Job design refers to an articulate process of arranging work in an organization; that is, crafting job content, methods of execution as well as the relationship between and among different jobs in order to meet organizational requirements. It is a process that directly impacts on how well organizational goals and objectives are executed – job design should therefore be informed by organizational strategy.It is important to design jobs that are challenging, meaningful but more importantly jobs that enable an organization to achieve its goals and objectives.

The primary purpose of job design is to improve throughput as well as quality of outputs. Every organization has got inputs that are transformed through various processes into outputs. Job design focuses on the effectiveness and efficiency of the transformation process in order to produce high quality outputs. There are different factors and approaches used in job design. However according to the Job Characteristics Model, effective job design should be able to satisfy the following:

1. Task Significance: this refers to the degree to which a job has an impact on the organization. Tasks and activities should be combined in such a way that the job achieves the greatest impact in the organization.
2. Task Identity: Jobs should be distinct in order to achieve accountability. Task identity refers to the extent to which a job can be completed as a whole, from start to finish and the extent to which outcomes can be predicted with visible outcomes that are entirely attributable to the job.
3. Task Autonomy: This refers to the extent to which individual job holders are given freedom and discretion in executing tasks. Jobs that have a high degree of autonomy have the highest motivation to achieve.
4. Skill Variety: This dimension refers to the extent to which individual job holders employ different skills and talents in executing different tasks in the fulfillment of job requirements. Jobs that demand a variety of skills are more fulfilling than routine jobs requiring a single skills set.
5. Job Feedback: This dimension refers to the howjob holdersare given feedback about how well they are executing their jobs in the organization. This enables the employee to fully understand their impact in the organization.

The Job Characteristics Model enables organizations to design jobs that have the highest impact to the business, jobs that are meaningful and satisfying to the employee as well as jobs that are adaptable to the changing organizational context.

Organizations invest a lot into crafting strategic plans. A strategic plan is only valuable when it is implementable and when it actually produces results.Our experience however has shown that not many organizations invest an equal measure of effort into aligning the organizational subsystems to the strategic imperatives. This has resulted in “the big disconnect” between strategic plans and their execution, that is, a new strategic direction with the wrong delivery mechanism.Whereas organizational strategy represents what needs to be done in terms of objectives, initiatives and targets, jobs represent the delivery mechanisms of the strategy which enable organizations to achieve these pre-determined outcomes. It therefore follows that job design is a precursor to effective strategy implementation. There is need to align individual jobs to the organizational strategic imperatives – ensuring that the processes and outputs of each and every job are aligned to the strategy. It is imperative for the leadership to create a clear line of sight between what people do on a day-to-day in their jobs to the overall strategy of the organization.

In many Zimbabwean organizations there is a general lack of realization by both employers and employees that jobs are in fact live entities. As live entities, jobs feed off the organization’s vision and strategy, without which jobs have no life of their own.Because jobs are created for a purpose, it therefore follows that when the purpose and direction changes, so should the design of jobs – it is mandatory that jobs are adaptable to changing organizational imperatives. Interacting with people at different employment levels in many Zimbabwean organizations, there is a general belief that the job that onesigns for does and should not change irrespective of the changing organizational dynamics. This is a sad reality as it is an indication that most people in organizations do not understand the big picture and how their individual roles fit in.Thishas an immediate impact of reducing organizational effectiveness as there is no alignment between what the leadership is trying to pursue in terms of strategy and what individual job holders are doing in their jobs.

Every new strategy will demand a new set of skills, new behaviours as well as new work arrangements for it to be successfully executed.The arrangement of tasks in different jobs should therefore be informed by organizational vision and strategy. Job design should ideally be evolving and in a state of constant change in response to the changing demands of the organization.It should be done is such a way the tasks are executed in an effective and efficient manner that directly impacts on organizational delivery.To the extent that these jobs are configured to deliver, effective strategy implementation becomes a pipe-dream.

Emmanuel Jinda is the Managing Consultant of PROSERVE Consulting Group, a leading supplier of Professional Human Resources and Management services locally, regionally and internationally. He can be contacted at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.tel: 263 773004143 or 263 4 772778 or visit our website at www.proservehr.com.

RECRUITING FOR PERFORMANCE: COMPETENCY–BASED RECRUITMENT

Recruitment refers to an organizational process of identifying and engaging talent for specific roles that arise in the organization. It is a Human Resources Management function which involves attracting, shortlisting, selecting and engaging suitable candidates that best meet the set criteria. As an organizational process, recruitment in itself is ideally driven by strategic imperatives – the organization would have realized that for it to be able to successfully execute its strategy, it requires certain critical tasks to be performed. These tasks are then consolidated together in the form of a job and a job description which then informs the caliber of people required to perform that job. The underlying principle of the recruitment process is therefore performance – the ability to identify talent that positively impacts on the organization by contributing towards the successful execution of the organization’s strategy. How then do recruiting officers determine those individuals that bring the most value to the organization through performance?

