| Human performance technologists and performance improvement practitioners are often involved in projects related to designing, implementing and evaluating job design interventions. In today's workplace, advancing job designs include technology tasks complementing direct-servicing tasks, job-sharing, and job reduction initiatives. Many employers use multifunctional jobs to promote organizational performance. Multifunctional job designs tend to result in employees being tasked with managing work time to complete tasks comprising dual priorities or competing deadlines. Literature and studies of several fields and disciplines state that time management and multitasking may birth challenges of consistent and effective performance. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to discover how aligning multifunctional job design interventions influences commitment to organizational performance goals. To probe the phenomenology, a study was conducted to determine which alignment factors incorporated in multitask jobs influence the outcome of employee commitment to enhancing organizational performance. From the descriptive experiences of 17 U.S. probation officers about how they perceived their jobs influenced their commitment to the performance of their organization, data analysis identified the following consistent themes and patterns: (a) focus issues, (b) knowledge retention, knowledge enhancement, and skill development issues, (c) task intensification or task interference issues (workload and time management, task redundancy, and technology tasks), and (e) job satisfaction issues (affection, flexibility and motivation). The disclosed themes and patterns indicated that multitasking jobs influenced the study participants' commitment to reaching the goals of the organization. The findings also implied that there may be a need to develop unique techniques for aligning goals, processes, and tasks with multifunctional job design interventions incorporating tasks with dual priorities, such as supervising and monitoring offenders/defendants in conjunction with performing mandated data entry tasks. Future researchers should explore how use of multifunctional job designs comprising tasks involving direct-client servicing coupled with technology tasks afford opportunities for performance improvement through the roles of human consultants, performance improvement practitioners, and organizational leadership. More research is also needed about which techniques should be used to design and implement multitasking jobs to ensure effective promotion of job enrichment and job enhancement elements at the employee level of performance. |
