For growing organisations, hiring new employees and dividing up the labour are necessary and beneficial. With these new employees, you will see an increase in productivity, skill set, and time. With more employees, output increases; and with their focus on one particular skill set, they will become experts. This will decrease production time as well as wasted time moving from one task to another. This division comes in handy later as well. First of all, new hires will experience simplified training, as they will just have one task on which to focus. Secondly, your company will also see lowered costs due to lack of wasted effort and the optimisation of time. Lastly, as employees become more specialized in a certain area, inventions will be created to make their part easier, faster, and more efficient.
There aremany advantagesfor division of labour,and depending on your organisation, it may prove to be a useful model that delivers better results. Henry Ford’s famous assembly line for the Model T car in the 1920’s is a great example of successful labour division. This mass production of automobiles revolutionised the industry, making producing a car much quicker and easier. The workers needed less training as they only needed to focus and become experts on one aspect of the line. The division also decreased production time as focusing on one job makes each employee become quicker, and no time was wasted picking up different tools or switching to other jobs. This helped Henry Ford make an affordable car for the masses that was quick to the market.
The division of labour is not always the right choice for a company. Some of the negative aspects of this process are:the job can become monotonous for employees. One of Henry Ford’s big issues was turnover in his factories, as employees were getting bored of the monotony of doing one job over and over again. Another issue is that it bringsa great deal of interdependence. Everyone’s job relies on another getting their job done. If one person slacks or does not finish, the others cannot do their job. Lastly, there can be a lack of job pride. If an employee is only responsible for installing the headlights on the car, there is less pride for the employee than when building the entire car. Employees are only responsible for a small part of a bigger idea rather than the idea itself. These aspects may cause more trouble than they are worth, depending on the layout of your company. Also, if you have a smaller organisation, you may not have enough employees to delegate each to a specialisation. In smaller organisations, there tends to be an “all hands on deck” mentality. Job descriptions can encompass several different jobs for one person, resulting in the opposite of division of labour.
Labour of division is a process that needs to make sense for your organisation, as it is sure to increase production. If you are responsible for creating products or are working in a factory setting, this could be perfect. However, this process may be difficult in a small architecture studio, for example. In addition, to ensure that this is right for your company, you must ensure that the right people are placed in the areas of production that fits their skills set. After all, the painter does not need to be responsible for building the engine of a car.
Ashley Herbert