In Zimbabwe, recruitment processes have traditionally been heavily influenced by academic qualifications, whereas the possession of certain qualifications has for a long time been deemed to be an essential predictor of good performance in the job. This was influenced by the post-independence Government policies on promoting formal education across the economy. It was therefore imperative for one to possess certain academic qualifications in order to be considered for formal employment. A lot of companies in post-independence employed people purely on the basis of possession of academic qualifications irrespective of what one knows or is able to do. The country has also witnessed a proliferation of professional bodies that certify possession of professional knowledge in different fields of study. However, over time, flaws in this strategy were observed whereas people where “qualified” to do the job but the required performance was not forthcoming. Even up to this day, there are many organizations in Zimbabwe that are still caught up in this historical conundrum where employees are highly qualified, but this in not reflected in their performance or impact in the organization – yet the intrinsic objective of recruitment is to improve organizational performance.

This realization that educational qualifications on their own are not a good predictor of performance in the job gave rise to a new “recruitment craze” – skills. A skill refer to practical knowledge that can be demonstrated through execution of tasks to achieve predetermined results. Companies shifted their focus from emphasizing educational qualifications to focusing on possession of practical skills than can be applied to given tasks in a job. Recruitment officers then began focusing on experience acquired, where it became imperative to have a certain amount of experience of performing certain tasks or operating in a certain environment for one to be considered for a job. Although this has resulted in improved performance in many organizations, there is still the realization that optimum performance is not being achieved. Something more needs to be done at the point of talent acquisition in order to achieve optimum performance. The recruitment discourse in Zimbabwe has thus now shifted to “competencies”. The recruitment philosophy is changing slowly to align to the need to focus on competencies rather than focusing on educational qualifications or on skills in isolation. This has given rise to the concept of “competency-based recruitment”.

Competency refers to the demonstrable ability to perform given tasks in an effective and efficient manner in order to produce results. It is an integration of knowledge, skills and attributes (KSA) that employees need in order to perform the job effectively. As discussed above, a lot of emphasis has been placed on knowledge and skills, but very little emphasis, if any, on attributes. Attributes refer to attitudes/characteristics and behaviour patterns that form the foundation of how well the possessed knowledge and skills are employed in a given context. Competencies basically refers to the job inputs that employees bring into the organization. Competence is therefore at the heart of performance – once an employee possesses the right competencies then performance is guaranteed. Progressive organizations the world over focus on competencies so much that even in the overall scheme of employee development they refer to “competency-gap” rather than the narrower “skills-gap” The recruitment process should therefore be re-engineered to assess these competencies in their entirety than its isolated elements.

Competency-based recruitment is therefore an ability-based recruitment process that seeks to assess a candidate’s possession and more importantly ability to apply knowledge and skills within a given context. It is a process that is designed to extract evidence of a candidate’s ability to perform given tasks that bring real value to an organization. The process is designed in such a way that throughout the stages of recruitment from candidate sourcing, shortlisting, interviewing, reference checking and even probation, competencies are assessed. Re-engineering the recruitment process to focus on competencies means:

• Ensuring that assessments focus on real value drivers for the organization
• Prediction of future performance
• Complete elimination of biases in recruitment
• Low staff turnover
• Job and organizational fit for the employee
• Clear and comprehensive candidate feedback

Competencies are organization and job-specific. They need to be defined upfront and should be informed by the work that needs to be done. This ensures that recruitment process only assesses candidates on those competencies that positively impact on the organization. Organizations in Zimbabwe need to embrace competency-based recruitment in order to derive real value from its talent acquisition processes. An organization is only as good as its people – it is therefore imperative that recruitment systems are re-engineered to get the right people into the organization. Recruitment has a long term bearing on the organization in terms of organizational effectiveness. They say “garbage in, garbage out” – if organizations fail to get the right competencies at the point of talent acquisition, optimum performance will remain a pipe dream.

Emmanuel Jinda is the Managing Consultant of PROSERVE Consulting Group, a leading supplier of Professional Human Resources and Management services locally, regionally and internationally. He can be contacted at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Tel: 263 773004143 or 263 4 772778

One of the key lessons which I learnt at University undergraduate level as part of my Joint Honours degree in Psychology and Sociology was that “people are the most important resources” in industry and that they are a source of competitive advantage in any organization. Although initially controversial, management literature shows that this notion has been debated since time immemorial and is now generally embraced by well informed leaders in the business community. Notwithstanding this recognition of the critical role of people in an organization it is interesting to note that the HR function in the past has been mostly administrative supporting the operations and front line functions in an organization. This continues to be the case with many organizations today not only locally but regionally and internationally.

