The increase in productivity and the decrease in controllable rejects Essay

Question 1. What changes in the work situation might account for the increase in productivity and the decrease in controllable rejects?
In general, it is possible to identify a number of factors related to work design which influence the work situation: job task and meaning, performance requirements, possibilities of development, independence and responsibility, status (recognition, etc.), interpersonal relations and company culture (Cummings & Worley, 2008). The changes in the organization of the hotplate assembly process have affected several significant factors in the design of the work system. First of all, the meaning of the work and independence have improved – earlier workers could not see the effect of their work, and had no personal responsibility for the hotplates. Job cycle became longer and included diverse activities; this helped to reduce the work routine.
Certain possibilities for recognition have emerged: when workers could see and measure the effectiveness of their assembly results, they could feel more rewarded when the number of rejects for their plates decreased. Moreover, interpersonal relationships might also have improved: earlier, errors of workers in the beginning of the assembly line might have caused others to wait, and the new version of job design allowed to avoid these conflicts. Finally, workers felt that their opinion was important for the company when the new decision was made, and this participation in the decision-making had most possibly improved the morale and job satisfaction.
Thus, the increase in productivity and decrease of controllable rejects were most probably conditioned by the reduction of monotonous work and associated improvement of employee morale and job satisfaction. In addition to this, personal responsibility for work results also motivated the employees to improve their productivity. The stoppages of the whole assembly process caused by individual errors have been removed by the new job design, which also contributed to greater productivity.
Question 2. What might account for the drop in absenteeism and the increase in moral?
The causes of absenteeism at workplace can be divided into two groups: personal factors (attitude, age, seniority and gender) and workplace factors (job stress, work routine and job satisfaction). The changes of work design have removed and/or reduced all three possible workplace factors. Job stress reduced since the workers received more autonomy and gained more recognition related to the results of their work. High level of job routine has been significantly reduced, and workers could control the results of their assembly process, which they could not do in the original work design.
Importance of the work and associated morale are determined by such factors as task significance, skill variety and task identity (Salvendy & Karwowski, 2004). In the original work design, task significance was comparatively low, skill variety and task identity were very low, and it is not surprising that work morale was low as well. In the new design, task significance was strongly increased, as well as skill variety. Now the workers could identify their hotplates, and thus task identity was increased, too. The above-mentioned factors caused the increase in moral.
Question 3. What were the major changes in the situation? Which changes were under the control of the manager? Which were controlled by workers?
The major changes in the situation were the delivery on control over the quality of assembly process to workers, increase of the job cycle and reduction of monotonous work, improved job responsibility, independency and satisfaction. The change controlled by the manager was the possibility for workers to choose the method of assembling the hotplates (individually or using the assembly line). Thus, the managers have introduced the idea of individual assembly. Training sessions were also controlled by the managers, and all other factors were controlled by the workers: the choice of the form of assembly itself, quality and speed of assembly, and even final inspection. Overall, this example shows that providing independence and responsibility for own results of work has a highly positive effect on job satisfaction, morale and productivity.