Work Design

Work Design refers to the process of organizing tasks, responsibilities, and systems to improve employee productivity, satisfaction, and overall workplace efficiency. This concept is crucial for optimizing how work is performed and involves a thoughtful arrangement of job roles and functions that align with both organizational goals and employee needs. Work Design takes into account various factors, including the physical environment, social dynamics, and the technology used in the workplace.

The aim of effective Work Design is to create a work environment that enhances motivation, reduces stress, and promotes collaboration among team members. It acknowledges the diversity of employee experiences and emphasizes the importance of designing jobs that accommodate different skills, backgrounds, and preferences. Moreover, Work Design can significantly impact employee engagement and retention, making it a vital aspect for any organization looking to thrive in a competitive landscape. As organizations continue to evolve, the principles of Work Design remain fundamental in shaping a productive and harmonious workplace.

Published in: 2021

By: Trudy Mercadal, PhD

Subject Terms

Work Design

Last reviewed: February 2017

Abstract

“Work Design” refers to a process of resolving contemporary workplace concerns, including distribution of repetitive tasks and enhancing worker satisfaction. Many global workplaces are more flexible and people-centric organizations than they were in centuries past. National differences, however, exist. Some countries exert more direct legislative and institutional pressure over the workplace than others, ensuring higher participation, autonomy, and workplace protections for employees. Organizations behave in accordance with the norms and expectations of their countries, inevitably shaping work design differently around the world.

Overview

Also referred to as “job design,” work design refers to workplace distributions and policies specifically aimed at overcoming employee disaffection and alienation. It originally began as a way to solve problems arising from the dissatisfaction experienced by workers engaged in repetitive mechanical tasks. The idea was to increase productivity as well as reduce worker discomfort. The concept was later expanded to other types of workplaces. In the contemporary workplace, work design is geared toward increasing productivity by way of non-tangible rewards such as personal well-being, satisfaction, fulfillment, and achievement.

History. Even though work design as we know it is considered a twentieth century phenomenon, the idea of creating arrangements for work has existed since human beings first became organized into communities. Early organizational forms may have been at first horizontal—relatively egalitarian—and eventually became more vertical or hierarchical as societies evolved in more complex ways. Scientists and scholars have determined that prior to living in established agrarian settlements, early hunter-gatherers created autonomous and flexible work groups. These work groups were not very different from the teams that modern job design experts have promoted in more cutting-edge work environments of the twenty-first century.

Settling into agrarian societies altered how people organized for work, that is, it changed the work design of the times. People began to depend more on the seasons and natural cycles of life with advances in animal husbandry and agriculture, as well as other tasks associated with fixed settlements, such as construction, maintenance, complex tool-making, and craft-making. Living a settled life allowed people to accumulate more than they needed for subsistence, which in turn created a more structured hierarchy and more sophisticated divisions of labor. Eventually, at the bottom of society, a class of subordinates who worked as forced labor, or slaves, formed.

In the middle ages in Europe, Christian churches and monasteries spread and craft guilds formed, further changing the work arrangements into more complex pre-modern systems, which included highly refined skills such as accounting, record keeping, bookmaking, and teaching. Society was arranged in very rigid hierarchical structures, which still included a great deal of coerced and other forms of unpaid labor.

With the arrival of the Industrial Revolution in Europe in the seventeenth century, the concept developed of labor as something that workers voluntarily sold to the owners of factories and other forms of mechanized manufacture. From the employer’s point of view, the necessity of paying for labor had to balanced with means of extracting the greatest profit from the workplace. It would not be until the twentieth century that work arrangements as design became a serious object of study (Nicholson, 2010).

Taylorism. At the inception of the twentieth century, industrial working arrangements became the object of scientific study. Taylorism, named for Frederick W. Taylor, sought to increase production and economic efficiency in the workplace. Taylor, a mechanical engineer, advocated organizing jobs along assembly-lines, breaking down complex worker responsibilies into small, repetitive tasks. Simple tasks can be performed by workers with relatively minimal skills and training. Taylor’s method ensured maximum efficiency and fueled the spread of industrial mass production in the United States.

Taylorism increased productivity but also had a negative impact. Positioning workers as mindless and easy-to-replace cogs in a machine alienated them from their jobs and workplace. After World War II, experts began to study ways to organize tasks that would consider a variety of factors beyond mere efficiency, such as employee safety and well-being. Worker unions formed and began to fight for better working conditions, such as shorter work days and work weeks. Managers began to implement employee health and safety policies and to consider elements of workplace design, such as work rotation, breaks, and lighting. Professional human resources departments were created, and the field of ergonomics developed to answer concerns about physically compromising equipment and furniture for workers.

Contemporary Workplace. As the field of work design evolved, ensuring that individuals felt motivated by their work became an important component. For example, managers are urged to carefully select individuals for specific tasks in accordance with their skills and talent. Firms began to consider their employees as their most important asset. They started to include employees in devising company goals and sought ways to improve personal and professional satisfaction among the workforce.

