You have just returned from a workshop on job design. Many of the ideas concerning this subject were of great interest to you. Some of the notes you made during the workshop follow: Studies have shown that the average worker utilizes only a portion of his/her abilities in their job. Many HR professionals are seeking more creative methods of capturing the energy and creativity of their workforce. Some complaints of your firm's personnel are: repetition, forced pacing of work, not knowing or understanding an identifiable end product, little social interaction, and no system to suggest improvements in their job. A selection of possible solutions in job design is listed below. Due to the small size of your HR staff, you will be unable to do as much as you would like in job design at the present time. However, you want to begin exploratory studies on one of the techniques for possible implementation in your firm. Which one of the seven items listed here will you begin to work on? Please explain why your choice is better than the rest.

1) Job rotation, job enlargement, and job enrichment.

2) Form autonomous work groups.

3) Ergonomics studies to aid in preventing physical stresses.

4) Replace the most routine and ergonomically stressing jobs with robotics and assign the employee to run the machine instead of actually doing the work.

5) Alternate work schedules including flextime (allowing employees some flexibility as to when they arrive and leave work), discretionary workweeks (consisting of 8, 9, 10, 11, or 12 hour days) spread out over 3, 4, or 4 ½-day weeks.

6) Telecommute (employees allowed to complete some or all of their work at home via computer network with employer).

7) Allow part-time work and offer job sharing.