Job Design: A Practitioner’s Guide [2025 Edition]
Increased productivity and motivation. Higher quality of work. More revenue. These are just a few of the benefits of job design and how it can help organizations. But how can you design roles that are meaningful to employees and fulfill a clear business need?
As job roles change quickly and new positions are created daily, job design is more important than ever. In fact, one study found that job design impacts employee health and wellbeing, job satisfaction and commitment, and employee productivity and innovation.
In this article, we will explore the basics of job design and HR’s role in it, plus how it can help businesses create jobs that add real value to the organization while being motivating and engaging for the employee. We also offer a proven and science-based framework that will help you design better jobs.
Contents
What is job design?
Job design theory
Job design strategies
Job design examples
Job design process: How to get started
FAQ
What is job design?
Job design is the process of structuring roles and responsibilities to enable the organization to achieve its goals while boosting employee motivation and satisfaction. This process involves determining specific tasks and their sequence and identifying the support and resources required for employees to perform effectively. A strong job design takes into account employees’ strengths and creates opportunities for skill development and growth.
Well-designed jobs lead to increased productivity and higher-quality work. They also contribute to greater job satisfaction, reduced absenteeism, and lower employee turnover. Conversely, poorly designed jobs can set employees up for failure. When individuals are pulled in too many directions without the necessary support, even high-potential employees may become frustrated, feel overwhelmed, and eventually experience burnout.
Job design vs. job redesign
- Job design focuses on structuring the components of a new job, which includes defining tasks, responsibilities, and the necessary skills, and establishing feedback and communication mechanisms.
- Job redesign, on the other hand, involves changing components of an existing job to improve, clarify, or update it. This process can help employers find skills gaps in their workforce and create targeted training programs to address this.
Both processes are essential for maintaining an effective and motivated workforce, keeping job roles relevant, and engaging in the long term.
Human Resources and job design
HR plays an essential role in job design to ensure that organizations can meet their strategic objectives and maintain a competitive edge. Effective job design helps structure roles to support the company’s goals by aligning job responsibilities with business needs.
A well-designed job framework enables organizations to attract candidates who are the right fit, supports employee development and retention, and drives performance. Through job design, HR must identify the specific skills required for various roles and continuously build a highly trained – and engaged – workforce.
Job design theory
Job design and redesign require a framework to guide the process. The best-known framework is Hackman & Oldham’s job characteristics model and theory. In 1980, Hackman & Oldham proposed that each job should have five core characteristics that motivate and challenge the individual. These characteristics remained consistent over time and are still used today.
Skill variety
The degree to which a job requires a broad range of skills. For example, a financial controller managing three different departments will have more skill variety than a controller managing one specific department. Jobs with greater skill variety are more challenging and require more competence.
Task identity
The degree to which an individual completes a whole piece of work, and how this fits into the wider goals of the organization. It’s more desirable and satisfying when a task has a clear beginning and end, and an employee is able to see the finished results of their efforts.
Task significance
The degree to which the work impacts others. When work impacts others, the task feels more meaningful, leading to higher satisfaction.
Autonomy
The level of independence and freedom an individual has. Higher levels of autonomy make a person feel more responsible for their work.
Feedback
The information that workers receive about their performance. Feedback can come from the work itself (e.g., a functioning product) and external sources (e.g., customer satisfaction).
When a job has these five characteristics, it will be more meaningful, and the employee will feel more responsible and have a greater understanding of the work results. This, in turn, leads to the outcomes we mentioned earlier: higher motivation, performance, job satisfaction, and low absenteeism and turnover. Put simply, when employees like their jobs, they are more likely to give it their all and strive for better results, which benefits both the employee and the organization.
Motivating potential score
The job characteristics model forms the basis for job design. Hackman and Oldham proposed a system called the motivating potential score (MPS). To calculate this score, one takes all core job characteristics into account and uses these to calculate the motivating potential of the job.
To do this, each of the core job dimensions should be scored on a scale of 1 (low) to 7 (high). Next, these values can be put into the formula as follows:
According to the formula, a low score on either autonomy or feedback will significantly impact the job’s motivating potential, while a lower score on skill variety, task identity, or task significance will have a less significant impact.
Job diagnostic survey
A job diagnostic survey is a tool to assess these aspects of a job. In the job diagnostic survey assessment example below, job A scores much higher on all motivational dimensions compared to job B. Because these motivational elements are multiplied, the MPS difference between the two jobs is substantial (255 vs. 40). Therefore, it would be advised to transfer some of the autonomy or feedback opportunities from job A to job B, if possible.
