What is Job Carving? (text)

What is Job Carving?

Job carving is a term for customising job duties and can used in different circumstances:

• to create specialist job roles thus freeing up the time of specialist staff
• to swap job duties to make the most of individual skills

Job carving can lead to improved productivity, service delivery and profitability based on using a higher percentage of the skilled workers time to concentrate on completing the tasks that require their professional level of skill. Job creation can benefit the organisation and the individual in many ways by working to the strengths of the individual and the needs of the organisation. Other advantages can include increased flexibility, for instance the created job could be for a few hours a day or working over 1 or 2 days as required by the organisation and to suit the worker.

Job carving can be used to tailor a job so that it is suitable for a particular worker. The employment consultant works closely with the employer to analyse a range of different jobs and identify the opportunities to carve out certain tasks that do not require the professional skill of the worker to complete. This can be particularly useful in enabling highly skilled workers to concentrate on the tasks that demand their skills while separating out more routine functions in a new job role. 

Example:

A garage may employ skilled mechanics to carry out vehicle servicing. When all the tasks are analysed there are many opportunities to carve out specific tasks and create a job that includes the identified tasks. In this example it may be that the tasks carved out include checking oil levels, screen washers and lights, washing and valeting the vehicle. Carving out some of these tasks and assessing the time required to complete them could create and customise a job for a specific individual. The time saved would be used by the skilled mechanics to carry out the more technical functions involved in servicing the vehicle, allowing the whole team to be more productive and cost-efficient.

There are times where it may not always be possible to find a candidate that can complete all the tasks involved in doing a particular job. This is where ‘job carving’ can be considered as a reasonable adjustment. It may be that the candidate is capable of completing a high percentage of the job tasks and the employer negotiates job duties across a team so that tasks are shared in a fair and equitable way.