, and knowledge-based systems.
Time-based systems also known as hourly and measured day-work systems, compensate
employees for the time the
employee has worked during a pay period. Salaried workers also represent a form of timebased
compensation.
Output-based (incentive) systems compensate employees according to their output .
agement Worker
TIME-BASED
Advantages for management
1. Stable labor costs
2. Easy to administer
For workers
1.Stable pay
2. Less pressure to produce
3. Simple to compute pay than under output system
4. Stable output
Disadvantages
For management
1. No incentive for workers
to increase output
For workers
2.Extra efforts not rewarded
OUTPUT-BASED
Advantages for management
1. Lower cost per unit
2. Greater output
For Workers
3. Pay related to efforts
4. Opportunity to earn more

Disadvantages
For managemenet
1. Wage computation more difficult
2. Need to measure output
3. Quality may suffer
4. Difficult to incorporate
wage increases
5. Increased problems with
scheduling
For Workers
1.Pay fluctuates
2.Workers maybe penalizes because of factors beyond their control

Individual Incentive Plans.

The simplest plan is straight piecework. Under this plan, a worker’s pay is a direct linear
function
of his or her output. In the past, piecework plans were fairly popular. Now minimum wage
legislation makes them somewhat impractical. Even so, hey typically incorporate a base rate that
serves as a floor: Workers are guaranteed that amount as a minimum, regardless of output.
The base rate is tied to an output standard; a worker who produces less than the standard will be
paid at the base rate. This protects workers from pay loss due to delays, breakdowns, and
similar problems.
Group Incentive Plans.
A variety of group incentive plans, which stress sharing of productivity gains with employees,
are in use. Some focus exclusively on output, while others
reward employees for output and for reductions in material and other costs. One form of group
incentive is the team approach, which many companies are now using for problem solving and
continuous improvement. The emphasis is on team, not individual,
performance.

Knowledge-Based Pay Systems

Companies are moving toward lean production with fewer managers and more focus on
flexibility, quality, and productivity.
Workers with multiple skills are more valuable.
Knowledge-based pay rewards workers for gaining new skills.
Horizontal skills– ability to do different tasks
Vertical skills– ability to perform management tasks
Depth skills – focus on improving quality and productivity.
Management Compensation
Companies are changing how they reward managers.
Focus is shifting from just profits to customer service and quality.
Executive pay is more often tied to company or division performance.
Some criticism exists when executives are paid more during company losses or layoffs.
Recent Trends in Compensation
Move toward flexible, performance-based pay systems.
Use of bonuses and profit-sharing based on goals.
Rising health benefit costs are prompting companies to rethink pay packages.
Emphasis on improving work-life quality.
Ideal compensation balances motivation, profits, and employee retention.
Job Design
Job design means planning what a job includes and how it will be done.
Focuses on:
What work is done
Who does it
How and where it is done
Goals: Improve productivity, safety, and quality of work life.

Approaches to Job Design

1. Efficiency Approach
Based on scientific management
Focuses on speed, logic, and low cost
Main goal: higher productivity
2. Behavioral Approach
Focuses on worker needs and job satisfaction
Aims to make work more meaningful and enjoyable.
Specialization
Means doing a narrow and specific job
Examples: heart doctors, cake bakers, assembly line workers
Pros: High skill, high productivity, low costs
Cons: Some jobs can be boring or repetitive

Behavioral Approaches to Job Design:

Companies try to make jobs more interesting by using methods like job enlargement, job
rotation, and job enrichment.
Job Enlargement:Giving workers more tasks at the same skill level to make work more
varied.
Job Rotation: Moving workers between jobs to reduce boredom and help them learn different
tasks.
Job Enrichment: Giving workers more responsibility, like planning or decision- making, to
make jobs more meaningful.
These methods are common in lean systems where workers are trained to do different tasks and
manage their own work. These methods are common in lean systems where workers are trained
to do different tasks and manage their own work.
Motivation:
Motivation is very important in job design. People work not just for money, but also for goals
like personal growth, social interaction, and feeling accomplished. Trust between managers and
employees also matters. When there is trust, employees take more responsibility, and managers
feel confident giving it to them.
Teams in Modern Work Environments:
As businesses strive to become more productive, competitive, and customer- focused, they are
rethinking how work is accomplished. One significant change in many organizations is the
increased use of teams and changes in how workers are paid, especially in lean production
systems. In the past, nonroutine tasks such as handling customer complaints or improving a
process were typically assigned to one individual or a few people under the same manager.
Today, these tasks are often handled by teams that collaborate to develop and implem solutions.

