GROUP 7

Summary (facilitator)

The Job and Work Environment

CHAPTER 16: Human Factors in Job Design

                

This chapter is concerned with some of the factors that might affect job performance, job attendance, job satisfaction, and other criteria of human behavior in industry. The nature of jobs – that is, their content, methods, procedures, activities, and so forth – can be the consequence of any of several influences some intentional and others unintentional.

Major Approaches to Job Design

METHODS ANALYSIS - Emerged from industrial engineering, focusing on the development of efficient work methods, thus having a significant impact on the nature of jobs.

HUMAN FACTORS - Concerned generally with the design of physical equipment and facilities people used and the environments in which they work and live so they are more suitable for human use.

JOB ENLARGEMENT (job enrichment) - Has been aimed more at expanding jobs, thereby increasing job complexity, decision making, and responsibility.

The criteria for evaluating human factors principles and data are performance criteria, physiological criteria, certain subjective criteria, and accident and injury criteria. Many human work activities conform to this pattern: an individual receives stimuli that in turn serve as the instigation of responses. This paradigm can express in terms of information-input processes, mediation processes, and action processes.

               

Information-input processes. The sensory organs of the body are the avenues through with individuals receive information about their environment, including the information available in performing their jobs. Information is presented indirectly by the use of some man-made display. Displays can be described as either static (signs, printed material, labels, and so forth) or dynamic (speedometers, clocks, radios, and so forth). These are used to present various types of information of quantitative information, qualitative information, check information and alphanumeric or symbolic information. There are certain guidelines that must be followed in designing displays – the delectability, discriminability, compatibility, symbolic association, standardization and use of multidimensional codes.

              

  Mediation processes. The nature of this function naturally varies with the situation but can include judgments and evaluations, reasoning, computations, and other mental operations. The concept of compatibility in the human factors refers to the spatial, movement, or conceptual feature of stimuli and responses, individually or in combination, which are most consistent with human expectations.

              

  Action processes. In designing equipment and in developing methods, it is desirable to provide for those human physical actions and responses that will result in the desired output. Psychomotor skills of people to work and equipment design perhaps can be viewed from two frames of reference – performance on variations of a given basic activity and individual differences in performance of a given activity. Control devices – the three types are correct identification, essentially a coding problem: specific design features: and location.

              

  Fixed work stations should be so designed that the individuals can perform their tasks effectively, comfortably, and safely.





Chapter 17: Job Enlargement

   Chapter 17 describes and evaluates job enlargement principles and practices. Job enlargement has been used to describe the expansion of the number of duties and responsibilities associated with a particular job. This expansion can occur along two dimensions – the horizontal loading - increases the number of subtasks required in jobs without increasing their responsibility or complexity, and the vertical - enlarged vertically by expanding ability and skill requirements as well as the amount of responsibility and autonomy required from job-holders.

The five basic dimensions of jobs are identified which affect psychological states of the employee and are described as follows:

1.      SKILL VARIETY – is the degree to which the job requires a variety of different activities in carrying out the work.

2.      TASK IDENTITY – is the degree to which the job requires the completion of a whole unit of work.

3.      Task significance- is the extent to which the jobs have a substantial impact on the lives and work of the people.

4.      AUTONOMY – is the freedom the job holder has to schedule his or her activities on the job and determine the procedures to be used to carry them out.

5.      FEED BACK – is the degree to which the individual obtains direct and clear information about the effectiveness of his or her performance.

Three conclusions of Katzell, Yankelovich, and others from their review of the job design research.

1.      In the most cases enlarging jobs does lead to higher levels of job satisfaction and other job attitudes.

2.      The performance changes in response to job enlargement are equivocal.

3.      The effectiveness of job enlargement is affected by conditions in the job environment and by the individuals who experience it.

Qualifying issues all point to a need for a systems perspective in the redesign of jobs with regard to job enlargement.

CHAPTER 18: Job Evaluation

The primary purpose of this chapter is to discuss the process of job evaluation, which is the dominant procedure for establishing rates of pay for various jobs.

Bases for Compensation

SALARY – paid to people for many types of jobs.

HOURLY WAGE RATE – commonly paid to workers in many blue-collar jobs, some office jobs, and certain other types of jobs.

INCENTIVE PAY – paid in relation to workers productivity, particular incentive system ranging from simple piece rates to complex systems in which increasing productivity is rewarded by differing ratios.

COMMISSION – basically the same s incentive systems except that they apply largely to sales jobs.

TIPS – a form of payment, in some instances over and above a basic salary or hourly rate, and in other instances as virtually the exclusive basis of earnings.

OTHER FORMS OF COMPENSATION – usually supplementary, such as profit-sharing schemes and bonuses.

