Hello and welcome to another episode of the Working Conversations podcast where we talk all things leadership, business communication and the future of work. I'm your host, Dr. Janel Anderson.

What if the way your job is designed is quietly shaping your performance, your stress levels and even your sense of meaning about work? Every single day we spend a lot of time talking about leadership and engagement and productivity, but not nearly enough about the invisible architecture underneath it all, how work itself is structured. Today we're diving into Smart Work Design, a research backed framework developed by organizational psychologist Sharon Parker. It just might be the most important thing that you have never heard of when it comes to designing work that's sustainable, motivating and human centered. So let's dive into it. What is even meant by smart work design and why are we talking about this today? Well, just a couple of weeks ago I had an opportunity to present this model to one of my clients and it was a fascinating discussion with them and so I just wanted to share it with you as well.

So SMART is an acronym that stands, stands for Stimulating Mastery, Agency, Relational and Tolerable demands. So five different aspects of how our work is designed. And Australian organizational psychologist Sharon Parker is the one who came up with this model and she's got a whole framework and tools and everything built out around it and even a center of work. Hold on one second, I'm going to look up what her center is called. So Sharon Parker, an Australian organizational psychologist, came up with this smart work model and in fact she's got a whole center devoted to sharing this with the world. It's called the center for Transformative Work Design. If you want to follow up more on her work. But I'm going to share the model with you today and we're going to talk about how applicable it is and how useful it can be in thinking about your own work.

And, and for those of you who are in a position to structure the work of others, whether you're a manager or a supervisor, or you're working in the field of organizational design, there are many lessons here on how to structure the work so that it is more engaging and leads to less burnout and all the positive things and mitigating many of the negative things. So it's just a brilliant structure. So it was first published in Human Resource Management Journal back in late 20, 2023. So this is, you know, in the world of work, that and work design and things based on research, this is fairly cutting edge because it was, you know, published only a little over a year ago. Year, year and a Half ago. Now, one of the other things that if you followed my work at all, you know this about me. I love taking that academic research and then translating it into actionable things that we can use in our work life today. So that is like my, I don't know, one of my superpowers is bringing that research based approach to practitioners who can use this every day in their work lives.

So let's get into it and frame up this conversation of S.M.A.R.T work design. Again, it's an acronym you may have heard of smart goal setting. This is totally different acronym, but still spells out the same word. So it has nothing to do with goal setting. And as you heard me describe each of those five terms, you probably heard them, that they didn't sound like smart goal setting. It's different type of smart. It's smart work design. Now, as we frame this up, I want to talk about it in terms of a very average kind of job.

And if this can apply to this very average kind of job, then absolutely it can apply to whatever kind of work that you do. So a couple of weeks ago, we had a window washer come into our home and wash our windows on the inside and the outside. Now again, if you've ever heard me talk about housework, you know that I am not the kind of person who wants to do housework like that. I don't even always appreciate it. Now, although I must say this was my husband's idea and I must say that those windows look so gorgeous after the window washer had been there. But I got into a quick conversation with the window washer because I was at the time researching this whole smart design of work, and I wondered if his work adhered to these principles. So how can being just something as every day as a window washer adhere to the smart work design principles? Well, was his work stimulating? Absolutely. And in fact, let's go through each of these categories and we'll talk about how the work design met each of these categories for Tony the window washer.

And then you can also think about how does it work for you in your work. So let's talk about stimulating first. What do we mean by stimulating? Well, is there a variety in the work, both a variety of and a variety of skills that you might need in order to accomplish those tasks. And then the second aspect of that stimulation and stimulating work is does it have sufficient complexity? So does it require some information processing? Like do you have to think? And then also problem solving? Is there some problem solving involved in it? So as we apply this to Tony's job as the window washer? Well, absolutely. It is a variety of tasks. He has to find his way to the client. So I don't even know exactly what happens on the booking end of things because my husband booked it. So I don't know if Tony was part of a much larger organization that had a lot of different window washers or if he is a solo practitioner.

