Dynamic Work Design
When you are at work and performing your daily tasks, how often do you consider how your job came to exist? How often do you reflect on how your work is structured within your organization? Traditional theories regarding work design focus on the content of tasks, activities, and responsibilities contained in job descriptions, and are usually static in nature. Most organizations are skilled at creating static work design, in that they are able to draw up organizational charts, determine the flow of work, and set specific internal policies while rarely returning to set policies in order to improve upon them. Static work design, therefore, often remains unchanged and does not take into consideration how the dynamics within organizations are constantly in motion.
As companies and marketplaces have increased in complexity, so too have the challenges associated with managing workflow and improving the quality of work that is performed. Static work designs work well in theory, but often do not take the interconnectedness and complexity of the modern organization into account. What happens when work starts moving through the system and problems occur that are not described in the design of work? Often, it is the case that workarounds develop, response time grows, issues pile up, and orders are delayed. When organizations find themselves in this situation, new initiatives often fall behind, costs mount, and employee frustrations increase. This results in the organization either failing or not meeting its potential.
There are two basic problems facing most organizations:
Many work designs appear not to have taken into account the way that the human brain actually functions.
Most of the existing structures that explain how work is done are static in nature.
The development of Dynamic Work Design is the result of a collaboration that has spanned over decades. During this period, the methods and principles attached to this constantly evolving methodology have been utilized successfully by a variety of organizations, including large corporations, NGOs, medical facilities, and science institutes.
A brief history of work design
How organizations approach work design today has much to do with the legacy of hundreds of years of thinking about the way work is best performed. Before organizations began to separate distinct tasks, individuals completed all parts of a particular process, from beginning to end. This approach to work changed drastically during the late 18th century with the publication of Adam Smith’s iconic work, The Wealth of Nations, in which he introduces what he calls the “division of labor”, which ultimately led to the type of work design that is so common today – functions designed to complete specific tasks.
An overview of management theory
As time passed, and new methods of completing work were developed, researchers began to consider how the act of completing work could be improved. Frederick Winslow Taylor would become a prominent figure in improving industrial engineering processes in the 19th century. Taylor focused on the scientific study of work, the standardization of processes, systematic training, and a distinct structure of employees and management. Taylorism, otherwise known as scientific management, stemmed from Taylor’s view of work design; he believed that all tasks should be broken down into their smallest units and that unnecessary motions should be eliminated. This included replacing “rule-of-thumb” with “one best way” work, training employees instead of leaving employees to train themselves, providing both detailed instruction and supervision to employees, and strictly dividing tasks between management and workers.
You can gain insight into Taylor’s idea of good work design with the following excerpt from his book, Principles of Scientific Management (1911):
It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best implements and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured. And the duty of enforcing the adoption of standards and enforcing this cooperation rests with management alone.
Taylor’s idea of work design was, therefore, entirely static, creating a strict hierarchy and separation of tasks.
Utilizing the ideas central to scientific management, Henry Ford introduced the assembly line, which resulted in every worker being assigned a specific assembly task. This not only meant that workers were stationary, while the line moved mechanically, but also that work became extremely repetitive. Workers were tied to the line and their autonomy was almost non-existent. This work design would eventually be said to lead to strikes, absenteeism, and the sabotage of the quality of work.
The practice of scientific management would draw further criticism from academics and workers alike. A critique often leveled against the methodology is that it reduces the worker to a machine, expecting maximum output while repeating the same task perpetually. This inevitably leads to a loss of motivation and the development of a “one best way” of doing the work
In contrast to Taylor and Ford’s views of working people, Peter Drucker described all workers, even those who worked low-level jobs, as both “knowledge workers” and “associates”, while asserting that responsible managerial practices would protect workers from exploitation and tyranny. Drucker’s management theories focus on the importance of organizational environments, as well as the “ability of managers to work collectively with their employees to initiate change and progress”.
Useful doesn’t always mean used
Now that you have an understanding of the different types of approaches one could utilize in the design of work, the question remains: are different methodologies used effectively? As you continue to examine the inefficiencies present in modern organizations, it will become clear that despite improvement techniques and methodologies containing useful learnings, organizations often fail to implement them effectively. Why is this? Research has found that this failure has very little to do with the tool itself, and is instead rooted in “how the introduction of a new program interacts with the physical, economic, social and psychological structures in which implementation takes place”. It is, therefore, a systematic problem, and not a reflection of the improvement program itself. Despite managers being faced with an increasing array of tools, technologies, and processes, all with documented benefits, most improvement strategies being invested in do not produce the desired results.
Have a look at Total Quality Management (TQM) as an example of this paradox. During the 1980s, TQM became extremely popular as an improvement program in the United States. Despite the initial excitement around the methodology, by the 1990s, TQM was considered an unsuccessful fad with minimal value. Studies have found, however, that TQM made a significant difference to organizations who committed to the methodologies and disciplines associated with the program. Despite this, TQM remains rarely used.
Static and dynamic work design
As touched on elsewhere in these notes, most modern organizations are familiar with traditional, static work design and continue to reproduce models that stay true to this form. In order to differentiate between static and Dynamic Work Design, one needs to take a brief look at the concept of static organizational design. As its description would suggest, static work design would be considered to lack movement or the ability to change. Static work design is able to account for what the organization looks like before the team starts working and interacting with the system. It concentrates on functions, organizational charts, and process maps, giving very little thought to what might happen when things inevitably go wrong within the system.
On the other hand, Dynamic Work Design concentrates on designing a system in which participants are constantly able to learn and improve how things are done. A Dynamic Work Design would consistently take into account what should happen within the system when things do not go as planned. If questions such as “How much work do you put in the system?”, “What problem-solving method do we use?”, and “Who do you call when something goes wrong?” can be answered, organizations have a much better chance of succeeding when issues inevitably surface. Therefore, a Dynamic Work Design helps organizations capitalize on the inherent dynamism present within organizations and, in turn, creates more effective, engaging work.
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