Rothwell W.J. - Beyond Training and Development[c] The Groundbreaking Classic on Human Performance Enhancement (2004)(2-e)(en)
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performance. It is therefore imperative to consider during redesign who is likely to be affected by the change, and in what ways. An effort can then be made to prevent any unwanted side effects.
2.Organizational redesign is rarely a stand-alone effort. Other HPE strategies should be combined with it. Once people are clear about their responsibilities, it is difficult to change that understanding. A change in organizational design may require frequent informational sessions and training to help people understand what they should be doing, what results they should be achieving, and why the change is worthwhile. The organization may also need to review the way it rewards performance to ensure that rewards match new responsibilities.
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I M P L E M E N T I N G H U M A N P E R F O R M A N C E
E N H A N C E M E N T S T R A T E G I E S T O
A D D R E S S W O R K P R O B L E M S O R
O P P O R T U N I T I E S
Some human performance enhancement (HPE) strategies are designed to solve performance problems, to improve the way the work is performed or organized, to support workers who carry out the work, or to capitalize on improvement opportunities at the work level. HPE strategies of this kind include:
Redesigning jobs or work tasks
Improving information flow about work-related issues
Improving feedback
Improving on-the-job and off-the-job training
Using structured practice
Improving equipment and tools
Using job or performance aids
Improving reward systems
HPE strategies directed to the work section of the performance model (see Exhibit 2-2) lend themselves to real-time, work-related HPE. Taken individually or collectively, they can exert tremendous influence on the quality, quantity, cost, and timeliness of human performance.
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Redesigning Jobs or Job Tasks
Job and task redesign directs attention to the work assignments at the level of individuals and/or their job titles. But what exactly are job redesign and task redesign? Why are they useful? When are they appropriate as HPE strategies? How is job redesign carried out? How is task redesign carried out? What problems can affect job or task redesign?
What Is Job and Task Redesign?
Job design is the process of establishing work duties, activities, responsibilities, and desired outcomes. Its purpose is to clarify, and communicate, the necessary work to be performed by an individual, team, or other group. Just as job design is related to organizational design, so job redesign is closely related to organizational redesign. Whereas organizational design establishes responsibilities by function, division, department, or work group, job design establishes responsibilities or activities by job title, position, or work.
A job is a set of work duties, responsibilities, activities, or desired outcomes. Many people may share the same job title. A position, on the other hand, refers to the duties, responsibilities, activities, or desired outcomes carried out by one person. Only one individual occupies a position, although he or she may bear a job title shared by many people.
Task design is more specific than job design. A task is a finite activity with an identifiable beginning, middle, and end. An employee’s role in carrying out a procedure of several steps may represent a task. Task analysis is the process of analyzing tasks to detect the underlying competencies, knowledge, skills, or attitudes necessary for people to complete the task successfully. Many approaches to task analysis have been identified,1 but all call for examining what performers need to know and do to carry out each task step.
The trend in job and task design is to move away from rigid definitions of what people may (or may not) do based on written job descriptions and to move toward flexible descriptions of work centered on doing whatever is necessary to meet or exceed customer needs or expectations. That trend has prompted experimentation with teams in which many people share common goals and interdependent responsibilities. The same trend has prompted employers to experiment with part-time workers, job sharing among several workers, task sharing across several workers, and teams composed of representatives of the manufacturer, customers, suppliers, and distributors.
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Why Is Job and Task Redesign Useful?
A job is the meeting point between organizational requirements and individual capabilities. Individuals perform only when they accept responsibility for duties, activities, or desired results. Clarifying job duties—or changing them—is thus one way to improve human performance. This does not necessarily require training or other HPE strategies, although other strategies will be required if changes in job design prompt employees to accept responsibilities for activities or results for which they have not previously had to perform or for which they are not currently rewarded.
When Are Job Redesign and Task Redesign Appropriate as HPE Strategies?
Job redesign can be used as an HPE strategy whenever:
Work duties, tasks, responsibilities, or customer requirements are not being consistently met because responsibility is unclear.
The organization has been reorganized or restructured.
Work processes have been reengineered.
Dramatic change has been imposed on the organization because of radical transformations in activities with suppliers, distributors, customers, or other key stakeholder groups.
In addition, job or task redesign may be necessary if the organization has introduced other HPE strategies, such as changes in reward or incentive systems or changes in the equipment or tools that employees use.
How Is Job Redesign Carried Out?
