JOB DESIGN is the process of putting together various elements to form a

job, bearing in mind organizational and individual worker requirements, as well as

considerations of health, safety, and ergonomics. The scientific management approach of

Frederick Winslow Taylor viewed job design as purely mechanistic, but the later human

relations movement rediscovered the importance of workers' relationship to their work

and stressed the importance of job satisfaction. Job design refers to the way that a set of

tasks, or an entire job, is organized. Job design helps to determine. It takes into account

all factors which affect the work, and organizes the content and tasks so that the whole

job is less likely to be a risk to the employee. Job design involves administrative areas

such as: job rotation, job enlargement, task/machine pacing, work breaks, and working

hours. A well designed job will encourage a variety of 'good' body positions, have

reasonable strength requirements, require a reasonable amount of mental activity, and

help foster feelings of achievement and self-esteem.

Management viewed job design since the industrial revolution in the approaches to Job

Design USING SOCIO TECHNICAL SYSTEMS There are three important approaches

to job design, viz., Engineering approach, Human approach and The Job characteristic

approach. Engineering Approach

The most important single element in the Engineering approaches, proposed by FW

Taylor and others, was the task idea, "The work of every workman is fully planned out by

the management at least one day in advance and each man receives in most cases

complete written instructions, describing in detail the task which he is to accomplish . . .

This task specifies not only what is to be done but how it is to be done and the exact time

allowed for doing it." The principles offered by scientific management to job design can

be summarized thus:

l Work should be scientifically studied. As advocated fragmentation and reutilization of

work to reap the advantages of specialization.

l Work should be arranged so that workers can be efficient.

l Employees selected for work should be matched to the demands of the job.

l Employees should be trained to perform the job.

l Monetary compensation should be used to reward successful performance of the job.

These principles to job design seem to be quite rational and appealing because they