Our experience, however, is that whether or not an organization views HR as an administrative or strategic partner, the positioning and operations of HR has an impact on sales, profits and general organizational performance. Consequently an effective HR strategy becomes as equally decisive as a Marketing Production or Distribution strategy. In today’s rapidly changing business environment, many factors have come on board to change the traditional HR role. These changes are exemplified by organizations becoming knowledge or technology based and as a result HR performance indicators have inevitably changed from man hours and manpower statistics to brain hours and brain power hours delivered. Organizations in the same vein have also shifted from production and quantity to productivity and quality. Such strategic considerations no doubt have a huge bearing on people management practices in organizations.

In the light of the changes in the environment and new role expectations, the question which is often asked is “Who should the Head of HR report to in order to effectively executive the new and evolving mandate of the function?” The issue is, as organizations embrace the new thinking on the role of people in organizational transformation how should HR be positioned to effectively deliver on its new and old roles? In the past decades organizations have been clearing debris, using downsizing, restructuring and re-engineering in order to improve efficiencies. It is common knowledge that for most organizations this hard work has not realized any meaningful gains despite the tremendous efforts.

Perhaps part of the answer to this challenge could be in the reporting relationship of the HR function. It is common practice in some organizations, notably Parastatals and Non-Governmental organizations that the HR function reports to the Finance Department. In the non-governmental organizations this reporting relationship is considered to be understandable for the reason that the NGO’s hold donor funds which need to be accounted for well and since checks and balances reside in finance it makes sense that HR which also performs an administrative function should be made part of Finance for the purpose of reporting. Similar logic is also applied mainly in the parastatal sectors and some private sector organizations that HR is an administrative function and should therefore report to Finance. Our experience suggests that this traditional assumption about the structural between finance and HR should be interrogated. Finance people and HR people are not all the same in as much as they may all deal with organizational costs and the need to contain them.

It has been observed in many organizations that where Finance and HR are seen as belonging to the same job family this suppresses the effectiveness of the transformational aspects of the HR role. Such functions like change management, productivity improvement, staff engagement and culture management often suffer. Under such an arrangement HR is quickly driven to focus on administrative issues with a particular focus on cost containment. In the process, developmental aspects of the HR function tend to suffer. The whole system often turns into a power struggle which in most cases results with the HR person being frustrated and calling it quits. Whilst it is absolutely critical that the HR person speaks the language of Finance in terms of cost management, it is also important that organizations realize that they need to effectively address people related programmes that ensure organizational effectiveness. The traditional stereotype in organizations is that Finance people like working quietly reconciling their figures and tend to be impatient about dealing with staff issues which are often time consuming and require patience and compassion. It is quite common in organizations that Finance and HR are often fighting about expenditure on staff matters with the former viewing such expenditure as wasteful whilst HR will often see such expenditure as an investment in human capital to promote staff engagement and innovation which in turn leads to productivity improvement.

Our own research has demonstrated that there is a significant correlation between the overall performance effectiveness of HR and who the function reports to. HR functions reporting direct to the Chief Executive Officer of the organization are generally rated as more effective than those reporting through the head of Finance. Whilst it is vitally important that HR should exercise the relevant checks and balances within a financial management framework, we believe that HR should be empowered to implement and manage its salaries and benefits programmes, staff development and retention budgets within the relevant budgetary framework.

In an ideal organizational structure, HR should report directly to the Chief Executive Officer thus enabling the function to speak directly to the person who moulds the corporate culture. This direct contact and positioning without having to work through another management layer (Finance) has a positive correlation with overall effectiveness on people management issues. Very often, if HR reports through Finance, the organization may be compromising the delicate balance between people’s needs versus financial needs which is often a tough balancing act. This argument is strengthened by the growing recognition in most organizations that “people are the most important resources in industry” and therefore the person dedicated to provide leadership on people issues should report directly to the Chief Executive Officer.

Emmanuel Jinda is the Managing Consultant of PROSERVE Consulting Group, a leading supplier of Professional Human Resources and Management services locally, regionally and internationally. He can be contacted at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.tel: 263 773004143 or 263 4 772778

The issue of the alleged victimization of employees is often a controversial and emotion charged matter in many organizations.

A victim is a person who suffers direct or threatened physical ,emotional or financial harm as a result of an act by someone else. In a workplace set up, victimisation include dismissal from employment using various means or being denied further contract work. This phenomenon is alleged to be quite common in many organisations and the occurrence of such acts usually finds breeding ground where employees are employed on a contract basis and when organisations undergo some reengineering process which may result in staff being laid off.