Other job design approaches
Job design theory (also known as motivational job design) is one of four well-known approaches to job design. Here are the other three:
- Mechanistic job design: This type of job design revolves around task specialization, the simplification of skills, and repetition, making jobs efficient and easy to train for. This approach is often used in manufacturing and assembly line roles where precision and repetition are key for productivity and consistency.
- Biological job design: This approach aims to design the physical work environment for the body and reduce physical strain on the worker. This approach to job design is common in jobs requiring physical activity or manual labor, such as warehouse work.
- Perceptual-motor job design: A type of job design that aims to ensure tasks match employees’ mental capacities, providing a healthy level of challenge without overwhelming them. This type of job design is frequently applied in roles involving decision-making and attention to detail, such as control room operators, air traffic controllers, and jobs in customer service, where maintaining focus and avoiding errors are essential.
Apply job design principles and embrace agile job design
Understanding and applying job design and agile job design principles is crucial for building a resilient and high-performing workforce. With these skills, HR professionals can create roles that are flexible, efficient, and aligned with the ever-changing needs of the business.
AIHR’s self-paced HR Manager Certificate Program equips you with the tools and knowledge to design jobs that support innovation, adaptability, and organizational success.
Job design strategies
Organizations apply four common job design strategies to increase a job’s motivational potential: job rotation, job enlargement, job enrichment, and job simplification. Each strategy impacts one or more of the elements in the MPS formula.
Let’s explore these strategies in more detail below.
1. Job rotation
Job rotation is the practice of moving employees between jobs in an organization. These moves will typically be lateral (at the same qualification or employment level) rather than promotional. Sometimes, a job rotation is temporary, and in other cases, some workers are on regular rotation and will move through several jobs in a year.
This increases skill variety and knowledge, allows employees to learn through different experiences and helps them gain a more thorough understanding of how different components of the business work together. It’s also an effective way for employees to find out where their greatest skills lie and what they most enjoy doing, which helps them develop their careers in the right direction.
For example, in an HR job rotation program, HR employees might spend a few months in different functions within the department, such as recruitment, compensation and benefits compensation, employee relations, and training and development. This rotation broadens their skills and provides insight into various HR operations. It helps prepare them for future leadership roles by offering a comprehensive understanding of the department’s functions.
2. Job enlargement
Job enlargement is a form of job redesign where managers and HR combine tasks of the same level and increase the scope of an existing role. For example, a graphic designer who was only handling the graphics for the company website and physical brochures was given the added task of handling the graphics for all social media content.
The aim of job enlargement is to increase productivity across the business, minimize repetitive tasks, and ensure team members remain motivated in their careers. This practice increases skill variety and task identity, enabling a worker to do more similar activities, which reduces monotony. It also teaches a variety of skills and provides a broader range of responsibilities, accountability, and autonomy. Effective job enlargement also leads to higher productivity levels and morale.
3. Job enrichment
Where job enlargement is aimed at adding tasks, job enrichment focuses on adding motivators to existing roles, increasing the Motivating Potential Score (MPS). Examples include adding opportunities to receive feedback, having more freedom to complete tasks in a way that suits the employee, and establishing client relationships to increase task significance. Another example would be creating natural work units, which are aimed at grouping interrelated tasks together to increase task identity.
Job enrichment gives employees new opportunities to learn and develop new skills and uncover their potential, which can increase their sense of accomplishment. This helps to boost motivation and morale at work, which can have a positive knock-on effect on the whole workplace and create a productive atmosphere. Job enrichment also creates additional performance-based opportunities for employees to be recognized and rewarded for their hard work.
4. Job simplification
Job simplification – the opposite of job enlargement – is the process of removing tasks from existing roles to make them more focused and maximize output. HR and managers may decide on job simplification if a role has been enlarged too much over time and become too much for one person to handle. The benefit of job simplification is that an employee becomes a specialist in their area, which increases their competence and confidence while minimizing error. Plus, employees become easier to replace as there is a smaller set of skills for someone else to learn.
For example, in a customer service department, agents initially manage all types of inquiries, but as the workload grows, job simplification divides these roles into specialized areas. One team handles billing, another manages account issues, and a third addresses technical support. This specialization boosts efficiency, reduces errors, and enhances employee expertise.
Job design examples
Let’s explore a range of examples of job design in real-life cases.
Example 1: WL Gore
WL Gore, a material science organization best known for the Gore-Tex material, has a non-hierarchical structure where there are no job ranks, titles, or set descriptions. Each person commits to contribute their unique skills individually and collectively to different tasks and areas of work. Workers are hired based on how strong of a cultural fit they are with the company.
