Week 3 Summary

I hope you agree with me, the central question of Job Design is still an intriguing one: What makes a job a good job? And we’ve been through some answers during this session. We’ve seen the five core job dimensions like skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, feedback. However, you should look somewhat broader than the immediate tasks at hand. Job Design is more than designing only individual tasks, indivual jobs. In general, you could say that Job Design is seeking the right balance between on the one hand job demands and on the other hand job control or even broader job resources, in general. And still, Job Design is broader than that.

You should also take into account the social relationship at work, so working in teams is important. Finally, even one step beyond that, organizations should take into account that individuals want to shape their functions, their jobs, their carreers.

So, also job crafting should be part of the answer: What makes job a good job? Today, we live 21st century organizations, with digital work. Therefore, it’s our challenge now to translate these classic recommendations of job design and enrich them with novels strategies, like relations and proactive behaviours. Only, the combination of them will bring us further in the design of jobs for engaged workers. Well, so far in a nutshell job design. I hope you enjoyed it! The next topic will be HRM systems. For, it is important to have a holistic view of HRM, integrating all the policies and practices of both personnel and organizational part of HRM, together. Good luck with that!