Tag Archives: job satisfaction
Frankfurt Airport, Fish-hooks and Job Design
Imagine the scene. Frankfurt airport was snowbound and closed all Thursday evening. It was Friday afternoon. Runways had just been cleared of snow. Flights had resumed at 2:00pm. The queues were huge. Two hundred people queued for the security check. One German security guy hurled bags and coats on the belt. Two security operatives patted down when everyone invariably failed the magnetic screen. And one lone guy manned the X-Ray machine. He progressively failed the bags and selected well over half for further analysis. He left his post by the X-Ray machine and opened each bag. He selected shoes, PCs and handbags and marched the owners to the swab analyser 15 metres away to spend three minutes with each passenger to clear them. That done, he wandered back his X-Ray machine to resume scanning. And all while his colleagues and two hundred passengers waited.
So HOW did this mess happen? How was it that two hundred passengers swore and gnashed teeth? It happened because the manager watching this fiasco did not understand the basics of job design. This short blog shows how an SME manager can analyse his or her organisation. It shows how the manager can optimise the various jobs so that competences are balanced across teams. That done the horrendous Frankfurt inefficiency can be avoided.
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On Job Descriptions
Job descriptions have three clear purposes in the firm: to guide recruitment (in concert with a Person Profile), give guidance to the principal on the relative value of that job against another, to guide the job holder should that ever be needed. Since there are such clear-cut purposes, it will come as no surprise that there is a very specific way of writing a Job Description such that these needs are satisfied.
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On ISO9001: Systematising the Firm
ISO9001 is the quality standard. Surely that means that it is the preserve of the quality manager in a firm? How then can it be anything to do with people? And more importantly how can it have anything to do with people management or HR?
ISO9001 calls for the firm to be systematised. This short blog discusses the role of systems in business, arguing that systems are important to job satisfaction and to staff flourishing. If achieved in the right way both lead to enhanced profits.
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On Virtual Firms
We’re working with a Sussex firm that is coming to the end of its lease on 2,500 square feet of office, meeting and server space. It’s at a fork in its corporate development. Many of its staff live up to 100 miles from the office and work on client sites and at home from time to time. So should it now go ‘virtual’, and embrace the ‘cloud’ to reduce costs and improve the employee experience? Should it let the lease lapse and go completely ‘virtual’?
