Work Design Pilot Report: Supporting Innovative Behavior at CERA

This report provides an in-depth analysis of a work design pilot implemented at CERA, a company striving to enhance its innovative capabilities. The report begins by outlining CERA's human resource planning, emphasizing the importance of aligning HR strategies with organizational goals, addressing labor shortages, and utilizing forecasting methods. It then delves into the critical role of work design, particularly the work of Rachel Amaro, and its impact on fostering creativity and innovation. The report explores various work design approaches, including mechanistic, motivational, and perceptual-motor, and their suitability for CERA's drafting office. The conclusion highlights the significance of human resource planning and work design in achieving organizational competitiveness and efficiency, especially in the context of CERA's growth and expansion plans, recommending that the company realign its human resource goals and work design to its strategic objectives and culture. The report also suggests the use of mechanistic, perceptual-motor, and motivational approaches in the drafting office to promote creativity and innovation.

Running Head: WORK DESIGN PILOT AT CERA 1
Report on Work Design Pilot to Support Innovative Behavior at CERA
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REPORT ON WORK DESIGN PILOT TO SUPPORT INNOVATIVE BEHAVIOR AT CERA
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Table of Content
Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
CERA Human Resource Planning...................................................................................................3
Work Design....................................................................................................................................6
Work design at draft office..........................................................................................................7
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................10
Recommendations..........................................................................................................................11
References......................................................................................................................................12

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Introduction
Human resource management is part of the core business strategies and needs as much
attention like any other department in the organization. These involve many activities ranging
from human resources planning to human resource design but we will be limited to the two. For
any organization to strategically grow the market size and create competitiveness there are
internal changes takes place to realign its human resource.
CERA needs to redefine its human resource after years of operation and after a
realization that there are missing links to building more innovative workforce due to poor human
resource planning and work design. The human resource management is a platform on which
workers needs are addressed in a diversified business like CERA. Expansion and diversification
pose a challenge to Israel Tobin who is the human resource manager. Nonetheless, their human
resource management approaches that are generally applicable to the departments in CERA. For
illustration, in the department of human resource management, the human resource manager
focuses on an effective way to respond to the employees’ shortage and how to bring the balance
between the supply and demand for the skilled workforce (Shih, 2015). CERA’s approaches to
work analysis and design will vary because of the company have different jobs in the different
businesses.
CERA Human Resource Planning
In the case of CERA, we can define HR Planning as a way of translating organizational
goals into human resource objectives of skilled labor, number of workers and allocation.
Deriving from the organizational objectives, we develop integrated organizational policies.
Human resource planning involves a logical sequence of events as established by Kramer et al.
(2014, p. 211)

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Israel Tobin and his team started the process of human resource planning by gathering
required market information on the likely demand from the bigger part of Sydney and after
expansion to NSW, also the demand that will arise after expansion of their market to other parts
in Sydney.
Then they tried to use these markets demand to translate it into staffing. The strategic
choice they tried to make was to forecast labor demand and labor supply and determine the
nature of and size of the gap. They used statistical and judgmental methods to forecast market
demand into labor demand and labor supply. After identifying the gap then the team continued to
goal setting and planning. There are various options to close the demand/supply gap, depending
on whether there is a forecast surplus or shortage of staff (Kramar et al).
Demand forecasting was made for particular workers sets and areas that required specific
competencies for the company’s present and five years period. The most useful leading
indicators for forecasting staffing needs are government expenditure on infrastructure
development and the policies and plans for developing commerce and residents.

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They found that determining the supply of labor is more straightforward than determining
labor demand for the company. CERA looked at current staffing in its various jobs and skill
categories and then had to adjust these figures based on anticipated terminations of jobs,
promotions of workers, transfers to other areas, voluntary turnover and retirements. A
transitional matrix (also called Markov analysis) is a tool of analysis used by organizations to
study workers and how they transition in different job categories in and out of the organization.
Israel Tobin applied Markov analysis in his meeting with the Civil Engineering and Planning
Divisions. The team drew a summary of labor demand and labor supply data into two
spreadsheets as shown below.
By analyzing the data above, it was clear that in the next five years CERA will be faced
with a labor shortage. The analysis covered a period of five years forecast of the likely labor
demand. The company was expected to employ more workers to meet the market demand and
also for the purpose of its prospective growth strategy to the new market. To avoid labor
shortage, the goal plan is formulated as with options classified by speed and revocability.

