Putting the individual at the heart of work design
Healthy, human-centred jobs stand and fall by the concrete ways work is designed on the ground. Adapting working conditions to suit the individual is accepted as the fundamental tenet of human-centred work design.
Ideally, prevention should be given thought while a workplace is still being planned. The principles of human-centred work design - avoiding physical harms, ensuring work tasks are manageable, eliminating adverse psychosocial factors, fostering personal development, and promoting social sustainability - help ensure possible health problems and negative psychosocial developments are averted at an early stage. Although corrective measures can also be implemented after a workplace has gone into operation, parameters that have already been set, such as the size of its rooms and spaces, will hinder the introduction of improvements.
The ideal of human-centred work design is, among other things, rooted in the insight that employees work under predetermined workplace conditions they are only able to influence to a limited extent themselves. This is why it is the employer’s responsibility – as part of their duty of care – to protect employees from hazards and adverse psychosocial factors. The same obligations are imposed by the Occupational Safety and Health Act (Arbeitsschutzgesetz, ArbSchG) (Link?) as well.
Issue 2/24 of baua: Aktuell (in German) is devoted to approaches that put the individual at the heart of work design, starting with an introductory article that explains the implications of human-centred work design: risks have to be combated at source and action taken to protect each individual. This can be done by following the STOP principle, which specifies the sequence in which protective measures are to be implemented. Efforts should initially be made to substitute a risk source or modify problematic processes. If this is not possible, the next option is to examine and adopt technical and organisational measures. Should such interventions too be insufficient to reduce hazards to safe levels, personal protective measures are to be put in place.
However, conceiving of workplaces in exclusively situational terms will not do full justice to the ambition for work to be designed with a human-centred ethos because behavioural measures, such as training and continuing professional development, are often essential if employees are actually to be able to meet the demands of their work and perform their tasks. In this context, personal (behavioural) measures such as learning mental recovery strategies (Link auf Broschüre?) are to be understood as vital techniques that complement human-centred work design.
The Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (Bundesanstalt für Arbeitsschutz und Arbeitsmedizin, BAuA) conducts research into a wide variety of topics connected with how work is designed, from process safety to time and location-flexible working - and pays particular attention to the changes taking place in the modern world of work, including the digital, ecological, and demographic transformations.
The current priorities for BAuA’s research on human-centred work design are summarised below.
Easing information overload, time pressure, and pressure to perform
Time pressure, pressure to perform, and information overload are facets of high work intensity. Employees experience pressurised situations of these kinds when conflicts arise because they have too little working time at their disposal to perform the requisite volume of work while meeting the quality standards that are expected. One important means of countering work intensity is alternation between work and recovery, an approach that requires good organisation.
BAuA is carrying out research into different aspects of human-robot interaction and its ramifications for human-centred work design. The topics covered range from ethical and legal parameters to the challenges faced when introducing and implementing these technologies in workplaces, as well as issues relating to interaction design and robot morphology.
Ever more people are having to be cared for by nursing personnel. However, the nursing profession is suffering from shortages of skilled workers. This is partly due to unfavourable working conditions. Good work organisation can help to improve this situation and thus have a positive influence on employees’ health and work satisfaction at the same time.
When it comes to interactive work, the individual stands in the foreground in a double sense. Firstly, employees are of crucial significance; secondly, however, important roles are played by their interaction partners, the customers who visit shops for example. The interactions between these two groups consequently need to be taken into account in human-centred work design because customers and similar groups are integral to the work process.
Human-centred working conditions depend in part on the right organisational arrangements being made in the workplace. Managers especially play a key role in this respect. At the same time they too are affected by the changes that are happening.
