A job characteristics model defines the job features and duration and occasionally mentions the potential candidates for particular responsibilities. A monotonous job can smother motivation, making employees feel undervalued and ignored. On the other hand, the job characteristics model can ignite motivation and drive performance. Companies in recent days, integrating the model with the other HRMS solution for getting better employee management practices.
This blog will enlighten you on the job characteristics model and how to effectively implement it within your company’s workforce. Let’s delve into this topic;
What is the job characteristics model?
The Job Characteristics Model (JCM) is a work design theory that identifies numerous job-related key factors, like work motivation practices, satisfactory work model development, and, ultimately, the process of employee engagement.
Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham first developed the model in 1976; it has since been used in various organizational studies and is known as the Hackman and Oldham job characteristics model.
Top 5 key features of the job characteristics model
Here are the top five key features in the job characteristic model, which explain the job types, proper task understanding, strategy to customize them and ultimately, meaningful work experience and further job satisfaction. The five core job distinguishing features are,
- Skill variety
- Task identity
- Task significance
- Autonomy
- Employee feedback
1. Skill Variety
Skill variety is considered the first feature of the job characteristic model. It includes various activities that use employees’ specialized skills or talents. Let’s take an example: if a software developer performs multiple duties like writing code, designing user interfaces, and conducting client meetings, it is considered as their skill variety over their daily work routine.
2. Task Identity
It is the second type in the feature list, which specifies the task types in detail. Moreover, the feature helps identify the doability of specific tasks, whether they fit into the broader organizational context or management needs assistance or guidance from contractual professionals.
3. Task Significance
Task significance is the third feature, which tells us how any specific job type impacts people’s daily lives within an organization or society. For example, when a person feels their work is making a gigantic impact on the well-being of others, leading to greater job satisfaction.
4. Autonomy
Autonomy is the fourth and most vital feature of the job characteristic model. It specifies the flexibility, freedom, and discretion every employee should have throughout their entire work tenure. A high autonomy leads to greater feelings of responsibility and control, ultimately resulting in employee motivation, job satisfaction, and productivity.
5. Feedback
The last feature of the five core job characteristics is delivering feedback. People receive clear and direct information about their hard work and performance through this feature. It helps the employees to improve themselves, stay motivated, and be engaged with their work by receiving frequent and constructive feedback. Let’s understand with an example: If an employee gets valuable feedback consecutively, he can evaluate and improve his performance. Which ultimately reflects employee engagement, motivation, and productivity.
What is the Goal of the Job Characteristics Model?
Acknowledging the benefits of the job characteristic model and following the steps of the model is also not enough for employers. Before initiating integration, it is essential to know the ultimate goal of the job characteristic model so that management gets proper assurance. JC model proposes that specific job characteristics influence key psychological states, which affect job outcomes. Here are nine primary goals of the JCM, outlined pointwise:
➔ Increasing Intrinsic Motivation
One core objective of the employee job characteristic model is to enhance employee motivation towards work. By delivering functionalities like intrinsic job design, bearable time duration, and flexible work ambience, the model seeks to encourage workers and engage them to work harder, ultimately improving productivity.
Besides, while focusing on designing jobs, a company can plan to reward employees using the JCM. The model collects all employee work-related documents and arranges reward programs. This intrinsic motivation results in improved performance and job satisfaction over time.
➔ Login to Employee Self Service Portal Enhancing Job Satisfaction
Another important goal of a job characteristic model is to evaluate job satisfaction and strategise a plan for fulfilling employee expectations. The JCM ensures features like skill variety, task significance, and task identity are designed to make employees feel that their contributions are valuable and impactful. Employees who experience these elements are more likely to feel satisfied with their jobs. Besides, the model also delivers end-to-end assistance by streamlining the collaboration between teammates and management.
➔ Improving Job Performance
The job characteristic model aims to improve employees’ work performance and productivity. The JCM introduces a job design model that creates a positive psychological state where employees become more committed to achieving high standards. Moreover, when employees feel valued, their responsibilities gradually improve, leading to a confident assurance of better performance outcomes.
➔ Providing Opportunities for Skill Development
Elevating employee motivation or enhancing their satisfaction for better productivity is not the only thing that the JCM does. One key goal of the model is to create job roles that offer opportunities for employees to develop and apply a wide range of skills.
Employers encourage employees to learn and grow by designing jobs that require various competencies. This not only increases their motivation but also contributes to their personal and professional development. This sense of growth enhances both job satisfaction and career progression.
