20-21 November 2024, Sydney

 

Integrating organisational psychology into the design of work

• Integrating new tools and discoveries from the psychology of good work design
• Harmonising work design strategies with existing organisational strategies
• Engaging organisational psychology experts to improve work design
• Leveraging psychological principles to design work better

 

Adapting your work design approach to new expectations and regulations

• Transforming your work design strategy in line with new HR and safety regulations
• Ensuring your organisation keeps pace with emerging work design innovations
• Adjusting workflow across all business functions to promote good work design
• Exceeding all expectations across the organisation with thoughtful work deign

 

Collaborating with other organisations in the implementation of work design

• Identifying key organisations which can support effective work design
• Ensuring external providers deliver effective and sustainable design changes
• Designing work productively with regulators, unions, and other external stakeholders
• Utilising resources and guidance on work design from other organisations

 

Embedding your work design strategy within an effective change management framework

• Managing the typical change management pain points in work design
• Preparing for the particular challenges for change management around work design
• Evaluating success of change management strategies after redesigning work
• Involving all relevant stakeholders in any work design changes

 

Designing engaging and rewarding jobs for your teams

• Providing diverse and interesting tasks for workers at all levels of the business
• Monitoring for indicators of disengagement with job tasks
• Encouraging creative thinking to problem solving in ongoing work
• Providing opportunities for individuals to vary their tasks and build new skills

 

Enabling your employees to engage in effective job crafting

• Ensuring workers feel safe to take ownership over their tasks
• Encouraging your teams to personalise their work environment
• Exploring ways in which perceptions of jobs can be developed
• Working cooperatively to design a workplace which brings out the best in each team

 

 

 

Updating role descriptions regularly for the changing demands of the future

• Balancing reflexive language and clear expectations in initial job descriptions
• Identifying when a role description must be updated to reflect new duties
• Consulting with workers and teams to ensure responsibilities and policy is clear
• Managing team dynamics based on role descriptions and working styles

 

Upskilling leaders to provide useful feedback and guidance for their teams

• Factoring personality styles into hiring for leadership positions
• Providing effective upskilling around work design for all leaders
• Building a culture of effective communication and psychological safety
• Ensuring consistent and fair performance management

 

Providing your workforce with a sense of ownership over their tasks

• Delegating some level of decision-making authority to all employees
• Rewarding initiative and engagement within task completion
• Identifying the risks of excessive oversight on worker agency
• Providing opportunities for team members to schedule their tasks autonomously

 

Implementing flexible work within the future of organisational processes

• Establishing the level of flexibility within your diverse business units
• Supporting all members of your workforce to self-manage their responsibilities
• Preparing your organisation for an increasingly flexible working environment
• Utilising flexible work arrangements to improve overall wellbeing and performance

 

Extending a reasonable level of autonomy to all members of your workforce

• Identifying opportunities to support job autonomy
• Creating a sense of ownership within inflexible work tasks
• Encouraging a sense of shared identity between your workforce and the organisation
• Extending trust to workers to self-manage in the increasingly flexible workplace

 

Promoting a cohesive and mutually supportive organisational culture

• Identifying opportunities to provide social support to your team members
• Engaging your teams in the internal and external significance of their tasks
• Empowering employees to drive bottom-up team building initiatives
• Encouraging senior leaders to engage with the rest of the business

 

Implementing job design changes based on feedback from your teams

• Determining the appropriate communication style for each of your business areas
• Collecting useful feedback without task or information overload
• Signalling organisational openness to accommodate feedback in work design
• Achieving enthusiastic buy-in for senior leaders on job design changes

 

Supporting line managers to perfect work design within their teams

• Ensuring supervisors understand the key principles of good work design
• Involving managers in regular discussions to improve work design in their teams
• Extending the principles of good work design to managers themselves
• Balancing diversity of teams with a coherent whole-of-business work design strategy

 

Mitigating the risk of burnout and overwork with tolerable demands

• Identifying pain points where there is a high risk of burnout in your teams
• Constructing a preventative strategy to manage the risk of overwork
• Managing team workload and hours collaboratively between supervisors, leaders, and employees
• Creating strong relationships of trust and psychological safety in the workplace
• Moderating the emotional, psychological, and physical demands of daily work

 

Ensuring job demands are reasonable and are mitigated with effective support

• Equipping direct supervisors with strategies to monitor work intensity in their teams
• Planning reasonable time pressure and expectations for each individual
• Providing consistent and productive instructions to employees and teams
• Reinforcing support systems with wellbeing services and programs
• Striking a balance between job demands and job positives

 

Panel Discussion:
Bridging the gaps in work design between HR, safety, OD, and other functions

• Designing work across the differing perspectives and goals of each business function
• Adjusting your collaborative approach to the unique features of each organisation
• Transforming work design to support key objectives across business functions
• Achieving senior leadership support for cross-departmental work design programs

 

Implementing effective work design strategies from a project management perspective

• Assessing the advantages and weaknesses of project management in work design
• Ensuring ongoing work design projects align with broader strategic objectives
• Managing a team with multiple ongoing work design projects
• Identifying business units and functions best suited to manage work design projects

 

Achieving senior leadership buy-in for your work design strategy

• Communicating the importance of good work design
• Leveraging examples of successful work design in other organisations
• Emphasising positive impacts of good work design on productivity and wellbeing
• Maximising the effectiveness of resource spend on work design initiatives
• Demonstrating the success of work design strategies for ongoing leadership buy-in

 

Communicating your work design strategy effectively with leaders and staff

• Explaining work design concepts accessibly in whole-of-business communications
• Adapting your communication style based on your audience
• Relating concepts in work design to existing strategies and practices
• Supporting leaders to acclimate their teams around work design changes