Friday, June 12, 2009

Different between job rotation, job enlargement, job enrichment and group working.

Different between job rotation, job enlargement, job enrichment and group working. In your opinion, which one if them is a better way of restructuring work? Substantiate your opinion with illustrations.



a) Job Rotation: This involves rotating people between jobs on the same horizontal plane, either in an agreed or informal basis. It goes some way to achieving some of the desirable job characteristics of increased variety, use of different skills and the opportunity to learn. However, it makes only a limited contribution to improving the motivational content of the jobs.
b) Job Enlargement: This involves combining a number of tasks on the horizontal plane to increase the cycle times and create more complete and hence meaningful jobs. It reduces the degree of specialisation involved and may reduce the degree of pacing in an individuals job. However, as with job rotation, some of the other characteristics of autonomy in decision makirig, interaction and responsibility not fulfilled.
c) Job Enrichment: This introduces changes in the vertical plane by giving operators greater responsibility for decision relating to their work. Thus they may be involved in the planning and organisation of their work, for checking and quality control or for auxiliary tasks such as record keeping, etc. The aim of this change is to enhance the motivational content of the jobs in terms of increased autonomy, decision making, responsibility, recognition, etc. This can be achieved to some extent by change on the horizontal plane, i.e. giving employees total task and control over their pace of work. However, vertical job enrichment does have implications in term of organisation, since it gives employees greater involvement in decisions which traditionally have been the responsibility of management.
d) Group Working: This recognises the significance of groups at work. The advantages of group working are seen as increasing the confidence of workers through recognition of important skills, development of social skills and the opportunity to influence and exercise leadership. The group provides support, encouragement and security and since individuals are interdependent, there is more scope for delegating complete task responsibility to the group.
CURRENT ATTEMPTS AT WORK STRUCTURING
Attempt at work structuring have shifted from the individual jobs as a unit of analysis and design, towards the group and a more holistic approach to work organisation design and development. The earlier technique of job rotation, job enlargement and job enrichment are perhaps now recognised as having somewhat more limited application, while the broader approaches involved in group working and socio-technical system design can often provide an umbrella under which the objectives that the earlier techniques sought to achieve are fulfilled.
Examples of work structuring from India and Abroad
Many organisations, in India and abroad, have attempted work restructuring with varying degrees of success. We shall review here a few such attempts.

Bharat Heavy Electrical Ltd., (BHEL) Hardwar
BHEL is one of the largest public enterprises in India with six major manufacturing plants and several divisions. The Hardwar unit, employing over 10,000 employees is mainly concerned with manufacture of heavy electrical equipment such as steam and hydraulic turbines, generators and other related equipment. Though, it was, 10 years old, the unit was not coming as expected and production was not satisfying
Survey undertaken in the unit to diagnose the training needs of the middle management level, it was found that in some of the key areas managers were lacking knowledge and there ere information gaps. The situation was not conducive for an effective performance of their supervisory functions. Another study to find out the linkage between the quality of family and community life and the quality of workers life, showed a clear dichotomy between the life of the workers at the workplace and their life around the family.
The above were some of the factors which contributed in undertaking a work design experiment at a favourable work site. Block V, where 25 workmen were engaged in fabrication of the upper part of condenser unit was selected, in view of its compact character, reasonable layout and the positive attitude of the manager and the shop-floor trade union leaders. The reasons for selecting the group were : (1) the condenser was an expensive piece of equipment, (2) for the setting up of the power status it was necessary that a condenser unit should be placed at the site before the steam turbine was installed and as such it should be manufactured and dispatched at least two months ahead of the completed steam turbine and (3) the productivity in the shop was not of a high order.
The workers agreed to undertake the work redesign experiment after a series of talks with internal and external consultants. The total complement of 25 workers in Block V was made up of 9 fitters, 3 fitters, 3 welders, 2 gas-cutters, 1 crane operator, 2 riggers, 2 helpers and 3 workmen involved in materials supplies.
The study of the social system of work imposed by the work organisation indicated that (a) each worker was concerned with his own trade and that none identified himself with the product itself, (b) there was invariably forced idle time because when a particular worker was working at a spot, another worker who was required to do his job in close proximity, had to wait till the first worker had finished his job and (c) there was uneven demand on the services of the materials supplies group, crane operators and riggers. When the study was undertaken in April-May 1975, productivity was certainly very low. Part of the low productivity was on account of high rates of absenteeism during months. The workers, after analyses of data generated from their own experiences, decided on two steps:
1) To set up a task force with representatives of each category of workers and the supervisor. The shop manager would also participate in the meeting if the group so wanted and an industrial engineer was also associated with the group as a resource person. The task group had a membership of 8. Two of the members would be on it permanently because of their leadership abilities and the other members would rotate (except for supervisor).
2) A new work system which would take care of the workers motivation as well as overcoming the persisting culture of low productivity was to be formulated.
Consequently, work system was evolved in which the direct production group would consist of one welder, three fitters and 1 fetters. The functions of the group is to take change of the complete task and gradually take up one another's skills by undergoing on-the-job training. The same is with the crane operator and the riggers. It was decided that the gas cutters and helpers on the one hand and materials supplies group on the other would be integrated into the new work system at a later stage. With more experience and confidence, the workers brought about another redesign of their work organisation in the month of September 1975. Here the workforce was distributed in two shifty in the following manner:

Shift 1 Shift 2
Fitters 5 4
Welders 5 6
Gas-cutter 1 1
Pettier 1 1
In addition, crane operators were there in both the shifts. Each shift group became an integrated group with one group fabricating the right side of the upper part of the condenser unit and the other fabricating the left side. The same process was started in concerned with the manufacture of the lower part of the condenser unit. A similar small-group module was designed with the task force consisting of eight members with the provision of monthly rotation.
The results of these experiments were encouraging. There were steady increases in productivity Further, the old culture of one man-one function was replaced by the acquisition of multiple skills leasing to the development a group system of working with internal monitoring of group norms, internal control work flow and work allocation, identification with the product and its quality and the gradual drop in personal idle time on account of loitering, etc. The old culture that higher status work like that of welder or a fitter would stand in the way of taking up a low status job could be overcome.

The minutes of the meetings of the task force indicate a high degree of orientation towards work-interest issues such as delay in the repair of cranes, etc as against the usual union management type of meetings in which interest related issues assume importance, one could discern a distinct qualitative shift towards problem solving orientation with a view to looking at a problem as a collective one instead of making a scapegoat the other group.
The work reorganisation experiences also led to a new supervisory role in the form of liaison with the input and output developments, service units and involvement with central planning. This became possible as a result of work groups taking substantial control over the production process including routine inspection and maintenance activities to maintaining discipline.

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