➔ Reducing Turnover and Absenteeism
The job characteristic model ensures strategized job design to meet the psychological needs of employees, minimize turnover, and eliminate absenteeism in an organization. Jobs are enriched with characteristics like task significance and autonomy; employees like to stay with the organization and the costs associated with high turnover rates. Additionally, employees who find their work meaningful are less likely to take unnecessary absences.
➔ Empowering Employees with Autonomy
Presenting autonomy in the workplace means commencing a flexible work environment in employee customization. The job characteristic model gives the employees more self-control over their responsibilities so that they can focus on their performance instead of task target completion. When employees are free to make decisions about their work, they experience greater ownership.
➔ Initiate Transparent Feedback
Another key objective of the JCM is to provide employees with regular and actionable feedback. Feedback helps employees understand how well they are performing, fostering a sense of accomplishment and direction. When feedback is clear and constructive, employees can make necessary adjustments, feel more competent in their roles, and stay motivated to maintain or improve performance.
➔ Introducing a Positive Organizational Culture
Ultimately, the job characteristics theory aims to create a positive organizational culture by promoting meaningful, engaging, and fulfilling work. The model helps organizations develop a motivated, satisfied, and committed workforce by designing jobs that align with employees’ psychological needs.
A positive organizational culture, driven by well-designed jobs, leads to higher employee retention, improved collaboration, and better overall performance.
Benefits of the Job Characteristics Model
However, the’ Job Characteristic Model’ can be initially confusing. It is a framework with five core job functionalities- task identity, skill variety, task significance, autonomy, and feedback- and their impact on employee motivation, satisfaction, and performance. We can raise queries like how a ‘job’ has these distinctive features and functionality, how we would manage it, and even the consequences. We have already discussed the basic characteristic types of the model; here, we will highlight the benefits of integrating the model in the workplace, considering how it impacts both employees and organizations.
1. Job Satisfaction
Employees who are satisfied with workforce practices will stay for a long time. A job characteristic model suggests job types and related techniques and strategies that motivate employees and help them experience better fulfilment in their roles. The model helps employees understand how their work becomes meaningful and fits them satisfactorily into the ultimate work output.
For example, when employees are given a flexible atmosphere and sufficient opportunity to explore their expertise, they are more likely to feel valued and respected by the organization. Hence, engagement improves, leading to better employee morale, greater accomplishment, and positive work attitudes.
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2. Improved Employee Motivation
A job characteristic model ensures the implementation of strategic work practices, which are systematic and goal-oriented approaches to work.
The model creates a flexible work atmosphere where employees feel enthusiastic, free to specify their viewpoints, and motivated to work hard during their tenure. The platform inspires the employees to engage in their work more deeply, resulting in higher motivation.
Moreover, using the proper JCM features, employees can explore their creativity rather than just completing their daily boring task routine. They are also recognized through the process, which helps to boost their contributions and further productivity.
The model helps employees get feedback on their hard work and dedication, resulting in better performance and long-term employee retention.
3. Better Performance
Using the job characteristic model as a support, employees can experience strategic and streamlined work practices, leading to high motivation and job satisfaction. Hence, they perform well, contributing to the company’s overall success.
Moreover, it has functionality like ‘autonomy’ and ‘feedback’ (described earlier) that allows employees to monitor their progress and drawbacks and make necessary adjustments. The employees focus on delivering satisfactory output and retaining the company for an extended period, reflecting the company’s better productivity, employee satisfaction, and overall performance.
4. Low Absenteeism
High employee turnover and massive absenteeism often show employee disengagement, resulting in less productivity and business loss. A job characteristic model helps the employees strategize their work and perform accordingly. With the help of the model, employees can understand and analyze the present work types and urgency and perform accordingly per the company’s requirements. Hence, they get growth opportunities, which reduces company turnover rates and other product costs.
5. Personal Growth Enhancement
The JCM platform helps employees inhibit personal growth by encouraging them to acknowledge new skills and development. The model emphasizes job design and required skills, making it easier for employees to develop critical thinking skills, problem-solving abilities, and confidence.
Additionally, the model provides feedback features essential for employees and helpful for employers when evaluating their staff’s performance. So, with the help of the model, employees contribute to personal and professional development, and conversely, it reflects employee retention and company business growth.
