0:04
So let's talk a little bit about what job design might look like with an example
that we see a lot at the Wharton School, and that's the job of junior analysts.
These are people who leave college and go to work for investment banks.
What do those jobs look like?
At least in a lot of places, the students find them pretty miserable and
the common theme about them is job design.
So what they find that they are doing is spread sheet analysis.
They get their data and they are told to manipulate it in Excel and
do some various kinds of calculations with it.
And that might not be bad, except that they do that everyday, all day.
Usually the same kind of analysis.
Once they figure out how to do it, they just do it over and over and
over and over.
There is no variety in that.
And there's no real control over how they do it either or when they do it.
It's dropped on their desk, we need this by tomorrow morning, and
here's how you gotta do it.
Everything is exactly the same.
The most surprising thing is that they've got
no idea what they're actually working on, typically.
Nobody tells them, they just give them the data.
So this idea of the significance of what they're doing, they might be working
on something really big for a country or something, they never know.
And how well they do on these tasks, they often don't know that either.
They hear, maybe somebody comes in and yells at them if there's a problem,
but otherwise they never know whether they've done a good or a bad job.
And you think about the consequence of that, the fact that they hate their jobs,
means in order to get them to do these jobs and to stay there,
you got to pay them a ton of money which was the deal.
You got a really boring job you're not going to like very much.
And it's incredibly hard, lots of hours, and demanding, but
we pay you a ton of money, right?
Now, if you think about how you would fix that job, it's not that hard to do.
A simple way to fix it, the simplest thing to do is to just tell people what are you
working on, takes ten seconds to tell them.
This is a bond issue for the Kingdom of Jordan or
something like that, so you know what is.
And then when you're doing the final presentation, maybe you let them sit in
the back of the room so that they get a sense of why this matters.
They also get some feedback.
Does the client like this whole project or not, right?
And maybe if they gotta do spreadsheet analysis,
at least you could have them do different analyses over the course of a week, so
it's not the same one all the time.
And could you give them a little control over when they do it,
at least schedule and maybe to some extent how.
It's not that hard to fix this kind of work
in ways that would make people like it better.
And when they like it better, quality goes up and
people stay longer, and performance improves as well.
So I have a little video here I'd like to show you of something that went
viral in an airline.
So take a look at this.
3:41
So here's what I need, especially you guys in the front,
because you know what's coming.
All right, I need a V, all right?
All I need you to do is stomp and clap and I'm going to do the rest,
because I just have had five flights today and
I just cannot do the regular boring announcement, again.
Otherwise, I'm going to put myself to sleep.
So you guys with me?
>> Yeah.
>> All right, so give me a stomp, clap, stomp, clap, come on.
Stomp, clap, stomp, clap.
Stay on beat there.
There you go, keep that going.
[MUSIC]
This is Flight 372 on SWA, the fight attendants on board serving you today,
Theresa in the middle, David in the back.
My name is David and I'm here to tell you that shortly after takeoff,
first things first, there's soft drinks and coffee to quench your thirst.
But if you want another kind of drink, then just holler,
alcoholic beverages will be $4.
If a Monster energy drink is your plan, that'll be $3 and you get the whole can.
We won't take your cash, you gotta pay with plastic, if you have a coupon,
that's fantastic.
We know you're ready to get to new places, open up the bins, put away your suitcases.
Carry-on items go under the seat in front of you, so
none of you have things by your feet.
If you have a seat on a row with an X, I'm going to go talk to you so
you might as well expect it.
You gotta help evacuate, in case we need you.
If you don't want to, then we'll going to re-seat you.
Before we leave, our advice is put away your electronic devices, fasten your
seatbelt, then put your trays up, press the button to make the seat back raise up.
Sit back relax, have a good time,
it is almost time to go so I'm done with the rhyme.
Thank you for the fact that I wasn't ignored, this is Southwest Airlines,
welcome aboard.
>> [APPLAUSE] >> Thank you very much for my beat.
I appreciate that, you will not get that on United Airlines, I guarantee you.
>> So in that video, you could see that the flight attendant was doing exactly
what flight attendants always have to do.
There's certain information they are required by the Federal
Aviation Administration to convey to you about the flight and about safety.
But they get to do it in a way that
taps maybe into their own creativity a little bit.
And they like it better and
it turns out the passengers liked it better as well, right?
So I think what we've had is a result of these lessons,
which began in the 1970s and progressed through the 1980s,
about how to design jobs differently is a kind of battle that went on between
engineers who design jobs and psychologists who design jobs.
And on the same campus at universities, you could go to an engineering department
and meet the industrial engineers, who were designing jobs as if Frederick Taylor
was more or less still around guiding them.
Time and motion studies, the one best way to do stuff,
fitting people to the machines and the logic of the production process.
And then you could cross the campus and
go talk to the psychologists, who would be explaining to you why that method of
designing jobs was a disaster and you had these two fighting.
And frankly, the engineers were winning
most of the time maybe because they were already in place.
But after we started to see things like the Lordstown, Ohio factory and
those problems spread across the US economy and
into Europe as well, it started to cost companies a lot of money.
Not just in turnover, but especially in quality and
having to make up and try to fix quality problems is really expensive.
But especially competition from foreign producers where they didn't
seem to be having these problems, really made US companies and
then European companies as well start to take all this much more seriously.
Michael UseemProfessor of Management and Director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management
Peter CappelliProfessor of Management, Director, Center for Human Resources