But there's definitely a variety of different things he does in his of tasks that he uses in order to get the job done as well as a variety of different skills that he uses to get the job done involving, you know, ladders and safety and and of course the actual washing of the windows themselves. And then just the getting to and from and setting up and taking down all of his equipment and so forth. And then complexity. Well, it might not be as complex as say, like a rocket scientist, but there certainly is a fair bit of complexity in terms of structuring the work and so forth. Probably problem solving as well, because we do have some of those windows that are two floors up, the really big windows, as well as on the outside of the house. How in fact, I wasn't there when most of this work got done. I was there as he was wrapping up. So I don't even know how big his ladders were, but they must have been pretty big to get to the second floor windows on the backside of our house because we're sort of built into a hill.

So with the basement windows being lookout windows all the way up to the second floor, that must have been some, you know, big ladders. So there's probably some problem solving that goes into the, into structuring the work that way as well. So I think is, you know, and as he talks about his work, I definitely felt that he felt it was stimulating. Now as I think about stimulating as it relates to work design, I'm always thinking about video games in terms of being stimulating. Now I'm a terrible video game player. I don't spend much time playing video games at all. But I sound tested this against my son, my 14 year old. He doesn't play that many.

Well, he plays a lot of games on his phone these days, but he's got like Mario Kart and those kinds of video games that we play sometimes in the basement on the big screen. And you know, for something to be stimulating, you have to be encouraged to want to try to get to the next level, to try to level up, to try to win. Now when he plays like a Mario Kart against someone like me, I don't think it's very stimulating for him because I'm so bad at it that I lose so quickly. But he would be stimulated if playing against somebody who was more on par with himself. Again, in terms of the variety of tasks, the complexity and so forth, being able to level up means it's stimulating. So again, for our window washer, Tony, it was a stimulating job. Now I want you to ask yourself how much variety is there for you in the tasks that you do and the skills that are required for you to do them? And then how complex is the work? Is there some variety in the complexity that such that you are required to do some information processing using your prefrontal cortex, using your critical thinking skills and your problem solving skills? If it's lacking, think about what could you do to either restructure your work or ask for your work to be restructured. All right, let's go on to the next one.

M is for mastery. So this mastery is a little bit more nuanced and complex than you might necessarily think of it at first. When I first encountered this model, I was thinking about mastery as just simply being able to do your job well, like mastering the skills that your job requires. But it includes that. But it's even more than that. So it's how much mastery you have over the skills, but also how much mastery you have over how your work fits with the broader objectives of the team, the work unit, the whole organization, so that you're seeing your work in context, in that larger context. And in fact, when I think about mastery in that way, it becomes really evident that when somebody is asking for a promotion before we think they're ready for it, it is probably that they don't have that sufficient organizational mastery. Like, they might know how to do their own job really well, but we may often think of them as not ready for the promotion because they don't see the bigger picture of where their work, their work unit, their team, fits into a larger structure.

So there's three different points that we want to be thinking about in terms of mastery and making sure that other people have mastery over their work. The first one is job feedback. So giving people clear and direct feedback about why to do the job and how to do the job again, so that they understand not only the how to of their work, but also the why of their work. So as we think about Tony and the window washer, I mean, there's certainly the mastery he has of the skill that he's doing, but I think there's also a certain level of mastery that he could be really tone deaf in doing his job if he didn't understand that bigger picture of why somebody wants their windows washed. Is it for an upcoming party at their house, maybe a graduation or some other celebration that's happening at their house? Is it because this is something that they do annually because they like this as part of their spring cleaning ritual? Or is it for some other reason, like, what's the bigger picture, pun intended, of why somebody would want to have their windows washed? And then the next component is feedback from others. Am I doing my job well? And so certainly Tony got some feedback. In fact, he solicited feedback from us. I got to have this quick conversation with him while he was finishing up, and he'd asked my husband to go around, take a look at the job he did to find out if there was anything that, you know, if there were streaks or places he'd missed or anything that we were dissatisfied with.

