Working Smart Can Help Ease the Pressure of Competitive Environment
Work smarter. That at least is the experts’ prescription for companies teetering under today’s competitive pressures.
The phrase means different things in different settings. But the basic message remains the same: Companies should knock down barriers that prevent workers “from using their own knowledge of how things should be done correctly,” said Edward E. Lawler, a management professor at USC.
To recognize the barriers--unnecessary rules or bureaucratic layers, for example--smart managers are advised to take a fresh look at all they require of workers.
“Don’t go to everybody in the 93 stages of the process and say, ‘I want you to do your job twice as fast,’ ” counsels Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Business School. “The way you solve the problem is to fundamentally redesign the process.”
Take design. In the past, auto workers lost valuable time by stepping off the assembly line to grab parts. Today, in a well-arranged factory, workers are able to reach the parts they need without leaving the line, said James E. Harbour, an auto industry analyst in Troy, Mich.
But smart work is broader than an issue of design. Lawler cited three traits of the smart workplace: It has only those rules and supervisors that really are needed, employee feedback is used wisely rather than ignored and workers are separated into different compartments--where they lose sight of the whole operation--only when necessary.
To be sure, the smart workplace isn’t a panacea. Yes, it should yield productivity gains that enrich society. But it also creates new pressures for rank-and-file employees who must take on new responsibilities.
“I’m not talking so much about physical hard work as mental hard work--the kind of stress that goes with responsibility,” Lawler said.
Handling new responsibilities may require skills that workers lack, however. As a result, some companies have begun to take matters into their own hands.
At Advanced Micro Devices in the Silicon Valley, more than 70 employees will soon begin up to two years of mathematics training at a nearby community college. The firm’s goal: to stay competitive in frontier areas of technology with rivals throughout the world.
The Sunnyvale, Calif., manufacturer of integrated circuits plans to pay for the student-workers’ schooling while also keeping up their salaries. After the training, they will take on added responsibilities at the company’s new Submicron Development Center.
Even in an era of rising concern about U.S. productivity, such efforts are novel. But some would say when it comes to smart work, smart workers are the most basic component of all: “We’re breaking new ground here,” said Gene Conner, a senior vice president at the firm.
