Division of Labor Wilson Football Factory Video Questions

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Division of Labor Wilson Football Factory Video Questions ORDER NOW FOR CUSTOMIZED AND ORIGINAL ESSAY PAPERS ON Division of Labor Wilson Football Factory Video Questions Please answer these questions to the best of your ability using the information that you gathered from reading the chapter, along with information from your own work experience. Please do not copy and paste. 1. Please watch the video entitled “Division of Labor; Wilson Football Factory.” What advantages of job specialization (as explained in Chapter 9) can be seen in the video. Please be specific. Division of Labor Wilson Football Factory Video Questions 2. The book also lists several disadvantages of job specialization. These disadvantages have been known to increase absenteeism and turnover. What disadvantages of job specialization did you recognize in the video? 3. If the disadvantages of job specialization increase employee turnover, then why have these same employees been performing the same jobs for such a long time? Please give a few reasons. Asks you to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of job specialization, based on your reading of 9-3a, and why companies still use this method of job assignment. This argument hearkens back to Frederick Taylor, who advocated giving employees the right tool and then training them after delineating a job into its smallest components possible. attachment_1 Question 1: The first obvious advantage (for the company) noted in the Wilson video is the lack of variety in each job. Most every job in this environment only has one goal, whether it’s to cut the football panels out, turn them from inside out, or ensure proper quality for their NFL-bound footballs. For Wilson as a company, this makes the work much easier for an employee to learn, resulting in lower training costs (196). Another advantage for Wilson is the high repetition of each job. This advantage is directly linked to lack of variety, so this factor in itself will also lower training costs for new employees. High repetition of any task will result in much faster mastering of the task, which typically leads to consistently high productivity levels within the factory. Within Wilson, every job is highly repetitive. They might not all have one goal to accomplish, but each of them are performing the same steps over and over again for each football. The last advantage I noticed was the fairly easy-to-learn steps for each job. For example, Deb’s job is to cut each individual panel for every football. All she has to do is place down a cookie-cutter like mold on the sheet of leather, use a press machine to stamp it down, and then she removes the now cut out panel from the bigger piece of leather (Wilson Football Factory). Another example is Michelle, whose job is to assemble boxes, place non-NFL footballs inside, and place six in a bigger box for shipping to retail stores (Wilson Football Factory). Both of these jobs are prime examples of easy-to-learn steps, which will further decrease training costs and increase productivity, much like the prior two advantages. Source: Wilson Football Factory. “Division of Labor; Wilson Football Factory.” YouTube, uploaded by northsidehuskies, 5 Feb. 2012, e. Question 2: One of the disadvantages I could see is actually one of the advantages I noted above: easy-to-learn. According to the textbook, “ . . . being so easy to learn, [specialized jobs] quickly become boring,” (196). This, in turn, “ . . . can lead to low job satisfaction and high absenteeism and employee turnover, all of which are very costly to organizations,” (196). What all of this amounts to is a very boring job, which can then cause the employee performing it to become increasingly less satisfied and motivated to the point that it can cause them to show up less and less, then eventually quit. However, in Wilson’s case, I did notice that all employees featured in this video had been working there for more than 20 years, so I suppose the benefits and rewards for their work efforts must be high. Another disadvantage is yet another advantage for the company as well: lack of variety. This falls as a disadvantage for the company for the same reasons as the disadvantage above, but I would like to stress the clear disadvantage that lack of variety can cause the employees themselves. Of course, lack of variety can result in high absenteeism and employee turnover, but I would say the biggest impact falls upon the employee, as the lack of variety can cause major dissatisfaction with their work. Low job satisfaction, coupled with the low variety, can cause an increase in physical and mental health problems. This is outlined in an OSHA document I found outlining health hazards in the workplace, where physical issues such as back problems and carpal tunnel can occur from repetitiveness, and a number of psychological issues can arise from stress (OSHA). Source: OSHA. “7SafetyHealthProbsWorkplace.” OSHA, Sept. 2014. Question 3: Given the disadvantages of job specialization on both the company and its employees, how could a company such as Wilson continue to retain the same employees to perform the same jobs day after day? Well, one reason could be job enlargement in some areas. According to the textbook, “[j]ob enlargement increases the number of different tasks that a worker performs within one particular job,” (197). For example, Tina, unlike some of her coworkers, performs two separate tasks: inserting a bladder for air into the football and lacing the football up. Tina, who has been lacing footballs for 20 years, could have possibly taken on inserting bladders as a result of job enlargement, which has shown to increase variety in the job, therefore typically increasing satisfaction (Wilson Football Factory). Division of Labor Wilson Football Factory Video Questions Another possibility, which I find the most likely in each of the jobs there at Wilson, is internal motivation. According to Chapter 9, “[i]nternal motivation is motivation that comes from the job itself rather than from outside rewards such as a raise or praise from the boss,” (197). Internal motivation is the feeling that workers feel that performing their jobs is in itself satisfying, like they have a strong feeling of accomplishment and success from doing their part. This type of motivation can be especially detrimental to job specialization, as this further increases job satisfaction without further cost on the company’s part, resulting in decreased employee turnover. At Wilson, these men and women are producing a very important piece of American culture: the NFL football. This in itself could make them feel as if their jobs are very important, which could then cause them to stay on the job much longer. This experience is a factor of internal motivation called task significance, which is defined as “ . . . the degree to which a job is perceived to have a substantial impact on others outside the organization,” (198). Task significance is a very important playing factor in the psychological effect a job has on the employee, which could very well be yet another reason Wilson employees stay on so long. The last reason is another playing factor in the psychological effects of the job: task identity. According to the textbook, “[t]ask identity is the degree to which a job, from beginning to end, requires completion of a whole and identifiable piece of work,” (197-198). This is fairly obvious when it comes to the jobs of Wilson employees, as each of their jobs are required to result in a whole product: a Wilson football. You need someone to cut out the panels, stamp them with designs, stitch the panels together, turn the football outside out, insert the air bladder, lace it up, air them up for shape, and perform quality assurance to ensure a league-regulatory football (Wilson Football Factory).These employees, who have been performing these tasks for a very long time, know this better than anyone else, which can then lead to positive psychological effects on the job and higher job satisfaction. Division of Labor Wilson Football Factory Video Questions Source: Wilson Football Factory. “Division of Labor; Wilson Football Factory.” YouTube, uploaded by northsidehuskies, 5 Feb. 2012, e. Get a 10 % discount on an order above $ 100 Use the following coupon code : NURSING10