So he was actively seeking out feedback. So that's another component. To ensure that you have mastery is feedback from others, Am I doing my job well? And then a third part of mastery is again, that bigger picture. Understanding your role, clarity, and how your role fits with other roles and other functions inside the organization and how you serve your clients, whether those be internal clients or external clients. So, again, mastery is a bit more nuanced than just, do I know how to do my job and am I doing it well? It also includes that bigger picture of what else is happening in the organization and how does your specific work fit into that. So if you are somebody who organizes the work of others, plans other people's work, supervises the work of others, you might want to think about this in terms of how much mastery do my team members have? And if they're missing some mastery, is it along the lines of their individual role, or is it along the lines of how their role fits into that bigger picture? Now, some of the additional research on feedback demonstrates that people who are in their role, who are newer in their role, whether that is because they're younger, or they could even not necessarily be younger, but be newer to the role itself. Well, when we're new to the role and younger or both, we need more specific feedback, both the positive feedback as well as the critical feedback, we are open to more of that, and we need a good balance of positive feedback and critical feedback just to know that we're doing the job well. Now, as we get further along in the mastery of doing the role, we're going to be open to more critical feedback, because we're going to want to learn how to do that role even better.

Now, some of that feedback research is outside the model that Sharon Parker is providing. But I just. It just felt like it made sense and it kind of fit to include that here. Now, that's mastery. Now, the next one is a agency. And you might even substitute the word autonomy for agency, because what we mean here is personal agency. Do I feel like I have some agency over the work? And there's a handful of different criteria that we can look at, different ways that one might have autonomy over their work. Do they have autonomy over some decision making? Maybe not all the decisions, but some of the decisions.

Do they have autonomy over timing how the ebb and flow of their work goes in terms of what do I do first, what do I do second, and what order can I do this work in? And then the third is method. Are there a handful of methods that I can use and make some choices about which methods to use that might be best in which parts of the work? So we can go back to Tony, the window washer. Does he have decision making? Absolutely. I mean, he's got some decision making over his schedule, like what time he starts, which house he's going to work on in the morning versus the afternoon. I think he has autonomy over scheduling. And then once he's there, there's a lot of decision making that goes into the project. So he could have started on the inside and done the insides first or the outsides. He might have done insides in one room and then the outsides of that same room.

Again, I wasn't there while he was doing the work. I came home at the tail end of it. So I didn't necessarily see or grill him on what went into his decision making around which rooms or sides of the house that he did first. But the it was definitely a fair bit of decision making that he had on, you know, that gave him autonomy over the work. And then again, timing which ones he did first, second, third, and whether our house was in the afternoon or in the morning, all of those things gave him that sense of personal autonomy. And I'm not so sure about the methods that he was using. And if he had multiple different types of methods, I do know that he had a certain kind of squeegee tool that he was using. And it seemed to be very effective because our windows are incredibly clean.

So certainly Tony had a fair bit of agency and autonomy over the work that he was doing. And again, something important for you to think about regarding your own work. And the organization that I was working with was evaluating this, and they had some fairly tight constraints on some of the work that their people were doing. I was working with the supervisors, managers, directors, and on up, and we were examining not only their work, but also the work of their direct reports. And there were places where they saw agency and there were places where they were, like, bound by regulations or their industry, where they said. Or even just the timing, because some of them were managing people who were in shift work. And granted, there isn't as much autonomy over timing when you do have specific start times and end times to the shifts. But I was sharing with them a page from a manufacturing client that I was working with that was having trouble with their shift workers showing up on time, especially for the earlier morning shifts.

