* adapted from Smith & Sainfort (1989)
Each individual is unique. We have unique needs, desires and ways of conceptualizing and responding to the world around us. We are unique in our physiology, skills, abilities and resiliencies. Put two people in the same work system (or family system) and they can have very different interpretations and responses, psychologically and physically.
A job consists of a set of tasks. Jobs require intellectual, physical and emotional resources from people, and we can describe them according to a long list of attributes such as workload, work pressure, autonomy, skill variety, task identity, and task significance. We can intentionally design work so that it has as many positive and healthy attributes as possible in order to attract and retain the best talent and produce the highest quality work product.
The work environment consists of both the physical and social surroundings. A work environment might be a physical office space (lighting, workstation, chair, cubicle, onsite daycare and dry cleaning) but it will also consist of the social environment (for example, whether it’s competitive or collaborative, encourages risk taking, innovation and/or asking for help, generates feelings of being supported and appreciated, or isolated and replaceable). It is common for physical work environments to be designed with intentionality, while the social work environments are left to chance, becoming reflections of the interactions between the individuals, the tasks they are working on and the technology’s requirements.
Anything that helps us accomplish tasks, whether it is a physical tool, an idea for a process, or a method of working, can be considered a technology. When we change the ways in which a task or a job is done, we change the job itself. We ask people doing the work to learn new and different skills, and we impact the other related tasks either intentionally or unintentionally. Technology brings with it another set of demands, as well as the challenge of keeping up with its rate of change.
Groups create structures, policies, procedures, social norms, beliefs and implicit/explicit agreements that result in and express their cultures. The impact of culture on people and their work cannot be underestimated. As the saying goes, “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” This means that no matter how great the ideas being introduced, the culture of the organization – its historical way of operating, the structures that it uses to reward and punish behavior, who and what it values – will dominate our decision making and behavior. Even if the organization is inherently in conflict with itself (for example, when it is hierarchical in structure and values but uses the language of egalitarianism and nurturing), people within the culture understand the messages that are being communicated and the overall goals of the group in which they have been indoctrinated. We learn to trust what we live, as opposed to what we hear.