In our experience the alleged linkage between victimisation and contract of employment termination is so intricate to the extent that one may fail to separate victimisation and a contract of employmentending genuinely.

I have come across many cases where employees argue that in their organisations, victimisationand contract termination are identical twins. It has also been argued that while it is a long standing  employee right to claimwrongful dismissalit is very difficult to prove because of the existence of the Siamese twin’s analogy. They have the same parents, share same everything but they look very different. Yes, thus the intricacy that exists in employment relationships to the extent that the victim usually ends up losing despite the emotional and financial harm suffered.

From an employment point of view, contract termination takes many forms i.e. voluntary resignation, expiration of a fixed term contract , redundancy or dismissal due to some act of misconduct.

This article will explain the practical examples in a work environment that lead to the conclusion that in most cases it is very difficult to separate victimisation and genuine separation using these two modes namely, contract expiration and redundancy. Who is targeted when an organisation’s resources fall short? Also who is targeted when organisations reengineer?

In the first world,   organisations have clearly articulated the channels to be followed by a victim in the case of victimisation. But, locally, despite   the existence of similar legal channels, victimisation is oftenalleged to be the main reasonfor the termination of contracts besides reasons given on the face of it.It is a common belief that employees considered “rotten apples” often fall prey to redundancy processes. These employees become the targets of any retrenchment exercise not withstanding   their contribution to business performance. It has been argued that redundancy processes have been used to single out those employees who speak out their minds. Managers are knownto wait for an opportunetime to descend on such people. One employee recently shared with us an example of an experience he had in one of the Blue chipcompanies when staff were invited to a meeting and in that meeting the Personal Assistant to the Managing Director was instructed to write down all the names of the employees who were asking controversialquestions. The discussion was mostly looking at benefits like bus services, bonuses and school fees allowances that were being removed. When the company embarked on a re-engineeringexercise shortly thereafter, it was very clear to everybody who was on that list. It is because of such occurrences that employees have the beliefthat there exists a very thin line between victimisation and redundancy.

We have interviewed many employees who believe that in international nongovernmental organisations, the use of contract expiration as the mode of victimisation is rampant. The circumstance of an employee who served an organisation for almost ten years on two year renewable contracts was recently brought to our attention. Such an employee must have had about four or more contract renewals. In the fifth renewal, they were advised that their post had been abolished because of the alleged lack of funds although this could not be objectively confirmed. This approach clearly is harmful to the employee who in most cases would have taken the organisation as their second home only to wake up one morning with this blow. They would have a legitimate expectation of contract renewal because their contract had been renewed over four times and there is no issue with their performance.

It has also been alleged that what makes the victimisation so evident is the heartlessmanner inwhich the process is done. It is meant to coincide with the employment termination datesuch that the victim is not entitled to any several severance benefits. Even if communication comes to the employee citing abolition of post or shortage of resources as the reason, the victim will not get any severance pay despite the long employment period.

It has been noted that the individuals who perpetrate victimization against employees are very often employees themselves. The adage that what goes around comes around is very true. When the perpetrators’ contracts of employments are terminated when they least expect it, they fight tooth and nail and even taking the employer to the courts because they feel they do not deserve such a treatment.

From a professional perspective we believe that such experiences should be learning lessons for managers who feel indispensable in organisations and treat employees unprofessionally.

It has been argued that where organizations use the retrenchment vehicle as mode of victimising employees this often leads to negative consequences for the organization.Staff motivation usually goes down because the retained staff are usually aware of all these injustices that is why some never want to contribute during staff meetings. Furthermore,employees then tend to develop a sense of resignation in response to the seemingly insurmountable obstacles. They lose the sense of team work and alignment with the entire organisation and begin to seek the safety of their profession.Cultures of   creative abrasion erupt because staff will want to avoid conflict forfear of blame.

This is precisely the reason why thousands of organisations that have reengineered work in order to focus employees on processes that clearly provide value to customers have not always yielded the expected results. For some organisations business hasactually gone worse. Ann Majchrzak and Qianwei in their article :Breaking the Functional Mindset in Process organisations” have argued that changing structures will not lead to change their functional mindsets, organisational cultures needed to be changed too! Also there is need to get rid of the unsafe environment and openly engage staff in what they would need in order to work well.

In conclusions those organisations, that do not act on bullying no matter at what level effectively are likely to see lower levels of productivity, performance, engagement as well as high staff turnover all which can damage the bottom line.

Emmanuel Jinda is the Managing Consultant of PROSERVE Consulting Group, a leading supplier of Professional Human Resources and Management services locally, regionally and internationally. He can be contacted at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.tel: 263 773004143 or 263 4 772778