The Truth About Managing People, Third Edition

Truth 50. Four Job-Design Actions That Will Make Employees More Productive

In spite of the reality that there are no ideal job designs that are right for everyone, there is substantial evidence that many people seem to have four common characteristics they prefer in a job. To the degree that you enrich jobs in your firm by encompassing these characteristics, you increase the probability that people will like their jobs and be motivated to generate high productivity in those jobs.

The following suggestions specify the types of changes in jobs that are most likely to lead to improving their productivity potential.

1. Combine tasks. Managers should seek to take existing and fractionalized tasks and put them together to form a new and larger module ...