Question

The Hackman-Oldham model we discussed identifies five core job design characteristics:

1. Task significance

2. Task identity

3. Skill variety

4. Autonomy

5. Feedback from the job

Which of these do you believe has the most influence in creating job satisfaction and work effectiveness in health care?Choose one answer and defend your position.Provide clear and compelling examples from your experience.  Put the name of the characteristic in your subject heading.

Answer 1

In 1980, Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham presented a job characteristics model in their book ' work redesign' . They formulated five job characteristics in which they explained how these characteristics paved way towards high performance, motivation and satisfaction by restructuring the tasks and responsibilities in job. They are

• Task significance: It is one of the job characteristics. Task significance is providing a worthy task which exhibits a influence on the lives of the employees and also has a better contribution to society. This brings a satisfaction and also a feel of meaningfulness to the employes which may bring job satisfaction and liking towards job.
• Task identity: It is the degree of job saying that how much a product or a process is completed without flaws. A job should has a perfect beginning and ending to mould an employee to put his full hard work for achieving a definite goal( a complete product). Such job may bring perfection and discipline as one worker will be responsible for a whole single product.
• Skill variety: It is the standard of the job demanding exclusive new activities , skills and talents to execute the tasks uniquely. A job lacking in variety may be dull with repetitive tasks which may lead to boredom in employees after sometime. Same tasks may decrease the talents in employees and their thinking capacity may be within limits . But when a demand is created by giving new tasks , it may produce a new energy and motivation to fulfill the needs .
• Autonomy: Autonomy is not influenced by external forces . So when an employee is allowed to work without limitations and his own self responsibility it may lead to self induced motivation. When one is responsible for all his actions , he may always follow a right path fearing he may be pointed out or punished when something wrong happens . So to be strong in their position ( like managers, administrators, nurse supervisors) those employees take initiative to complete a task in a full flegded successful way.
• Feedback from the job: An evaluation is always responsible for having an impact on the people. When an employee completes his job at a good rate or even normal , he has to be given an appraisal report or his performance scores to keep him motivated to aim higher . Feed back has positive and negative impacts . The performance evaluation encourages an employee to meet the requirements of the particular job.

According to me an effective feedback will be the most infleuntial in creating job satisfaction and work effectiveness in healthcare. Because job satisfaction has cognitive , behavioral and emotional effects on employees. When an employee is praised , he is motivated towards more perfection and improvement and also he devours to get another appraisal . Usually in healthcare feedback is always missed which helps an employee to stay motivated and energised. A feedback has a good influence over employee and also it helps in improving society too. When a healthcare worker is recognised for his job , he may think many ways to uplift the healthcare to next level. Feedback plants positivity.