Emerging Needs and Opportunities for Human Factors Research (1995) / Chapter Skim
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8 Emerging Technologies in Work Design
8 Emerging Technologies in Work Design
Pages 220-240
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These developments present new challenges for human factors specialists. They raise issues about how to design jobs to make sure that the latest technologies fulfill their promise of raising industrial productivity and competitiveness.
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Later, the sociotechnical systems perspective added the idea that effective work design
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Machine tools became highly specialized, and feed and conveying operations were automated whenever possible. Assembly line jobs encompassed only a few repetitive tasks requiring minimal discretion or knowledge.
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The human relations approach to work design expanded from the 1950s on and became linked to a movement within job design known as the "quality of work life" movement. The approach remains especially salient where high levels of worker motivation (high initiative, good judgment, and carefulness)
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Workplace Health and Safety Another equally important goal of work design, made more prominent by recent technological developments, is the maintenance and improvement of workplace health and safety. Recent concerns over workplace safety and occupational health reflect Occupational Safety and Health Administration legislation in the United States and, in Scandinavia and elsewhere in Europe, the influence of trade unions, which have targeted workplace health as a major issue (Butera and Thurman, 1990)
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Thus, we have seen the design of better chairs, video display terminals, lighting, and keyboards, drawing upon the human factors knowledge base. However, while giving traditional ergonomic factors their due, the epidemiological research suggests that additional sociopsychological factors may be at work to create job stress that is in turn related to the physical symptoms of repetitive strain disorders.
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Intellectual Work and Teamwork Intellectual Work For several decades the proportion of the labor force in white-collar jobs has been growing, with managerial, professional, and technical occupations leading the way. As "knowledge work" has come to dominate the information economy, job design has had to embrace new concepts and approaches especially suited to intellectual and informational jobs.
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. This approach looks for previously fragmented tasks to integrate; it "delinearizes" and resequences tasks, creates new, broader jobs, and also restructures (typically reduces)
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Teamwork A rather different aspect of the impact of computer technologies on jobs involves the rising importance of teamwork in modern workplaces. Teamwork among small groups of skilled individuals predates the diffusion of information technology: one thinks of physican-nurse teams in a hospital operating room, the flight team in an aircraft cockpit, and the team of sailors taking bearings and steering a ship into port.
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The potential importance (and practical difficulties) of applying human factors approaches to the job design of group work or teamwork can be illustrated by the example of software development, a steadily growing area of employment in our postindustrial economy.
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Software development is but one of the numerous contexts in which teamwork is the preferred strategy for organizing work. But the contrasting prescriptions and beliefs about how to best design teamwork prove that the knowledge base and science behind job design of teamwork are at very rudimentary stages.
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when automated equipment fails, the system loses credibility; (3) automation usually increases training requirements; (4)
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This means understanding traditional problems of interface design at the lowest level, through complex activities such as planning, scheduling, expediting, and maintenance, up to the most global level of policy setting by management. Indeed, the concept of macro-ergonomics has recently been introduced.
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These workers perform the high-technology jobs called for in, for example, advanced flexible manufacturing technology. The other job class requires more workers but places few demands on them for specialized training and education.
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. Thus, in addition to ergonomic concerns, human factors specialists who seek to understand the demands of these jobs as an input into work design must find new methods of measuring the cognitive workload and cognitive skills of the jobs.
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What are the effects of individual differences in cognitive style on worker performance with automated systems? CONCLUSION We have argued that computer technologies and the shift to an information economy present a considerable challenge for those involved in work design and for those researchers in human factors and related disciplines
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Third, research must investigate informal learning processes and skill acquisition among those working with new technology; this is a relatively neglected but important research topic. Insights gathered from such research should be used both to plan formal training procedures and to improve ease of on-the-job learning.
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Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Air Force Studies Board 1982 The Effectiveness of the Air Force Nondestructive Inspection Management.
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1989 CIM in action: microelectronics, manufacturer charts course towards true systems integration. Industrial Engineering 21:18-22.
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Panel on Human Factors Research Needs in Nuclear Regulatory Research, Committee on Human Factors, National Research Council. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
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Walker, C., and R Guest 1952 Man on the Assembly Line.
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