The general wage level in any given labor market depends on a number of different factors such as and demand , government wage controls, contract negotiations, general economic conditions, general regional and industrial factors higher in certain regions or industries than, and productivity.

The wages administration policy of an organization needs to provide for offering wages that will attract and retain a competent work force, and at the same time it needs to keep its total wage payments reasonably in line with going rate levels in order to remain competitive in the sale of its products or services.

Steps in Installing a Job Evaluation System

1.      Establishing responsibility

2.      Development or selection of the job evaluation system to be used

3.      Preparing  job descriptions

4.      Evaluation of jobs

5.      Converting evaluations to money values

6.      Providing for evaluation of new jobs.

Methods of Job Evaluation

1.      RANKING METHOD - jobs are compared with each other, usually on the basis of judged overall worth. These judgments are obtained by simple rankings of jobs.

2.      CLASSIFICATION METHOD – consist of several categories of jobs along a hypothetical scale.

3.      POINT METHOD – characterized by the following:

a.       Use of several job evaluation factors.

b.      Assignment of points to varying degress or levels of each factor.

c.       Evaluation of individual jobs in terms of their degress or level on each factor.

d.      Addition of the point values for the individual factors to derive the total point value for each job.

4.      FACTOR COMPARISON METHOD – jobs then are compared to others in terms of factors common to all jobs. Such factors are mental requirements, skill requirements, physical requirements, responsibility, and working conditions.

5.      JOB-COMPONENT-METHOD – is the implicit assumption that similarities in job content impose similar job demands on the incumbents and should therefore warrant corresponding rates of pay.

CHAPTER 19: Working Condition

Working condition covers two general categories. The first is on the physical environment with particular reference to illumination, noise, and atmospheric conditions. The second is on various aspects of time, such as hours of work, work schedules, and rest pauses.

Illumination levels for various tasks should be prescribed according to two classes of criteria – visual performance and visual comfort. The intrinsic characteristics of the task that affect the ability to make visual discriminations include the brightness contrast of the details to be discriminated against their backgrounds, the size of the details to be discriminated, and the time available for seeing.

Atmospheric conditions deals with the more common aspect of atmosphere, especially temperature and humidity. Heat stress, heat stroke, and even death can be caused by excessive heat; it is desirable to provide working conditions that are within reasonable tolerance limits. Such limits, however, need to take into account the work load and duration of work.

Noise is created by human technology such as machines, trains, airplanes, automobiles, motors, and other mechanisms of our lives. If noise levels are kept within reasonable bounds in terms of other criteria, such levels typically would not have a serious effect on work performance as such.

Work schedule is an important condition of work from the worker’s point of view. Its aspects are the total number of hours worked per week (forty-hour week), the distribution of hours throughout the work week (four-day work week), shift work, and provision for rest periods.

There was some evidence indicating that errors tend to be a bit higher and output a bit lower on shift work, especially on the night shift, but these effects were not consistent and may be attributable to certain characteristics of the workers.

Rest period, rest during work it should be noted first that for work that is physically demanding or that is done under extremely hot conditions, rest periods should be provided in order to compensate for adverse physiological effects. Its typically do not reduce output even though there is less time worked and in fact sometimes increase output.

CHAPTER 20: Accident and Safety

Accident means any unexpected event that interrupts or interferes with the orderly progress of the production activity or process. It may also cause damage to equipment or materials or may delay production, without resulting in an injury or fatality. Accident behavior can be considered as being a precipitating factor in by far the majority of accidents.

Surry proposed a model that seems to offer a reasonable frame of reference for viewing the occurrence of accidents.

The three Principal Stages

Stage1. Environment - It is both spatial and temporal, with potential injury agents (moving equipment, machines, tools, hazards etc.)

 Stage2. Hazard-imminent danger – it is caused by condition or circumstances that, if unchecked, will lead to inevitable injury or damage.

Stage3. Injury and/or damages – it would develop if there is any negative response to one of the cycle leading to this stage.

Two Classes of Variables in Accident Occurrence

Situational factors – the general characteristics of situations set the stage by establishing the probability of accidents – inducing circumstances. There are many different situational factors that contribute to accident frequency and some of these are job factors, work schedule, and atmospheric conditions.

Individual factors – an individual’s personal characteristics give rise to one’s predisposing behavior tendencies that in turn influence potential accident behaviors, thus in a sense contributing to the incidence of specific accident behavior of an individual in any given situation.

The specific personal factors related to accidents are vision, age and length of services, perceptual motor relationships, perceptual style, and other factors adjustive behavior, then, can be viewed as a consistent predisposition toward – essentially an attitude.

A few of the possible approaches to reducing accidents from the human liability side of the coin, rather than from the situational side are personnel selection and placement, safely training, and persuasion and propaganda.