Job Specification and Job Design

 

Job Specification

The job description specifies the minimal requirements that the incumbent must possess in order to execute the job properly. The job specification specifies the knowledge, skills, and abilities required to execute the work effectively based on the information gathered via job analysis. Individuals who possess the personal traits listed in the job specification should be able to perform the work more successfully than those who do not.

As a result, the job specification is a crucial tool in the selection process since it maintains the selector's focus on the list of qualities required of an incumbent to do the position and helps determine whether contenders are qualified.

The following items should be included in a job specification:

1. Physical attributes such as health, strength, stamina, age, height, weight, eyesight, voice, eye, feet and hands coordination, motor skills, and colour discrimination.

2. Emotional stability, adaptability, decision-making capacity, analytical view, mental ability, pleasant manners, initiative, conversational skill, and so on.

3. General intellect, memory, judgement, concentration, foresight, and other mental characteristics

4. Individual attributes such as gender, education, family history, work experience, interests, extracurricular activities and so on.

All of these traits must be divided into three categories:

• Characteristics that must be had by a person.
• Desirable characteristics that a person should have.
• Contraindicators that will be a hindrance to effective job performance.

Job Design

Job design is a relatively new concept. Human resource managers have discovered that the work design has a significant impact on productivity and job satisfaction; badly designed jobs frequently result in employee boredom, higher turnover, job discontent, poor performance, and a spike in the organization's total expenses. With appropriate work design, all of these negative outcomes may be avoided.

Job design is an attempt to fit job needs to human characteristics. It entails arranging the job's components as well as the patterns of interaction among the members of a work group. It aids in the creation of appropriate employment designs that increase efficiency and pleasure.

Principles of Job Design

Principles are the foundations of the job design methodology. The following five work design concepts were proposed by Robertson and Smith (1985):

• To promote skill diversity, provide individuals the opportunity to execute several jobs and combine them;
• To impact task identity, combine tasks and delegate work to natural work units.
• To impact the value of a task, establish natural work units, and tell individuals about the importance of their job.
• Give people responsibility for choosing their own working systems to encourage autonomy.
• Establish solid relationships and open feedback channels to impact feedback