Psychological characteristics of jobs

Posted: August 5th, 2013

Psychological characteristics of jobs

            Hackman and Oldham designed the job characteristic model. This model focuses on the idea that the key to employee motivation is work. Tedious and boring work lowers employee motivation and therefore the performance will not be great as expected. However, an interesting and challenging job will increase the motivation of the employee. In order to make a job challenging, an organization can practice job improvement and job rotation in order to reduce monotony and increase motivation. The company can also employ sovereignty, diversity and decision authority in their jobs to make the job more challenging and interesting (Clays, Françoise, Marcel & De Backer, 2006).

All these views therefore certify that the job characteristic model gives a realistic view of the job motivating potential. When the employees find their work boring, they will not be motivated to come to work or even learn more from their work. The output will not be of great quality if they do not find meaning in the work since they only rush to complete the task. Failure to provide feedback to an employee concerning his work limits the growth of the organization. This also makes the employee performance not to grow. All these are evident in organizations since they actually happen. Therefore, the Hackman and Oldham’s job characteristic model is realistic in its idea of the job motivating potential.