Job Redesign Of Health Information Services

JOB ENRICHMENT IN JOB REDESIGN OF HEALTH INFORMATION SERVICES 1

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to analyze Elizabeth Layman’s essay, “Job Redesign for Expanded

HIM Functions” and identify how the principles of job enrichment have been applied to her proposal, what the outcome is and what the impacts were.

Keywords: Health Information Management, job enrichment.

JOB ENRICHMENT IN JOB REDESIGN OF HEALTH INFORMATION SERVICES 2

Principles of Job Enrichment in Job Redesign of Health Information Services

It’s important that when companies what to implement a change or solve problems they accurately set goals. According to the Goal Setting Theory, setting goals can greatly improve performance. There are four main reasons to why goals motivate.

Also, they provide the team with a challenge, and when that goal is achieved a person can feel accomplished. Finally, goals also encourage people to think critically, independently, and outside of the box to find ways to achieve that goal. However, it is not enough to simply set goals, they have to be SMART goals, not only in the definition of the word but in the acronym as well: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely (Carpenter,

M., Taylor, B., Erdogan, B, 2009). In Layman’s essay, “Job Redesign for Expanded HIM

Functions”, the author explains how in the Health Information Services Department goals are set to adapt to sector changes, organizational changes, and shift employee perceptions.

In Layman’s essay, the main goal to be achieved in the Health Information Services is job redesign. In order to achieve this, the author focuses on making the goal as specific as possible by explaining what the principles of the organizational structure are: specialization, departmentalization, unity of command, and span of control. All these principles will be addressed when it comes to job redesigning. To further specify the goal, the author also explains what the structure of a job is and the main issue for job redesigning: work overload. In order

For this job redesign, principles of job enrichment will be used: “a redesign technique that allows workers more control over how they perform their own tasks” (Carpenter, M., Taylor, B., Erdogan, B, 2009). For example, one of the problems that workers in this industry currently have is a work overload which results in a low morale environment. One of the proposed solutions for this issue is to increase autonomy, which is a principle of job enrichment. When autonomy is increased, employees can decide over their own work and see which of their tasks can possibly be eliminated in order to give way to more important tasks and thus alleviate the stressful environment that is causing low morale (Layman,

2011). Another principle of job enrichment proposed in this case is the increase of responsibility. As workers exercise more authority and responsibility over their work they can become more efficient and have a better work performance. This also allows for workers to enjoy the consequences of a good performance and in contrast also suffer the consequences of a poor work performance. Additionally, Layman’s essay also proposes that to have