My Weaknesses And Strengths Of A Job Characteristic Model

I currently work for Home Shopping Network as a sales agent through a third party company called West at Home. I have been working for them for almost two years now and am always learning something new in order to improve myself as a worker. Similar to any job working outside of the home, I have been evaluated on what my strengths and weaknesses are based on either a specific call or a certain number of calls. The supervisors who listen to these calls are known as Performance Assessment Liaison, or PAL. The PAL’s are required to give all the agents a weekly feedback. After listening to a particular call, they provide the agent a grade out of 100 points. In the feedback, they give a summary of the verbiage of the conversation between the agent,

The Job Characteristics model was developed J. Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham with the idea that “any job can be described in terms of five core job dimensions”(Robbins and Judge,2009, p.215). An example of a core job dimension is the skill variety. The skill variety is the use of skills based on the degree of activities. For example, as a sales agent, I am required to take the order of a customer as well offer the customer another product that goes along with the product he or she ordered. Another core job dimension is the feedback. According to the text, “feedback is the degree to which carrying out the work required by a job results in the individual obtaining clear and direct information about the effectiveness of his or her performance”(Robbins and Judge,2009. p.216).. Research has shown the psychological states of a person can determine how he or she will take in the information from a feedback. A person who has a low growth need may take a negative feedback has a personal attack which can make them less productive at work or cause them to quit. Sad but

In the article.” The Mediating Role of Work Engagement and Burnout in the Relationship between Job Characteristics and Psychological Distress among Lawyers,” authors Veronica Hopkins and Dianne Garner conducted a study on how demands of being a lawyer and psychological distress are related and what steps could be taken to reduce the psychological distress which can lead to burn out if not handled. Hopkins and Garner(2012) discovered that “high levels of burnout were associated with more psychological distress, while high work engagement was associated with less psychological distress”.(p.65) An example of work engagement is to exhibit dedication for the task required for the job. An example of work engagement for a salesperson is to share with a customer a great personal experience with a product. According to week 3 audio lecture, the goals of job design is to give the employee skill identity and variety which will eventually lead to job enlargement and rotation. In order to retain their employees, employees should expand skill variety to meet with change of identity. This effort could probably lead to a lower job dissatisfaction rate. According to 2 Corinthians 8:7,” Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, [so let him give]; not