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Source: (Kramar et al., 2014, p. 216)
It is important to make note that when making human resource goals and specific plan
from the findings above, you have to consider the strategic choice of the organization and
organizational culture.
After deciding on the course of action, CERA needs to implement the program and do the
evaluation. Implementation undertakes particular actions which are designed to affect objective
set by the planning team. The process inherent steps are observed to put the goals in the right
direction and ensure that the intentioned object of those goals is well aligned with the plan
devised. The whole program calls for accountability, authority, and resources available to
accomplish the stated goals.
Evaluation of the plan often occurs regularly whereby it can be carried out at particular
intervals or continuous. It is a critical component of important company programs which are put
in place to see that the goals of the plan are achieved. For the purpose of effectiveness before
actual implementation certain measures are put in place. The measures may include statistical
goals and time schedules, surveys of the workers affected by the program, any other method
which will be effective in measuring the results of the implementation program. The overall
objectives of the program implemented are then compared with the outcome of the whole
program to see whether they helped in solving the human resource problems. Out of the results,
the experience got from the evaluation, are used to modify the strategies previously applied for

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long-term planning. After HR planning CERA will be able to focus on analysis and work design.
The other important part is work design a responsibility give to Rachel Amaro.
Work Design
CERA needed to do the analysis and work design (Arnold and Randall, 2016). The work
analysis and design are one of the critical parts to creating and enhancing innovativeness in the
jobs. To implement HR planning strategy is virtually difficult without doing full work-flow
analysis, job analysis, and job design (Lawrence, 2010). A manager needs the appreciation of
their unit workflow process for maximum productivity and success. For her to understand this
process, she must also have details of the information about the jobs that exist in her job unit
through job analysis. When she has a better understanding of workflow process she can
restructure works for assurance that the unit can achieve its set objectives and also the workers in
that unit become motivated, satisfied, safe, healthy and achieve. This is crucial for creativity and
innovation in CERA.
The CERA business strategy affects how works are designed and work together. The
company is different from other companies that compete on the basis of cost. CERA compete on
the basis of service/product differentiation and innovation (Kistner, 2010). For instance, in public
sector and non-profit organizations, the way services are provided to customers depends much on
how the jobs are designed. Work design, therefore, is dependent on the setting within which the
organization does its activities and the strategic choices it makes about how it will position itself
in its environment.
Job design defines the scope of work, how the job will be performed and every task that
pertains to the job (Kramar et al. 2014, p. 192). It involves the change of tasks or the how the job
is performed in the already existing job. This is the area of interest in CERA. This is the work
that Rachel is required to accomplish.
On the other hand, job analysis has several contributions to HR practices. It is the process
of gathering information about the job of interest (Morgeson and Humphrey, 2006). To do a job
analysis, it involves workflow analysis, questionnaires, interviews, surveys and observations in
gathering all information about the job. Job analysis is important in work restructuring, employee

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learning and development, HR planning, selection, career planning, performance management
and job evaluation
Work design at draft office
There are four approaches to any work design:
The motivational approach – the approach establishes that work design is guided by work
autonomy, goal clarity, extrinsic job feedback, Social interaction, Task variety, Task identity,
skill-level requirements, skill variety, intrinsic job feedback, Task significance, learning
The mechanistic approach – focus on work specialization, task simplification,
specializations of tools and procedures, single activities, job simplification, repetition, over time
and job automation
The biological approach – uses strength, lifting, shift work, endurance, physical
differences, wrist movement, noise, climate and work breaks to explain work design.
The perceptual-motor approach – the approach focus on lighting, information-processing
requirements, programs, workplace layout, displays, information-input requirements,
information-output requirements, memory requirements, printed job materials, stress and
boredom in explaining the work design.
The choice of the approach to be applied depends on the organization’s strategy and
culture. The most appropriate depends on the outcomes she wants to achieve. In CERA case, the
outcome is to enhance innovation of workers in Drafting Office.

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(Source: https://image.slidesharecdn.com/module3analysisanddesignofwork-130722103715-
phpapp02/95/module3-analysis-and-design-of-work-30-638.jpg?cb=1374489541)
In Drafting Department, Rachel is required to do a pilot work design to foster creativity
and innovation in CERA. The approach to use will solely dependent on this objective (Ceylan,
2013). Ceylan is examining the innovation performance of organizations, notably, so-called
commitment-based HR practices.
HRM Innovations selectively identifies the best talent for the job (Jain, Mathew & Bedi’s
2012). They established the connection between HR innovation with company performance and
organizational culture.

