MGT3005: Evaluation on Workforce Planning - Case Study

Internal Code: MAS3347

Exercise on Job Design

Case Study: A train driver shortage with Queensland Rail came to a head when massive service disruptions and cancellations commenced in late 2016. Queensland Rail executives had ignored warnings that it would face driver shortages with the opening of the Redcliffe Peninsular line opening in October 2016. In just over two weeks of its opening, 167 services in and around Brisbane were cancelled, two revised timetables with reduced services were released within a month of each other, and cancelation of hundreds of services occurred on Christmas Day 2016. As at February 2017, the ABC news reports are suggesting that Queensland train woes are likely to continue until quot;late 2018" at the earliest, due to the long-term shortage of skilled drivers. Read the news report available at the end of this guide (and also available in the assignment 2 section on the StudyDesk) by Tin, J & Templeton, A 2016, ‘Rail Fail’ Courier Mail, pp. 8-9, 1 November issue. This article describes some of the issues at play in the ‘rail fail’ fiasco. Questions: We can see that early or ‘classical’ job design theory, despite its evolution over the past century; can still be detected in how some jobs are designed today. For instance, people working in restaurant kitchens operate in clearly defined roles, reflecting elements of Taylorism in the design of how they do their work. In comparison, the typical job design for teachers and academics provide these workers with aspects of discretion and autonomy about how they are going to ‘teach’ their courses. This reflects elements of a contemporary, ‘socio-technical’ theory of job design. Then perhaps we could argue that the organic, cross-disciplinary and highly discretionary jobs that exist in organisations such as Google have developed in the contemporary, ‘concertive’ era of job design. This evaluation exercise asks you to reflect on a job (paid or unpaid) you have held or currently hold and consider the influence of this job’s design characteristics on your overall enjoyment and satisfaction with your job. Your response must address specifically these points: 1. First, fill in the ‘preliminary information about the job’ table included in the assignment template (available on the MGT3005 StudyDesk). The information supplied in this table will not be assessed. But failure to complete it is likely to impact the evaluator’s contextual understanding of your answer, which can have implications on his (or) her scoring. This table does not form part of the word count. 2. Evaluate your job’s current design using Hackman and Oldham’s job characteristics model (JCM) as described in Module 4 Reading 1 (pp. 163). You must give a concise description of the JCM and its various aspects reflected in your job’s design. This evaluation forces you to assess how closely or not JCM characteristics are prevalent in your job’s design and your overall sense of job fulfilment that you experience in your job given the presence or absence of some or all of the JCM characteristics. 3. Recommend how you think your job’s design (and potentially the overall sense of job fulfilment you experience) could be improved using JCM. In addition to the traditional JCM by Hackman and Oldham presented in reading 1 in module 4, consider as well the additional areas of research on design characteristics theory (JCT) discussed in Module 4 Reading 2 by Oldham and Fried (2016). In addressing points 2 and 3, it is anticipated that you may need to reveal brief details about the job in order to associate the job to the relevant pieces of theory.