It is important, however, that work design comply with realistic production goals. Worker satisfaction measures must occur within the framework of organizational objectives. One of the best ways to achieve this, say experts, is through joint decision-making—that is, including employee opinion in company plans and goals. In fact, it has been shown that including those workers who have more direct knowledge of a process leads to better decision-making overall. Developments that empowered employees were accompanied by increased team work and collaborative practices.

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the workplace was greatly impacted by the rapidly growing knowledge economy, in which encouraging proactivity in employees became very important. In a knowledge economy, dependent on accessibility to information, the ability to constantly adapt and improve is of paramount importance. Many workplaces became concerned with designing work that encouraged creativity and innovativeness. Proactive employees were more prone to being highly adaptable and taking risks and initiative, characteristics that were highly desired in innovative environments.

Besides fostering innovativeness and proactivity, an approach known as job crafting developed, in which employees may anticipate—and are accountable for—changes in their workplace tasks and flow, and thus lead changes in their job and goals. In other words, workplaces in which this approach is implemented, allow change to occur from the bottom-up and maintain a flexible environment in which these activities may succeed. Therefore, some experts argue, empowering employees with leeway for decision-making and personal accountability, increases both efficiency and effectiveness in the workplace (Singh & Singh, 2016).

Further Insights

The modern field of work design was born from research developed in the last decades of the twentieth century. In the late 1970s, J. R. DeJong, an expert in work redesign, came up with a series of strategies meant to introduce change to increase worker motivation and satisfaction, particularly for tasks that were monotonous or low on engagement. To implement these, DeJong recommended the following:

The method or approach should be participative—that is, include the workers.
Workers involved must be willing to redesign their jobs or work situation.
Management should gather and include pertinent information concerning present tasks, situations, and opinions of all individuals concerned.
It should include openness to a re-consideration of horizontal and vertical task engagement, as well as factors such as work organization and equipment, product design, and payment system.
Overall autonomy and enrichment for work groups, when possible, should be preferred over work rotation and enlargement.
The final design should be flexible, that is, allow alternatives for task and work performance.

Moreover, DeJong was prescient in also recommending that the conventional rational and analytical mind frame associated with organizational management should also be accompanied by creative thinking.

In time, other productivity and workplace experts built upon the work of twentieth century experts. They discovered that the physical environment of the workplace can affect employees’ motivation and performance; comfortable working conditions can affect in positive ways these factors, as can allowing workers a good measure of control over their conditions and work. Unsafe or uncomfortable working conditions, on the other hand, impact negatively an individual’s ability to work; these generate undesirable results, such as high turnover rate.

In other words, workplace design that is comfortable and human-centered is more likely to increase creativity, innovation, and productivity as well as decrease the incidence of error and workplace accidents and employee turnover. Work design strategies that provide ideal conditions for motivation and performance include elements such as comfortable temperature, access to nature and open views, lighting, color, noise ambiance, air quality, ergonomics, spacing (or crowding), and employee engagement.

Issues

Work design has advanced significantly since work and the workplace first became objects of study and analysis by experts, becoming more humane and people-centered. Nevertheless, Taylorism remains the norm in many contemporary workplaces. Some industries thrive on flexibility and innovation, but others remain dependent upon highly mechanized processes, especially in the rapid and aggressive competition of a globalized economy.

Experts posit that national culture has much to do with the ways in which firms implement the work methods deemed necessary. In some regions of the world, for example, anti-Taylorist movements have grown, such as in northern and western Europe, such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries, where assembly-line type jobs have been modified by work conditions that include enrichment and quality standards.

This has important correlations with one of the factors that most concern many firms, that is, high employee turnover. Industries that must invest in recruiting and training workers incur major capital losses when employees leave in high numbers. These expenses run into the billions every year.

Therefore, workplace strategies aimed at employee retention can save companies a significant amount of capital. While not all employee discontent results in high employee turnover, especially during economic downturns or recessions, employee discontent and desire to leave does negatively impact workplace motivation, morale, and productivity. This may also result in other forms of negative expression, including absenteeism, boycotting, and vandalism, which inevitably harm work performance (Wang-Jing, Yung-Shui & Tung-Chun, 2013).

Coordinated economies like those of northern Europe include collaborative and strategic relationships that operate high on trust and include a strong system of interactions between a variety of organizations, such as firms, banks, unions, employer associations, and work councils. Firms work with unions to set wages that are deemed acceptable to both and in developing industry-specific standards and skill sets. This has occurred because relatively strong unions and government oversight has ensured legal control of employment, wage rate protection, constant training, and other issues pertaining to the workplace, such as hiring and firing conditions. Although this has meant less flexible labor markets than in more liberal economies, it has also resulted in less labor turnover and a more highly skilled workforce. Moreover, managers feel free to allow workers a high degree of control and decision-making, decreasing the need for direct control by management.

In liberal economies, on the other hand, such as the United States and Canada, workplace dynamics are based on individual contractual relationships and the competitive labor market. Unions are weak and generally mistrusted by firms, and employer associations—such as the Better Business Bureau or the United States Chamber of Commerce—do not function as employer-worker partnering organizations in the way that occurs in coordinated economies. In such labor markets, job protection is comparatively limited and employers less likely to provide training. In consequence, there is a lower rate of overall skill development and higher rates of performance oversight, according to experts. Liberal economies, however, are more flexible in regards to wages, work mobility and other work conditions (Crouch, Finegold & Sako, 1999).

