A new user-friendly book replete with checklists, case studies, helpful diagrams and easy-to-understand tables shows how the environment in which people work has a direct impact on productivity, competitiveness and success.
Published by the International Labour Office in Geneva, Work Organization and Ergonomics is a practical book. It explores recent changes in work organisation and ergonomics and shows how significant improvements can be made for little or no cost to business enterprises.
It shows how to match the environment in which people work with workers' needs and potential. Simple changes to posture, workstations or the psychological environment in which workers do their jobs, can increase the quality of products or services, enhance morale and reduce accidents, staff turnover and business costs.
The book offers practical tools to employers, managers and workers to make workplaces more innovative, focus on specific work tasks and set in train effective plans to redesign jobs. It is intended for readers who: work for medium-sized, medium-technology industries or services; are open to a participatory approach; and have "fairly severe financial constraints on action".
There are chapters on: designing innovative workplaces; task analysis and work design; workplace design; layout of equipment and production flow; flexible work groups and multi-skilling; well-planned buildings and premises; and Strategic organisational issues, like total quality management, just-in-time and technological change.
The book was developed as a tool for the specific needs of a "design team". Increasingly, enterprises use design teams to solve problems. Such a team is a group whose task is to develop and introduce changes into a specific work environment. The team should be representative of the people or groups who will be affected by its proposed changes, including workers and supervisors.
The book is equally good on workers' physical, mental and psychological needs. For instance, it lists basic work-related human needs that must be met to energise and motivate people in their jobs. These include reasonably demanding but varied work, self-paced work "with the opportunity to move around physically", opportunities to learn new skills, a degree of autonomy in working methods and decision-making "including planning and control of work and opportunities to exercise discretion".
The book provides 10 simple guidelines on manual handling which, if implemented in every workplace, would radically reduce the suffering to workers and costs to employers, insurance companies and the State. These include: "Do not attempt to lift or transfer a weight which may be beyond your capacity" and "handling loads at heights below the knees or above the shoulder should be eliminated wherever possible".
The section on flexible work groups and multi-skilling is especially useful, in particular a case-study showing the effectiveness of autonomous working groups, that is, teams with sets of work activities which enjoy total or partial discretion about how they do their work.
Work Organization and Ergonomics is available from Government Publications, Mail Order, 4-5 Harcourt Road, Dublin 2. Telephone: 01 661 3111. Fax: 01 475 2760.
