{"id":26917,"date":"2024-12-11T09:08:39","date_gmt":"2024-12-11T01:08:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/?post_type=media-release&#038;p=26917"},"modified":"2024-12-11T09:08:43","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T01:08:43","slug":"smart-work-design-the-key-to-beating-burnout","status":"publish","type":"media-release","link":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/media-release\/smart-work-design-the-key-to-beating-burnout\/","title":{"rendered":"SMART work design: The key to beating burnout"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Burnout and disengagement are pressing challenges for workplaces worldwide, but latest research from the Centre for Transformative Work Design (CTWD) at Â鶹ֱ²¥ shows changing the way jobs are designed could improve employee well-being and boost productivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Based on decades of research and shared in <a href=\"https:\/\/sloanreview.mit.edu\/article\/design-work-to-prevent-burnout\/?utm_source=outr2&amp;utm_medium=pr&amp;utm_campaign=parker1210\"><em>MIT Sloan Management Review<\/em><\/a><em>,<\/em> a new SMART model for improving work design highlights five key themes to help workplaces create healthier and more engaging jobs: <strong>Stimulating work, Mastery, Autonomy, Relational work,<\/strong> and <strong>Tolerable demands (SMART)<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>CTWD Director, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.transformativeworkdesign.com\/sharon-parker\">John Curtin Distinguished Professor Sharon Parker<\/a>, said when jobs include positive characteristics such as autonomy, variety and social support, employees are more satisfied, motivated and committed to an organisation and they perform better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOften when managers aim to boost productivity and morale, they tend to focus on fixing the person, such as offering productivity tips, boundary-setting advice or mindfulness training, but these approaches rarely tackle the root cause of stress \u2013 such as long hours and unreasonable workloads,\u201d Professor Parker said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cA better approach is to create healthier and more sustainable jobs and our SMART work design model captures the most important characteristics for a thriving workplace.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The themes for SMART work are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Stimulating work<\/strong> \u2013 Providing task variety, the chance to develop skills and solve meaningful challenges.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Mastery<\/strong> \u2013 Ensuring people understand their roles and responsibilities, receive feedback and see how their work fits into the bigger picture.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Autonomy<\/strong> \u2013 Giving employees control and influence over when and how they work, including schedules and daily decisions.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Relational work<\/strong> \u2013 Recognising the human need to belong, which is vital to feeling engaged and performing well, by building into jobs opportunities for connection, social support, and teamwork.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Tolerable demands<\/strong> \u2013 Keeping job demands such as workloads manageable. Job demands can become intolerable when workers must routinely put in excessive overtime, suffer abuse or are given conflicting priorities.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Professor Parker said the new model can be implemented company-wide or one team at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWork design problems are often systemic in organisations and workers shouldn\u2019t be left to cope on their own with poorly designed jobs that cause disengagement and burnout,\u201d Professor Parker said.<ins><\/ins><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cA greater focus on the design of work can have a huge impact on the bottom-line, increased innovation and employee well-being.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The full article, <a href=\"https:\/\/sloanreview.mit.edu\/article\/design-work-to-prevent-burnout\/?utm_source=outr2&amp;utm_medium=pr&amp;utm_campaign=parker1210\"><em>Design Work to Prevent Burnout<\/em><\/a>, is available in <em>MIT Sloan Management Review. <\/em>Free resources about the SMART model can be found here: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.transformativeworkdesign.com\/smart-work\">www.transformativeworkdesign.com\/smart-work<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Burnout and disengagement are pressing challenges for workplaces worldwide, but latest research from the Centre [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4454,"featured_media":26918,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"7021,4650,7479,4888,7147,7587","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_research-areas":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1115],"tags":[1111,383,1112,1113,1114,1116,1110],"research-areas":[],"class_list":["post-26917","media-release","type-media-release","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-burnout","tag-business","tag-ctwd","tag-fowi","tag-future-of-work","tag-human-resources","tag-smart-work-design"],"acf":{"experts":false,"post_options":{"":null,"additional_content":{"title":"","content":"","image":false},"related_courses":[{"title":"","qualification":"","link":"","description":"","faculty":""}],"credits":{"author":"","photographer":"","media":[24383,24381]},"display_author":true,"banner":{"image":false}}},"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/3-1000x500.jpg","author_meta":{"display_name":"294101E"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release\/26917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/media-release"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release\/26917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26917"},{"taxonomy":"research-areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-areas?post=26917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}