Magazine Spring 2022 Issue Research Feature

How Well-Designed Work Makes Us Smarter

Work that permits autonomy, demands problem-solving, and meets other criteria for good design can bolster employees’ cognitive skills and ongoing learning.

Sharon K. Parker and Gwenith G. Fisher Reading Time: 19 min 

Topics

Permissions and PDF

Rob Dobi/theispot.com

Promoting worker learning is an increasingly urgent priority: To succeed at executing technology-driven strategies, a company must have a workforce that can rapidly adapt to and master new tools, processes, and roles. As AI systems automate more manual and routine tasks, humans will likely take on work that is more cognitively challenging.1 All of this makes it increasingly critical that managers understand how to foster cognition and accelerate learning in the workplace.2

We already know that both on-the-job learning and expert knowledge are strong drivers of higher worker performance.3 But how can we further enhance work to promote learning? Is it possible to speed up people’s informal learning at work? Can some types of work make people more (or less) intelligent over time? Our research addresses these important questions. The results show that not all work is equal when it comes to fostering learning — but the differences do not result from the type of work being done. From a review of research studies across multiple disciplines (including organizational psychology, occupational health, ergonomics, and gerontology), we identified the powerful role of work design for enhancing workers’ cognition.4 This means that, irrespective of a person’s occupation, more learning will happen when work is well designed.

Work design is about the nature of people’s work — for example, which tasks workers do and how many tasks they have — as well as how the work is organized, such as whether people work on a team or independently.5 In this article, we’ll describe five aspects of work design that we identified as shaping worker cognition, and ways to maximize them to boost learning. We’ll also discuss the implications that this research has for an aging workforce and provide recommendations that managers can put into practice.

Topics

About the Authors

Sharon K. Parker (www.sharonkparker.com) is a John Curtin Distinguished Professor at Curtin University, an Australian Research Council laureate fellow, director of the Centre for Transformative Work Design (@wetransformwork), and a chief investigator for the Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research. Gwenith G. Fisher (@gwenithgwyn) is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Colorado State University, an adjunct associate professor at the Colorado School of Public Health, and an affiliate investigator with the Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research.

References (28)

1. C.B. Frey and M.A. Osborne, “The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?” Technological Forecasting and Social Change 114 (January 2017): 254-280.

2. S.K. Parker and G. Grote, “Automation, Algorithms, and Beyond: Why Work Design Matters More Than Ever in a Digital World,” Applied Psychology, Feb. 13, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1111/apps.12241.

Show All References

Tags:

Reprint #:

63319

More Like This

Add a comment

You must to post a comment.

First time here? Sign up for a free account: Comment on articles and get access to many more articles.

Comments (4)
pedro gavides
Very good research work on improvements in work design beyond the use of new technologies. They place human capital and continuous learning as a flag in the improvements of the work environment and therefore in the best quality of it
John wilson
This is an awesome article!!! An unquestionable requirement read for this advanced time.
Edwin Weckend
It's an in-depth and competent information. Thank you for the advice.
Joelle Bixby
This is a fantastic article!!! A must read for O&D and L&D professionals for this modern era.
undefined