Once an employee has completed their core responsibilities, they are free to build on their role as they please, based on their specific interests and career aspirations. This allows employees to take ownership of their own development and use their own judgment at work.
When an employee quits, instead of automatically replacing them, the role is reevaluated to determine if it’s still relevant. This ensures constant job design and redesign.
Example #2: Centrica
In 2005, a UK-based international energy company, Centrica, went from five London sites to three and dramatically changed its ways of working. Hot Desking and a clear desk policy were implemented, breakout areas and additional meeting rooms were introduced for conversations, IT upgrades meant that employees could collaborate and share documents online, and flexible working policies allowed employees to choose the location they worked at to best perform their duties.
To prepare for this change, managers were provided with training and encouraged to model the changes for their team. Employees were also helped to prepare for the changes with roadshows, coaching, team-building sessions, one-to-one meetings, and technical training. These changes led to a 38% increase in improved work-life balance and a 4% increase in engagement.
Example #3: Unipart
A supply chain company, Unipart prioritizes continuous improvement when it comes to job design, and decision-making is delegated to the lowest level. Employees determine the best way of working for themselves, then design, measure, implement, and continuously improve it—for themselves and their customers. This means that while tasks are simplified, employees have more responsibility and control over what they do, and work processes and performance are constantly improved across the business.
Unipart’s Coventry site had to reconfigure its operations and workforce to provide different services, implement technology, and adapt to more complex customer needs. Value stream mapping—used by the workers who would be affected by these changes—identified all of the processes involved in the work and helped to redesign them to reduce waste. With the rest of their team, they decided on the optimum design of processes as well as the physical design of the workspace, then took responsibility for implementing and managing the improvements.
Following these changes, service levels dramatically improved.
Job design process: How to get started
Here are some simple steps for HR professionals to get started with job design at your organization.
- Apply the Job Characteristics Model: Ensure that each job contains the five core characteristics to challenge and motivate your workers: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback.
- Identify key responsibilities, skills & competencies: Work with managers to identify what’s most important in each job. Once you know the main requirements of a role or the most important objectives and tasks, you can then strip away anything unnecessary and ensure employees have the support and resources they need to perform and grow in their careers.
- Utilize the free Job Design Optimization Tool (JDOT): With this tool, you can assess the demands of any job and the resources within the organization to fulfill that job, determine when a job is effectively or poorly designed, and see the design changes you can make to improve the functioning of a job.
- Think about what makes work fulfilling: Aside from compensation and benefits, other factors such as being recognized and rewarded for achievements, having a supportive manager, access to training and development opportunities, tasks that utilize your talents and skills, having a clear path for growth, and seeing how your work benefits others and helps the organization thrive can all help workers feel fulfilled in their job. Think about this in the job design process.
- Keep flexibility in mind as job design might need to evolve: We live in an interesting time where technology is rapidly changing the way we work. Certain jobs are becoming obsolete, others are transforming, and new ones are created every day.
- Create room for job crafting: Job crafting refers to employees having the freedom and taking the initiative to shape the characteristics of their job, either independently or in collaboration with their manager. Job crafting can be encouraged through higher organizational support, higher levels of autonomy, and higher self-efficacy, which is the employee’s belief in their capacity to achieve what they want to achieve. Job crafting leads, in turn, to higher levels of job satisfaction.
To sum up
Job design is a systematic approach to creating jobs that are sustainable, motivating, and contribute to wider organizational goals. When done well, job design not only supports the professional growth and motivation of individual employees but also drives organizational performance and success, creating a positive feedback loop that benefits everyone involved.
FAQ
Job design is the process of creating a job that helps a business achieve its goals while challenging, motivating, and rewarding the employee.
Job design is important because the world of work and your business are constantly changing. Each job needs to be regularly refreshed to ensure that it aligns with organizational goals and is manageable for the employee.
Effective job design leads to higher productivity, quality of work, job satisfaction, motivation, and engagement, as well as lower absence and lower employee turnover intentions.
The four common types of job design are job rotation, job enlargement, job enrichment, and job simplification.
An example of job design could be a Project Coordinator for Renewable Energy Initiatives. This role involves managing project timelines, ensuring regulatory compliance, and facilitating team communication. Key skills include project management, organization, and prior industry experience. The employee will have the autonomy to identify risks, propose solutions, and enhance workflow processes. They will coordinate meetings, prepare reports, and collaborate across teams to meet sustainability goals, balancing clear responsibilities with opportunities for innovation and growth.
This job design balances well-defined responsibilities with the freedom to propose and implement improvements, making it motivating for the employee while supporting the company’s larger strategic goals.
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