scholarly journals Good work design: strategies to embed human-centred design in organisations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Louise Pazell
Author(s):  
Caroline Knight ◽  
Sabreen Kaur ◽  
Sharon K. Parker

Work design refers to the roles, responsibilities, and work tasks that comprise an individual’s job and how they are structured and organized. Good work design is created by jobs high in characteristics such as autonomy, social support, and feedback, and moderate in job demands such as workload, role ambiguity, and role conflict. Established research shows good work design is associated with work outcomes such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, work safety, and job performance. Poor work design is characterized by roles that are low in job resources and/or overly high in job demands, and has been linked to poor health and well-being, absenteeism, and poor performance. Work design in the 20th century was characterized by traditional theories focusing on work motivation, well-being, and performance. Motivational and stress theories of work design were later integrated, and work characteristics were expanded to include a whole variety of task, knowledge, social, and work-context characteristics as well as demands, better reflecting contemporary jobs. In the early 21st century, relational theories flourished, focusing on the social and prosocial aspects of work. The role of work design on learning and cognition was also recognized, with benefits for creativity and performance. Work design is affected by many factors, including individual traits, organizational factors, national factors, and global factors. Managers may impact employees’ work design “top-down” by changing policies and procedures, while individuals may change their own work design “bottom-up” through “job crafting.” In the contemporary era, technology and societal factors play an important role in how work is changing. Information and communication technology has enabled remote working and collaboration across time and space, with positive implications for efficiency and flexibility, but potentially also increasing close monitoring and isolation. Automation has led to daily interaction with technologies like robots, algorithms, and artificial intelligence, which can influence autonomy, job complexity, social interaction, and job demands in different ways, ultimately impacting how motivating jobs are. Given the rapidly changing nature of work, it is critical that managers and organizations adopt a human-centered approach to designing work, with managers sensitive to the positive and negative implications of contemporary work on employees’ work design, well-being, and performance. Further research is needed to understand the multitude of multilevel factors influencing work design, how work can be redesigned to optimize technology and worker motivation, and the shorter- and longer-term processes linking work design to under-researched outcomes like identity, cognition, and learning. Overall, the aim is to create high-quality contemporary work in which all individuals can thrive.


2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 346-371
Author(s):  
Steven H. Hattrup ◽  
Mark Edwards ◽  
Kenneth H. Funk

Managers and work design engineers seek to improve productivity while maintaining sustainable and viable organizations. This study provides new information for such practitioners to do that while informing theoretical reflections on what constitutes “good work”. Using an inductive qualitative approach, we describe results of a study of 30 in-depth interviews with full-time workers in the Western United States representing a wide range of occupations. We allow workers to generate their concepts about what constitutes good work and compare this with their reactions to prompts derived from existing research. The three most common job characteristics that workers say are important are (1) positive interactions with people, (2) work that provides social value, and (3) control over work. This study adds to extant quantitative studies of work design characteristics because it provides workers’ spontaneous yet coherent perspectives and demonstrates where those agree or not with prior findings. For example, our study reveals that workers strongly distinguish between two kinds of feedback at work: feedback from impersonal systems (e.g., equipment displays) and feedback from managers and other employees. Our study also finds newly emerging characteristics that have yet to be adequately addressed in assessing “good work”: effective and ethical management, job stability, and mutual trust.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 336-341
Author(s):  
Akilla Makanuay ◽  
Jemi V. Palpialy

Organizations need to do a good and structured work design to create parts or portions of work that are balanced between one employee and another so that later it does not cause jealousy between one employee and another employee who thinks that the workload is heavier among other employees. With the creation of a good work design, a good organizational culture will also be created, the sense of tolerance of workers will be stronger because the division of the portion of the work is equal, so that there is no jealousy between employees and the creation of a good, orderly work environment so that the goals organization was achieved. The expected results from this study are to determine the effect of work design and organizational culture on the performance of Jayapura Poltekbang employees so that it is hoped that problems related to work design, organizational culture, and employee performance can be resolved and for future employee performance improvements. Keywords: Work Design, Organizational Culture, Employee Performance, Jayapura Poltekbang.


1990 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 349-350
Author(s):  
Faye Crosby ◽  
Gail Fries
Keyword(s):  

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
IJmert Kant ◽  
Helga J. van den Elzen ◽  
Anna J. H. M. Beurskens ◽  
Ute Bultmann ◽  
Gerard M. H. Swaen

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy P. Munyon ◽  
Stephen E. Humphrey ◽  
Frederick P. Morgeson

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