- Project number: F 2502
- Institution: Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA)
- Status: Completed Project
Description:
The world of work is going through a continual process of digital transformation. This project investigated how knowledge-based tasks at work in particular are changing as a result and how the digital transformation is affecting employees. The objective was to develop specific future scenarios for the human-centred design of knowledge-based tasks in the digital age.
In cooperation with the other components of the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (Bundesanstalt für Arbeitsschutz und Arbeitsmedizin, BAuA) focus programme "Occupational Safety and Health in a Digitised World of Work", criteria and design guidelines for humane working in the digitally transformed world of work were developed in a multi-stage interdisciplinary consensus process. To further address the research question, we determined the current state of knowledge through literature and data analyses. Changing task requirements were analysed separately for three different types of information-based tasks: those that demand routine skills, those that call for flexible approaches, and those that presuppose creative/problem-solving capabilities.
Both the opportunities and the challenges created by digital technologies for work design are apparent in employees’ greater locational and temporal flexibility and mobility, especially when it comes to information-based tasks. In consequence, when efforts are made to match up the technology deployed with a specific work task, the working environment in which that task is performed comes to have even more weight as a design factor too. Greater locational and temporal flexibility is also accompanied by greater variability with regard to the diverse forms of communication used at work. Explicit organisational norms on communication behaviour help to exploit the opportunities offered by digital communication via web conferencing systems, chat and e-mail programmes and to minimize the risks. At the same time, the well-known and well-established design guidelines on visual display unit workstations and measures against lack of exercise remain relevant for the design of safe and healthy knowledge work regardless of the digital transformation progresses.
Building on these results and taking into account the work in the projects "Monitoring the digital world of work" and "Technical and organizational occupational safety and health", we developed future scenarios of information-based tasks. These describe for five fictional persons how information-related tasks in the digital world of work can be designed in a humane way. In order to reflect the potential, digitisation has to promote the positive development of information-based tasks in the workplace, we have deliberately focused on ideal visions. While this vision is also predictive in nature, it is primarily normative, depicting a future that is worth striving for.
This project was part of BAuA’s focus programme "Occupational Safety and Health in a Digitised World of Work".