Over the years much has been written about job redesign.2 There is a difference between really changing work responsibilities, duties, activities, or desired outcomes and simply clarifying what people are expected to do in their jobs. Some people are not sure what they are responsible for; as a result, they do not perform to expectations. (Supervisors and their workers may agree on as little as 50 percent of the workers’ job responsibilities.)
To clarify existing job responsibilities, HPE specialists should use traditional or nontraditional approaches to job analysis. Job analysis should be understood to mean the process of discovering the work activities and desired work results of
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a job or type of work. Job analysis may require job incumbents and their supervisors and/or coworkers each to prepare written job descriptions or to write out responses to a structured interview questionnaire about what job incumbents are doing on a daily basis. The outcome of the job analysis process (summarized in Exhibit 12-1) is usually a job description. Many job descriptions are published in The Dictionary of Occupational Titles, a U.S. government publication that can be found in many public libraries. The Dictionary of Occupational Titles is being replaced by the impressive O’Net work site (see http://online
.onetcenter.org/).
Although a job description describes what workers are doing or what results workers are achieving, it does not necessarily indicate what workers should be doing or what results they should be achieving. To determine that, it may be necessary to form a project team composed of exemplary job incumbents, their immediate organizational superiors, and representatives of other affected groups. The project team should investigate how the job incumbents’ work duties should be changed to meet customer needs or expectations better, achieve the organization’s strategic goals, or conform to requirements stemming from new responsibilities allocated in a newly restructured or redesigned organization.
A good general approach is to follow this four-step process:
1.The project team is formed.
2.Team members investigate changes affecting the organization, customers, and the work. As part of this step, they may wish to benchmark the same job title in other companies.
3.Team members feed the information back to their peers.
4.Team members prepare a proposed job description that lists new work duties attuned to customer needs or organizational requirements; circulate it among exemplary job incumbents and their immediate organizational superiors; and prepare a flexible action plan to add, subtract, or modify the duties, responsibilities, work activities, or desired results of job incumbents.
Team members should also work with HPE specialists to identify compatible HPE strategies to support job redesign, such as changes in selection, training, reward/incentive, and feedback practices. Such an approach has been successfully used in transforming directive supervisors into supportive team leaders.
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Exhibit 12-1. Steps in the job analysis process.
Step 1
What is the key purpose of the job? (one or two sentences)
Step 2
What are the functions of the job? (List them.)
Step 3
What are the key duties, responsibilities, activities, or functions of the job?
Step 4
What knowledge, skills, attitudes, competencies, or other qualifications are needed to learn the job?
Step 5
Under what conditions is the job carried out? (Describe working/performance conditions.)
Step 6
How can the job be described? (Write a job description and job specification.)
Step 7
How much agreement exists about the job? (Show the job description/specification
to stakeholders.)
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How Is Task Redesign Carried Out?
Task redesign can be carried out in the same fashion as job redesign, by a team comprising representatives of everyone who carries out a task. If that group is large, only exemplary performers should be chosen. The group constructs a flowchart that depicts the way the task is currently carried out by writing each step on an 81/2-by-11-inch sheet of paper and using the sheets to construct a chart of the steps on a large blank wall. Team members then come up with ideas about how to streamline the procedure or task by combining it, dropping it, or modifying it to achieve a more efficient or effective flow of activities. They also suggest ways to make the change, providing information and training to those who are currently carrying out the task or procedure. Customers or other stakeholders can be involved in this process.
What Problems Can Affect Job or Task Redesign?
Job and task redesign are imperfect HPE strategies. Seldom can they be carried out in isolation from organizational redesign because changes in one job or task affect other jobs or tasks. For this reason, then, it is advisable to assess the possible consequences of any job redesign before making it and to involve other teams or groups that may be affected.
Improving Information Flow About Work-Related
Issues
‘‘Why didn’t you tell me that?’’ is a common—and plaintive—question in many work settings. It expresses the bewilderment of an employee or manager who stumbles on a change of which he or she was previously unaware. ‘‘Poor com- munication’’—meaning lack of information on which to base decisions or ac- tions—is a commonly cited cause of performance problems.3 Providing the information necessary for workers to perform their jobs effectively was cited by training professionals in my 2004 survey as a most commonly used and significant HPE strategy.4
But what is information flow? When should information flow be a focus of attention for enhancing human performance? How should information flow be improved? What problem affects efforts to improve information flow?
What Is Information Flow?
Information flow refers to quantity and quality of work-related information that flows into, up, down, across, and laterally in organizational settings. It is closely
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related to organizational communication, defined as ‘‘the process of creating and exchanging messages within a network of interdependent relationships to cope with environmental uncertainty.’’5
When Should Information Flow Be a Focus of Attention for Enhancing Human Performance?
