Good job design means more than just ‘grouping tasks’

Managers often lack the skills and experience to design interesting jobs, particularly if their own work is repetitive and lacks autonomy, a West Australian study has found.

Psychologists at Curtin University in Perth conducted three studies that looked at the process of designing jobs and how professional expertise and life experience could contribute to the task. The findings are published online in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Sharon Parker, from the university’s Future of Work Institute, said the results suggested many managers “did not have an evidence-based understanding of how to design engaging work”.