Of course, differences exist between industry-specific studies in the countries analyzed, such as between manufacturing and service operations. Yet findings consistently show that jobs in nations such as in Germany and the Scandinavian countries—Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden—have significantly more autonomy or work discretion than jobs in Australia, Canada, and the United States. These differences persist across variables such as industry sector, occupation, educational level, and age. Most differences are rooted in management and training systems preferred in each nation, as well as the existence and solidity of local bargaining institutions, such as unions and employer associations. In addition, experts add that English-speaking nations tend to be significantly influenced by Taylorism, with a heavy reliance on rationality, supervision, codification, job rules and routines, and less autonomy and skill-development opportunities (Holma, Frenkel, Sorensen & Wood, 2009).

These studies illuminate the ways in which national culture and formal institutions influence organizational dynamics, including the area of work design. They also shed light on the extent of worker representation in the workplace. Despite the comparatively unregulated structure in the United States, for example, national institutions still influence workplace interactions. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission are federal agencies in charge of protecting different aspects of workers’ rights and workplace conditions.

In short, a growing tendency worldwide has made workplaces more flexible, humane, and egalitarian than was the case in centuries past. Some countries, however, exert more direct legislative and institutional pressure over the workplace than others, opening spaces for higher rates of worker participation and autonomy and offering better job protection. Moreover, managers and workers usually behave in accordance with the laws, protections, customs, and expectations normative in their countries. All these factors continue to influence the field of work design, as do global interactions, cultural cross-pollination, and local/global economic forces.

Terms & Concepts

Coordinated Market Economy: One of the varieties of a capitalist system, these rely on institutional market regulation and the interactions of all stakeholders in the market, including firms, suppliers, unions, and banks. In this system, there are higher levels of job security, and worker participation in organizational decisions is encouraged.

Ergonomics: The scientific field used in organizational settings that focuses on workplace design methods aimed at improving and promoting physical well-being and improved performance.

Human Resources (HR): The HR department in any firm is the division in charge of all employment administrative issues, such as hiring, benefits, payroll, and medical insurance.

Knowledge Economy: An economy that is based not on the conventional means of production or commerce but on the production and distributuion of information.

Lean Production: A manufacturing or production system bent on the elimination of wastefulness and efficient and effective flow.

Liberal Market Economies: One of the two major branches of the capitalist system, liberalism is characterized by a higher rate of deregulation and expressed in a free economy or mixed economies with significant freedoms. Relationships between organizations and their stakeholders tend to be based on competition.

Participative: The term implies that individuals involved in a situation or activity are included, agree to, and are prepared to assist in the event.

Proactivity: Self-starting behavior aimed at change and improvement.

Taylorism: A system that breaks all workplace activity into specific tasks.

Bibliography

Chang, W. A., Wang, Y., & Huang, T. (2013). Work design-related antecedents of turnover intention: A multilevel approach. Human Resource Management, 52(1), 1–26. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=85103173&site=ehost-live

De Spiegelaere, S., Van Gyes, G., De Witte, H., & Van Hootegem, G. (2015). Job design, work engagement and innovative work behavior: A multi-level study on Karasek's learning hypothesis. Management Revue, 26(2), 123–13. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=103619991&site=ehost-live

Dierdorff, E. C., & Morgenson, F. P. (2013). Getting what the occupation gives: Exploring multilevel links between work design and occupational values. Personnel Psychology, 66(3), 687–721. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=89220898&site=ehost-live

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Gittell, J. H., Weinberg, D. B., Bennett, A. L., & Miller, J. A. (2008). Is the doctor in? A relational approach to job design and the coordination of work. Human Resource Management, 47(4), 729–75. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=35387125&site=ehost-live

Holmsn, D., Frenkel, S., Sorensen, O., & Wood, S. (2009). Work design variation and outcomes in call centers: Strategic choice and institutional explanations. Industrial & Labor Relations Review, 62(4), 510–532. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=42212417&site=ehost-live

Lu, Y., & Roto, V. (2015). Evoking meaningful experiences at work—A positive design framework for work tools. Journal of Engineering Design, 26(4-6), 99–120. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=103224538&site=ehost-live

Nicholson, N. (2010). The design of work—An evolutionary perspective. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 31(2/3), 422–431. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=47805900&site=ehost-live

Santos, F. M., Pache, A., & Birkholz, C. (2015). Making hybrids work: Aligning business models and organizational design for social enterprises. California Management Review, 57(3), 36–58. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=103146034&site=ehost-live

Singh, V. L., & Singh, M. (2016). Techniques of job crafting: An exploratory study on management consultants. South Asian Journal of Management, 23(2), 25–50. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=117659012&site=ehost-live

Work Design

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Subject Terms

Work Design

Abstract

Overview

Further Insights

Issues

Terms & Concepts

Bibliography

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