The Effect Of Work Design On Other Organisational Functions And Activities Including Production, Finance, Human Resources, And Marketing Etc.

The effect of Work Design on other organisational functions and activities including Production, Finance, Human Resources, and Marketing etc.

Work Design is closely related to operations management and within this is will have the greatest effect on production, which is an operations function, rather than finance, human resources or marketing which are separate business functions.

Production

Productivity has been generally defined as a ratio of a measure of output to a

measure of some or all of the resources used to produce this output. The effect of work design on production will be within the employees involved in producing the goods for a company and the ways to increase their output. Some of these ways will be through job design, job enrichment, job rotation and motivation.

Job design is a concept wherein a worker is given a larger share of the overall production task. This involves horizontal loading, which is where the additional work given to the employee is of the same difficulty level and responsibility as the other jobs that they do. The aim of job design is to give the employee more and different things to do so that they are less bored within their job. From a production point of view an assembly worker would be given responsibility for a sequence of events rather than just one.

Another way that production would change would be through job rotation. This is where employees regularly change their jobs. For this to be effective the worker would have to change to a more interesting job as there is little point in changing from a boring job to another boring job. In production using the example of an assembly line worker again they would switch to a job that is not on the production line, to give them a change of pace.

Job enrichment is also a method of work design that would affect production workers. Job enrichment involves increasing the level of responsibility for planning and coordination tasks, it is referred to as vertical loading. This works for production workers by focusing on satisfying them within their job so as to motivate them further.

Motivation is a key element within work design. The ways that motivation affect production is as previously stated to motivate employees to work better and increase their output. Frederick Herzberg contributed to work design two theories of motivation which are the hygiene theory and what people actually do on the job.

The hygiene theory is simple ergonomics which Herzberg has chosen to call hygiene. The first part of the motivation theory involves the hygiene theory and includes the job environment. The hygiene factors include the company, its policies and its administration, the kind of supervision which people receive while on the job, working conditions interpersonal relations, salary, status, and security.

These ergonomic factors will not lead to higher levels of motivation but if a company does not have these in positive forms there is dissatisfaction.

The second part of Hertzberg's' motivation theory involves what people actually do on the job. The motivators are achievement, recognition, growth and advancement and interest in the job.

Herzberg states that for maximum affect both these approaches must be done simultaneously. Within work design in a production system will involve treating people as best you can so they have a minimum of dissatisfaction. It will also involve using people so they get achievement, recognition for achievement, interest, and responsibility and they can grow and advance in their work.

The hygiene factors that will affect production and production workers are the company policies and administration, the method of supervision, the working conditions and the interpersonal relations of employees. The motivation factors according to Herzberg that will affect production and production workers are; the achievement of employees and the recognition for achievement. An employee's interest in the task, their responsibility for an enlarged task and their potential growth and advancement within a business.

Finance

The affect on finance of introducing a work design system will be from the compensation. Compensation is a motivation factor and this will affect finance