Improving information flow may be an effective HPE strategy in these circumstances:
Employees complain that they do not receive sufficient information about their jobs and organizations.
Management does not follow up on employee messages.
Messages are sent too early or too late to be used.
The grapevine supplements the void created by management’s lack of openness, candor, or visibility.
Impersonal channels are substituted for face-to-face contact.
Employees are given no chance to offer suggestions about decisions affecting them.6
Information flow should also be examined when an unacceptable time lag exists between changes in customer, supplier, or distributor requirements and action taken by appropriate groups or individuals inside the organization.
How Can Information Flow Be Improved?
Good intentions are not enough to improve information flow. Management, employees, and HPE specialists must be genuinely committed to the process.
One approach to improving information flow and organizational communication is to apply the communication audit, which compares existing to desired information flow.7 A communication audit may focus on an entire organization or any part of it. The aim of a communcation audit is to assess current organizational communication practices, desirable improvements to those practices, and the impact of those practices. Improving communication can be an HPE strategy aimed at improving the timeliness and specificity of information flow.
To conduct an audit, HPE specialists can follow these steps:
1.Identify the organization’s implicit (or explicit) communication policy. Decide what information decision makers are to provide to employees, customers, and other stakeholders.
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2.Assess how well employees and other stakeholders believe that information is flowing within the organization by using written questionnaires, face-to-face interviews, team meetings, focus groups, observation methods, and other approaches (see Exhibit 12-2).
3.When the results are in, feed them back to stakeholders, establish action plans to improve information flow, and create methods of monitoring and measuring improvements in information flow. As part of this process, ask employees and other stakeholders to devise strategies to improve communication at all levels throughout the organization.
What Problem Affects Efforts to Improve Information Flow?
One key problem affecting HPE strategies centered on improving information flow is managers’ and other decision makers’ tendency to blame poor communication or lack of information for many human performance problems. They use the issue, as they sometimes use lack of training, as a catchall for many (or all) ills afflicting the organization. However, performance problems are not always attributable to poor communication, nor is improving the timely and specific flow of information a panacea.
Exhibit 12-2. Sample questions to assess the quality and timeliness of information flow.
Directions: Use this questionnaire to collect information about the quality and timeliness of information flow in an organization. Give this questionnaire to employees. Ask them to respond honestly and anonymously. Ask them also to forward the completed questionnaire to an identified individual. When the questionnaires are in, compile the results. Then feed them back to decision makers and employees. Ask them to suggest ways to improve information flow in the organization.
1.How well do you receive information that you need to do your job? Do you feel the information you receive is adequate or inadequate? Why? Explain.
2.How specific is the information that you receive? Is the information too general to be useful? Explain.
3.What could be done, in your opinion, to improve the flow of information you need to receive to perform effectively? Provide suggestions for action.
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To address this problem, HPE specialists should work with managers, employees, and other stakeholders to distinguish genuine communication problems from other problems. A good place to begin is with two key questions:
1.Who needs information about a change to perform?
2.For what reason(s) might people wish to deliberately conceal or distort information?
The answer to the first question is not always apparent to everyone in an organization. To answer it, it will be necessary to improve employee awareness about who does what. The second question focuses on motivations. Information flow is psychological more than logical; people will provide, conceal, or distort information in their own self-interest. To improve the timely and specific flow of information, then, it is necessary to address disincentives for communicating, incentives for not communicating, and incentives for communicating.
Improving Job Feedback Methods
Feedback is closely related to information about work. Indeed, feedback is a special form of information. Yet lack of feedback on work consequences and lack of timely feedback were cited as often encountered and significant human performance problems faced by training and development professionals in my year 2004 survey.8
What is feedback? When should it be a focal point for attention for enhancing human performance? How should feedback be improved? What problems can affect efforts to improve job feedback?
What Is Feedback?
Thomas Gilbert has pointed out, ‘‘[M]ore than half the problems of human competence can be traced to inadequate data. Such an easily correctable defect would not exist if people were more aware of it and its consequences.’’9 Feedback refers to messages as they are understood. It exists only in the larger context of a communication-performance model, which may be called a feedback system that consists of all elements contributing to information provided back to a performer. A feedback system, like David K. Berlo’s classic communication model,10 includes important elements such as a sender, receiver, channel, message, noise, and medium (see Exhibit 12-3). A sender is the performer who