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Source: https://image.slidesharecdn.com/jobdesign-120909064612-phpapp01/95/job-design-4-
728.jpg?cb=1347173254)
The most appropriate approach work designs for Drafting Office in CERA are
mechanistic, perceptual-motor and motivational.
Perpetual- motor work design approach – focus on the employee psychological abilities
and limits. The approach main goal is to design jobs in a way that ensures they do not exceed
people psychological abilities and limits. This approach commonly attempts to expand
dependability, safety and user responses by designing jobs to reduce information-processing
requirement. This approach is suitable to CERA. Engineering works involve a lot of mental
work, therefore designing a job this job using perpetual-motor approach will be one of the best
choices in fostering innovation and creativity.

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Motivational work design – she will focus on the job features that affect both mental and
motivation of the employee. Attitude differences such as intrinsic and extrinsic motivation,
satisfaction and work participation, and behavioral variables such as performance and attendance
are the most important product of the work design. To increase meaningfulness of jobs, job
design emphasizes on motivational approach.
Mechanistic approach – mostly aims at reducing the complexity of the job so that to
increase employee efficiency, by simplifying the jobs to the extent anyone assigned to do that job
can do it with little training. These approach emphases on creating a design that carries out the
concept of job specialization, skills simplification, and repetition.
These approaches are applicable in drafting office where the pilot work design needs to
be carried out. The approaches will improve the creativity and innovation in drafting area. To
achieve these, the approaches create efficiency, motivation, specialization, and learning process.
Conclusion
Human resource planning is the heart of human resource management for the
organization to be competitive in the market. Planning for HR is as important as other functions
of the management. HR planning helps the company to be futuristic in terms of labor forces and
market responsiveness.
From this report it is clear for CERA to achieve job efficiency and effectiveness in the
next five years, it needs to realign it human resource planning goals and work design to the
organizational strategic goals and culture. It is clear that it will experience the labor shortage in
its five years strategic plan. To achieve expansion and growth in Australia the company needed
to carry out human resource planning and job analysis and design.
HR planning and work design are two inseparable areas of human resource management.
To carry out work design, one must plan the work and strategize HR planning goals. Planning
lay a foundation on which work design is based. There, the report started by examining CERA
HR requirements to establish the workforce required before carrying out work design.

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Recommendations
Rachel Amaro needs to shift her paradigm thinking and see the light of the modern
human resource planning needs and benefits it accrue to the whole organization. As well outlined
by this report it will become clear on how to carry out work design in the Drafting department.
This report recommends carrying out analysis and work design so that it’s growing and
expansion prospects will be achieved. In so doing workers will be motivated, there will be
specialization, fewer resources will be used, there will be improved efficiency, and eventually,
an environment that fosters creativity and innovation.
This report seeks to advise Rachel Amaro on how to design jobs in her Draft
Management Office to support innovative behavior. On her part, she did not saw the need for
additional work on HR management. She saw this as added word workload whereas they have
been doing well without human resource management. For her to do this work design, she need
an integrated us of HR planning and work design, both are used together to achieve a common
objective. So in this report we will establish the human resource planning and work design of
CERA.

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References
Arnold, J. and Randall, R. (2016). Work psychology. 6th ed. New York: Pearson Education.
Shih, K. (2015). Labor market openness, h-1b visa policy, and the scale of international student
enrollment in the united states. Econ Inq, 54(1), pp.121-138.
Ceylan, C. (2013). Commitment-based HR practices, different types of innovation activities and
firm innovation performance. International Journal of Human Resource Management,
24(1), 208-226. doi: 10.1080/09585192.2012.680601
Jain, H., Mathew, M., & Bedi, A. (2012). HRM innovations by Indian and foreign MNCs
operating in India: a survey of HR professionals. International Journal of Human
Resource Management, 23(5), 1006-1018.
doi: 10.1080/09585192.2012.651332
Lawrence, P. (2010). The key job design problem is still Taylorism. Journal of Organizational
Behavior, 31(2-3), pp.412-421.
Kistner, L. (2010). Determining and executing new product strategy: Integrating the product
innovation charter and the fuzzy front-end. Doctor of Philosophy. Capella University.
Morgeson, F. and Humphrey, S. (2006). The Work Design Questionnaire (WDQ): Developing
and validating a comprehensive measure for assessing job design and the nature of work.
Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(6), pp.1321-1339.