Types of Teams:
Short-term Teams:
These teams work on specific tasks like quality improvement, product/service design, or solving
particular problems. Members can be from the same or different departments, depending on the
issue.
Long-term Teams: A common long-term team in lean production is the self- directed team (or
self-managed team). These teams aim to improve teamwork and employee involvement. While
they don’t have complete decision-making power, they are 1’, ‘ally allowed to makechanges to
the processes they control.
The main idea behind self-directed teams is that workers who are closest to the process have the
best understanding of it and are more capable of making meaningful improvements. Since they
are personally involved, they tend to work harder to ensure positive results compared to changes
implemented by marement alone.For self-directed teams to work well, members must be trained
in areas like quality control, process improvement, and teamwork.
Benefits of Self-Directed Teams: Fewer managers are needed, as one manager can oversee
multiple teams. Teams respond more quickly to problems and take ownership of solutions.
Improvements can be implemented faster.
General Benefits of Teams: Higher quality of work, Increased productivity, Greater employee
satisfaction.
Higher satisfaction also leads to lower turnover and absenteeism, reducing costs related to
training new workers and covering absences.

Ergonomics:
Ergonomics means fitting the job to the worker and mutual adjustment of man and his work for
improvement of efficiency for human use.
Types/ Domains
 Physical Ergonomics
 Deals with human body’s response to physical and physiological
stress. Includes strain injuries due to repetition or posture.
 Cognitive ergonomics
Concern with mental process such as perception, reasoning and motor response.
Include workload , decision making, error and training.
 Organizational Ergonomics
Concerned with organizational structure, policies and process. Include
motivation, supervision, ethics, team work and jobsatistification.
Method analysis
Method analysis in operations management is a structured approach to examining
how a job or process is done
The need for methods analysis can come from a number of different sources:
1. Changes in tools and equipment.
2. Changes in product design or introduction of new products.

3. Changes in materials or procedures.

4. Government regulations or contractual agreements.
5. Other factors (e.g., accidents, quality problems).
The basic procedure in methods analysis is as follows:
1. Identify the operation to be studied, and gather all pertinent facts about tools, equipment,
materials, and so on.
2. For existing jobs, discuss the job with the operator and supervisor to get their input.
3. Study and document the present method of an existing job using process charts. For new jobs,
develop charts based on information about the activities involved.
4. Analyze the job.
5. Propose new methods.
6. Install the new methods.
7. Follow up implementation to assure that improvements have been achieved.
Selecting an Operation to Study
Selecting an Operation to Study. Sometimes a foreman or supervisor will request that a certain
operation be studied. At other times, methods analysis will be part of an overall pro gram to
increase productivity and reduce costs. Some general guidelines for selecting a job to study are to
consider jobs that
1. Have a high labor content.
2. Are done frequently.
3. Are unsafe, tiring, unpleasant, and/or noisy.
4. 4. Are designated as problems (e.g., quality problems, processing bottlenecks).
Documenting the Current Method

The Current Method.

Use charts, graphs, and verbal descriptions of the
way the job is now being performed. This will provide a good understanding of the job and
serve as a basis of comparison against which revisions can be judged.
Analyzing the Job and Proposing New Methods. Job analysis requires careful
thought about the what, why, when, where, and who of the job. Often, simply going through
these questions will clarify the review process by encouraging the analyst to take a devil’s
advocate attitude toward both present and proposed methods.
Analyzing and improving methods is facilitated by the use of various charts such as flow
process charts and worker-machine charts.
Flow process charts are used to review and critically examine the overall sequence of an
operation by focusing on the movements of the operator or the flow of materials. These charts
are helpful in identifying nonproductive parts of the process (e.g., delays, temporary storages,
distances traveled). Figure 7.3 describes the symbols used in constructing a flow process
chart, and Figure 7.4 illustrates a flow process chart.
Flow process chart Chart
used to examine the overall
sequence of an operation by
focusing on movements of the
operator or flow of materials.

The uses for flow process charts include studying the flow of material through a department,
studying the sequence that documents or forms take, analyzing movement and care of
surgical patients, studying layout of department and grocery stores, and handling mail.
Experienced analysts usually develop a checklist of questions they ask themselves to generate
ideas for improvements. The following are some representative questions:
1. Why is there a delay or storage at this point?
2. How can travel distances be shortened or avoided?
3. Can materials handling be reduced?
4. Would a rearrangement of the workplace result in greater efficiency?
5. Can similar activities be grouped?
6. Would the use of additional or improved equipment be helpful?
7. Does the worker have any ideas for improvements?
A worker-machine chart is helpful in visualizing the portions of a work cycle during
which an operator and equipment are busy or idle. The analyst can easily see when the operator
and machine are working independently and when their work overlaps or is interdependent.
One use of this type of chart is to determine how many machines or how much equipment the
operator can manage. Figure 7.5 presents an example of a worker-machine chart, where the
“worker” is actually a customer weighing a purchase in the bulk-foods section of a supermarket.
Among other things, the chart highlights worker and machine utilization.

Installing the Improved Method. Successful implementation of proposed method changes

requires convincing management of the desirability of the new method and obtaining the
cooperation
of workers. If workers have been consulted throughout the process and have made suggestions
that are incorporated in the proposed changes, this part of the task will be considerably
easier than if the analyst has assumed sole responsibility for the development of the proposal.
If the proposed method constitutes a major change from the way the job has been performed
in the past, workers may have to undergo a certain amount of retraining, and full
implementation may take some time to achieve.
The Follow-Up. In order to ensure that changes have been made and that the proposed
method is functioning as expected, the analyst should review the operation after a reasonable
period and consult again with the operator.