July 2016 - Volume 2, Issue I
ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN
NEED FOR A SOCIO-TECHNICAL
INCLUSIVE SYSTEM DESIGN APPROACH TO MEET 21ST CENTURY
WORKFORCE CHALLENGES
By
Dr. Hussain Amjad
Abstract:
Changes occurring in the business and socio-economic
global environments increase the complexity of working
systems. The global work-force is becoming more diverse
where people from different social, cultural, geographical
and technical backgrounds work together in spite of their
existing differences. Existence of varying human responses
caused due to variations in individual’s physical, physiological, psychological, social and cognitive responses to the
organizational design becomes a real challenge for designers. Moreover, increase in the number of older workers,
also requires the attention of designers, as they are different in many ways. These issues increase the complexity of
organiza-tional systems and have serious implications for
human factors and ergonomics as this complexity challenges the way conventional organizational systems are
designed and implemented. There is a great need to develop new strategies where human variations are rightly understood and then emphasized during organizational design
process. A proposed Sociotechnical Inclusive System
Design approach has been discussed for addressing social
and technical issues of organizational design by integrating
socio-technical principles with inclusive thinking so that
these challenges might be addressed at the organizational
and individual levels. This article briefly describes global
workforce challenges like increase in diversity, ageing, and
impact of individual level variations on workplace safety
and task performance. Finally, it highlights the need to
design organizational systems based on diversity and differences where social and technical inclusivity should be an
integral part of any design decision so that organizations
can effectively utilize their human capital. The suggested
design approach can draw multiple benefits including
employee satisfaction, workplace safety and well-being,
high productivity, the quality and retention of a skilled work
force for a longer time. All these benefits ultimately support
the attainment of long term organizational sustainability.
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