In Washington, D.C., Richard G. Barry, now senior advisor for management systems at the World Bank, has successfully let employees help pick some of the computer gear the bank was using. Barry didn’t set out to experiment. He just decided that giving the workers a strong voice would be the most logical way.
It happened, among other places, in the offices of the Eastern African region at the bank’s D.C. headquarters. “We had a few word-processing machines,” Barry said, “and there were a few word-processing centers around the bank where we could go if we wanted something done, but essentially we were starting out from zero.”
The office included two hundred professionals and one hundred secretaries and other clerical workers, and Barry’s task force represented them in several ways. One was by job function; lending officers were there as well as those overseeing the existing projects. People also came from different parts of the office’s bureaucracy, from different countries, and, obviously, from different job levels—everyone from secretaries to division chiefs. Barry didn’t go out of his way to pamper clerical workers in particular. He simply felt that like any other bank employees, they should decide what tools they needed to get the job done.
Secretaries, far from being anticomputer, asked for equipment to reduce repetitive typing. Managers sought fast word processing, in different languages, which complicated keyboard requirements. The secretaries themselves wanted terminals with whose keyboards and screens they’d be happy. In a microcomputer installation without separate terminals, of course, there may be less choice.
It took a year for the task force to line up the equipment, and wisely the actual equipment shopping came last. Instead, the task force focused on what characteristics it wanted the gear to have. Then it learned what was available—how products compared to the ideal system within budget. As a result, the Eastern African region ended up with good, sharp computer screens, ergonomic furniture from the very start, and a lighting system fit for computer work. And Barry says the teamwork helped promote ...
... Good Job Design
A friend of mine, a mid-level manager, was almost salivating over the economies of computerized word processing.
“You know what I’d do?” he said of an office where he’d worked. “I’d take out just about all the secretaries and dump them into a central office. I’d reduce their salaries. They’d be doing less demanding work and should be paid less.” He wasn’t an ogre. He was reflecting the thinking of a good many modern managers. It makes sense, doesn’t it, turning offices into factories, which, indeed, might run twenty-four hours a day, to make the best use of equipment?
Well, not quite. In fact, not at all. Nor should you try obnoxious gimmicks like computerized pacing.
They’re all threats to good job design, which is nothing more than sensibly deciding what each job includes and how the employee does it.