They did have some latitude in how long machines could be down during shift change. And so they gave their employees the autonomy to choose their start time. Now, there were some specific parameters they couldn't choose, like a 10am start for a shift that really should have started started at like 7am but they could, let's say, have the autonomy of 15 minutes on either side of 7am and what they found is that when employees got to choose their own start time, they were much more likely to show up on time. And so they were able to do away with some of the punctuality issues that they had been facing just by giving employees more opportunity to choose their exact start time. Again, within some parameters. Parameters.

All right, the R in smart is relational. Do employees feel connected to the team? Do they have social support? Do they understand how their work benefits others? So again, we're talking about relationships internal within the team, and then we're talking about relationships with our customers and undergirding all of that.

Is there social support for when people are feeling, you know, maxed out, stressed out, burned out? So in this particular case for Tony, does he feel connected to the team? Well, I'm not sure what broader team he might be working with because I, again, I didn't want to, like, really grill him and make him feel like he was being interviewed. I was trying to just have a casual conversation with him and get at some of these things. Does he understand how his work benefits others? I mean, he could see in my sheer delight and in my husband's being pleased with a job well done as well, that he could understand how his work was benefiting others. So for sure, he felt that. Again, I'm not so sure about all of the social support that he may or may not be getting as part of that job as well as potentially interacting with other team members who are doing similar things. Or perhaps a supervisor who oversees his work. Again, that supervisor was not on site to check his work with us. So it wasn't that level of supervision.

But I definitely felt that Tony felt related and was relatable to us as the homeowners as he was washing the windows and finishing up washing the windows, which is when I was visiting with him. As my client was discussing this in their management team, this is where they felt they really excelled, that they didn't have much to do to turn up the dial on the relational because their team members felt connected to each other and certainly saw the connection and the value that they were bringing to the customers that they were serving, especially those who were frontline staff could really see the impact that, the positive impact that they have in helping their customers. And without getting into exactly what this client is doing. Just be it fair to say that absolutely, given what I know about their organization, that their employees would definitely be seeing the value that they would be bringing to the clients that they serve. But again, something to really interrogate and ask for yourself. One of the other things that we hit on with this client is I was reminding them that as a large organization they have a very robust employee assistance program. So as part of that social support, I was really reminding the management team to be reminding their staff about that great employee assistance program that they have because it is really part of their whole compensation package as one of their benefits. Just making sure people know about it and are using it.

All right, so that was relational and then the T is tolerable demands. So this consists of having relatively low levels of role overload. So that's feeling like too busy. I've got too many things going on. So is the work manageable? The next piece is role conflict and role conflict. It's not interpersonal conflict in the workplace. What role conflict means is, are you like serving two different bosses? Is one person telling you that these are your top priorities and somebody else is giving you another part of your workload saying these are your top priorities.

So when you're taking orders, are getting direction from multiple parts of the business or multiple managers. So if you, if you're in a more of a matrix style organization where people have dotted line reporting responsibilities, or maybe you're in a role that has dotted line reporting responsibilities like let's say a project manager. So a project manager is going to be beholden to their own boss, which is probably somebody part of the project management organization, maybe it's a project program manager that you report directly to and your project is part of a larger portfolio. So you're taking some direction from your project manager, but then you've also got the business side, the business managers who you are beholden to as well. And so in a situation like that, a role like that, you could be experiencing some role conflict where you taking essentially getting direction from multiple people and then having to juggle and prioritize which ones of these things are the most important.

So what I was telling my client was if you've got people who are in those dotted line relationship, dotted line reporting relationships, making sure you're having open and transparent conversations with them so that if they ever feel like they're not sure which one is most important or where their priorities should really lie, that they feel free to come to their manager or supervisor and have that conversation transparently. And then the final part of tolerability, tolerable demands, is work home conflict. Now this could be for those who are on site really managing things about like your commute, personal appointments, time off, and just managing all of that as well as you might have things happening in your personal life that you know, you're thinking about on the work during the workday, even if you're not necessarily being pulled away from your work to do them.

