My Learnings in the Importance of Work Designing

 

 

Way back in college, when I was a second-year student, we had a course “Human Behavior in Organization” facilitated by our university guidance counselor. It was fruitful and full of information for me. During those times, I cannot relate to the topics that were discussed, because I have no experience yet of what is happening within an organization or workplace. 

Now that I am taking up the MPA program, we have this course "Human Resource Development and Management," which is almost similar to the course I took before. This time, I can somehow correlate to the topics based on my actual experiences from my current work.  Also, I can integrate what I am learning from this course into my workplace.

In Chapter Four: HRM and the Design of Work, we conversed about its brief history, work system design (smart working, flexible working, lean manufacturing), organizational design (organizational choice, successful organization design), and job design (job design and job analysis, aim and foci of job design, factors affecting job design, approaches to job design, role development.

Every institution, organization, or workplace has sets of work designs, organizational designs, and job designs that they adhere to enhance the flow of operation. It must be observed even in small groups or teams to guarantee that the organizational goals are realized. 

Some of the themes are being observed in our workplace:

Work design

This work design, talks about smart working and flexible working.

With the nature of our work, we are always on the field on our own, which is why we are managing ourselves with minimal supervision from our Focal Person. The decision-making, coordinating, and performing of the actual work relies on us. To monitor our daily outputs, we have a tracker that we update at the end of the day before we time out. 

 

Being in the field is challenging, it requires maximum tolerance, flexibility, and the ability to adapt to different people, cultures, and environments. There are situations in that we must be flexible with our working hours to tend to our clients. Most of the time, we sacrifice our Holidays, Saturdays, and Sundays to accomplish our work. 

 

Some pictures taken during our fields works, 2020. My first time.

 

In addition, I appreciate the Lean Manufacturing System of the Japanese, especially Toyota. It is a great practice to emulate by every employee and employer to achieve optimal balance within the organization. I love how the Japanese value respect for their employees and how they encourage continuous improvements in every worker. I believe that anyone who is given value and treated with respect will be motivated to perform well in their tasks. If we adopt this model correctly, there will be a harmonious and good relationship between employer-employee or top management and subordinates. 

Organizational Design

All organizations have their organizational or structural designs. We, in our team, have specific roles and functions to perform. We also have certain processes to follow in performing our designated tasks to ensure the quality of our outputs.

Job Design

In my work, even though we have specific designations, we make sure that all of us can execute different functions, that way when the other member is absent or has an emergency, anyone can replace his/her responsibility for the time being. It also allows us to rest in between and to prevent boredom from doing monotonous tasks. It's a great avenue for us to learn and explore other tasks other than our functions. We were also trained to multitask to maximize time, labor, and effort and to achieve our targets. 

I like the idea of this job design, it allows me to evaluate where I perform well, what task I love and enjoy doing and to test my capability and flexibility to adapt to new and challenging assignments. It would likewise be beneficial to my growth as an individual and employee. 

In this chapter, it emphasized the importance of designing work in every organization, to achieve its goals and objectives. Aside from the top management, all employees play specific parts in realizing the goals and objectives of one company or organization. With that being said, it would be helpful to practice excellent working behavior individually or with a team.

In general, this course helped me understand and know more about human resource development and management. It widens my perspective and knowledge about the existing theories and practices being observed in the workplace, which I can also use in my present job.

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