Role of ergonomics in re-designing job design in call centres

Abstract

Purpose. The ergonomics focus regarding job design is to address the issue of fitting the job to the worker. This means that other things such as space, matter, pedagogical parameters and the organizational environment need to be adjusted to the worker, to obtain optimal performance. Hence, it is important that jobs are designed in such a way that the environment of the worker becomes ergonomically better. Methods. Seventeen interviews were undertaken with employees from call centres of three major telecom companies in Islamabad. The interviews were semi-structured and NVivo version 10 was used for analysis. Results. The results indicated an influence of the following ergonomic factors on job design: (a) force, mental well-being and supervisor and peer support acted more on the complexity of the task; (b) inappropriate postures, mental well-being, characteristics of work, supervisor and peer support and the work environment acted on the skill and efforts required; (c) repetitiveness, workstation design, mental well-being, supervisor and peer support, work environment and characteristics of work acted more on the degree of worker’s control. Conclusion. The issues related to these factors should be addressed to improve job design in the workplace.

Keywords:

• job design
• physical ergonomics
• cognitive ergonomics
• organizational ergonomics
• call centres

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 EUR 1 = PKR 177.94; USD 1 = PKR 160.45.