This is always comes up for parents. And as we're heading into the summer season here I was reminding my client to be, you know, talking with their working parents who were on the teams to really be, you know, have some transparency around that work home conflict again, whether they're on site employees, but maybe have kids who are in half day camps that need to be picked up over the lunch hour and dropped back at home and then you come back to the office or you're arranging transportation for children or arranging care for their kids during the day who might otherwise be at school during the school year. So that work home conflict, I think bubbles up for working parents more during the summer than it does during the rest of the year. And then of course, we've got the contingent of people who are either working from home full time or are on those hybrid work schedules where when they are working from home, whether that's a couple days a week or every day of the week, they may have a different level of work home conflict, of competing demands on their time during working hours, whether it's because of working children or raising a puppy or any number of other things.

Now, as it relates back to the window washer. I think  the window washer definitely. Tony definitely felt like it was tolerable demands. Now he did go. I'm not sure what his working days usually are like, but he, he did our house in the afternoon and it had been raining earlier in the day, so it might be that he pushed his work a little bit later because I was getting home 5:30, 6:00 clock and he was still there finishing up. So, you know, if, if you're taking work home with you at the end of the day, if you're feeling the need to work on the weekends or work late into the night or just feel stressed out during the workday because of all the work that you have to do, that would be an example of when the tolerable demands are getting to be, be a little bit intolerable. So if we stay inside that threshold of tolerable, that is good work. Design keeps people engaged and connected to the work in a way that just, you know, makes sense for them. Okay, so that is the smart work design model.

Again, I will just recap the five components of it. Stimulating mastery not only over your role, but seeing how your role fits in the big picture. Agency having that autonomy and decision making over your work. Relational connecting with your co workers and your clients, and then t tolerable demands. So what Sharon Parker notes about all of this is that when we are experiencing all of these smart criteria in our work, then we are more likely to feel more engaged, feel more connected, less likely to feel burned out. She points to a handful of different benefits of the smart work design. And so I'll close this out with those benefits preventing harm. So when work is designed to adhere to these smart criteria, it minimizes the risk of physical and psychological harm. There is improved well being, improves mental and physical health in terms of the, you know, reduced mental health issues, reduced physical health issues. It leads to higher commitment.

So that means increased engagement, which is what everybody wants right now out of their workforce. Increased engagement, increased creativity and performance, and then overall increased productivity. So there are organizational benefits that her research team has studied that show that there's cost savings and that there's higher productivity when work is designed to meet these smart criteria. Now Sharon Parker and her team are doing what any good researchers would do, and that is they are, you know, testing this in the real world against workers in real jobs to make sure that the hypothesis of this smart work design played out in the workforce indeed yields these benefits. And her research team definitely shows that it does. So smart research work. So smart Work design is not just an academic concept. I really think it's a call to action.

It's a heuristic or a model that we can use to evaluate our own work against and the work that our teams do. So in a world where burnout is high and engagement is low, we do need smarter ways, pun intended, to structure work itself and not just manage the people doing it and try to squeeze more out of the people doing it. The beauty of this model is that it gives leaders and organizations alike a roadmap to redesign work in ways that are both productive and humane. So whether you're a manager, a team member, or an HR leader, don't let this framework sit on the shelf. Start asking the smart questions again, pun intended, and begin redesigning work so that it fits the world that we live in for everyone.

 All right my friends, thanks for tuning in this week and I will see you next week where we keep exploring what it really takes to thrive in a constantly changing world. Now if you learned something in today's episode or you simply enjoy the content, please subscribe to my channel over on YouTube, subscribe to the podcast on your podcast platform of choice and follow me over on social media. These are all excellent no cost ways for you to support me in my work.

You'll find links to my social media over on the Show Notes page. And that's just janelanderson.com/219 for episode 219. As always, stay curious, stay informed and stay ahead of the curve. Until next time. Keep thriving and keep working toward the future of work that we all want and deserve. Be well my friends.