6. Improved Organizational Culture
A supportive work culture enhances employee enthusiasm for work, makes them feel recognized and valued, and encourages them to trust the recent company workforce and do their best by sharing ideas and working together towards common goals. Moreover, employees who feel satisfied and motivated in their roles are likelier to exhibit positive attitudes and commence a supportive work environment.
7. Cost Savings for the Organization
By implementing the job characteristic model, organizations can significantly reduce costs while strategizing the workforce for the employees. JCM is a comprehensive solution where employees get all the task details, such as task type, task submission date, task analysis, feedback review, etc., from one platform instead of searching on a complex database or spreadsheet. From the organization’s viewpoint, management spends less when integrating with the JCM than connecting with multiple software, providing a sense of security and efficiency.
How to Apply the Job Characteristics Model
The primary content already discussed the functionalities and benefits of the job characteristic model, but people can be confused when considering how to apply it to the workforce management system. The following points highlight the steps of integrating the JCM into the organization.
Step 1: Understand the Five Core Job Dimensions
Before inviting the model into your workforce, it is essential to understand the five core job dimensions, which drive motivation to the employee and employer’s psychology. The five-core job features mainly include
- Skill variety ensures multiple skill development strategies, reduces monotony and allows employees to use a broad range of abilities.
- Task Identity ensures the project’s every detail from start to finish, enhancing employees’ sense of accomplishment within the workforce.
- Task Significance describes how any work and its purpose of completion are essential for business growth and people’s personal development.
- Autonomy signifies the level of independence and flexibility an employee should receive throughout their entire working tenure when making decisions about work, schedules, and completion.
- Feedback is the final feature that helps employees understand how well they are performing and where they can improve.
Step 2: Assess the Current Job Design
Before applying the job characteristic model, employers need to understand the current job design for dedicated employees. Management should run different employee surveys to understand and analyse the employee experience and perception of the current roles and responsibilities. Then, they need to analyse the job role before assigning responsibility to a specific employee. Delivering employee feedback is also included in the job design practices.
Step 3: Identify Opportunities to Enhance Job Characteristics
Before integrating the job characteristic model, it is essential to determine what types of opportunities employers can deliver to their employees. Once you’ve gathered data about the existing job designs, look for opportunities to enhance the core job dimensions. Based on the findings, consider the following activities: offering training before assigning responsibility to any employee, initiating a rotational workforce by maintaining work-life balance, and requiring employees to use a broader range of skills or take on different tasks.
Step 4: Assess Individual and Contextual Factors
Employers should consider individual differences and contextual factors while adjusting the job characteristics model. Let me explain clearly: if an employee is motivated to work in a flexible atmosphere while others may value working in fixed hours, as per the workforce’s diverse needs. On the other hand, the company should be aware of the available resources, industry norms, and organizational culture to strategise the model based on the factors.
Step 5: Calculate the Motivating Potential Score (MPS)
The Motivating Potential Score (MPS) is a key tool in the JCM. It quantifies the motivating potential of a job based on the five core dimensions:
MPS= (Skill Variety +Task Identity + Task Significance)/3 × Autonomy× Feedback
The MPS score helps assess how motivating a job is likely to be. Higher scores indicate more motivating jobs. If the MPS score is low, focus on improving the dimensions with the lowest scores.
Step 6: Revise the Job Design
Once employers identify the employee requirements, their working style, and product delivery strength, they can focus on the areas of improvement, develop a clear plan to implement the changes like revising job descriptions to reflect the new responsibilities, skills, and autonomy, offering training programs to help employees adapt to new tasks or ways of working, making clear communication the rationale for job changes to employees to help them understand how the redesign benefits them.
Step 7: Monitor and Evaluate the Results
After implementing the changes, analyse both the employer and employee reactions and closely monitor the results. If something unsatisfying happens, employers can attend to further redesign practices through different employee surveys, evaluate performance metrics, and analyse turnover rates to analyse the effectiveness of the redesign. If employees report increased motivation and satisfaction, the changes are likely working. Be open to adjusting based on feedback.
Step 8: Continuous Improvement
Implement Job design, analyse the process, gather feedback, and continue it with further moderation. Job design is not static, so employers need to maintain continuous improvement. Periodically revisit the job characteristics to ensure they meet the organisation’s and its employees’ needs. Encourage ongoing dialogue with employees about how their roles can be further improved.
Now it’s your turn!
What do you think? What do you believe? What do you feel? Does the job characteristic model help your workforce handle and improve employee management practices? do you have anything to add or some more tips to share regarding this job theory? let’s highlighted them by sharing our blog content.
