Posts Tagged ‘job design’
Noobes shouldn’t be on the front line until they can do it with ‘no hands’
Posted April 14, 2010
on:The dreaded western customer service job
Yesterday, I had to sit around offices a bit and I watched two people work in jobs that aren’t very high powered.
The noobe
In the first, the relatively more senior job, was a young fellow, baby faced but with determined lower body movements. He was racing the clock as he tried to execute what, for him, is still a complicated sequence of moves. He took great pleasure in deftly picking up the paper, entering stuff in a computer, standing up, sitting down, and barking out commands to customers.
He needs the time and space to practice but should he really have been released into the wild?
The old hand
The second was a very much more junior job but a more experienced guy was handling two customer points simultaneously. He was relishing the challenge and got ahead by anticipating what people wanted and priming his work station. He was still racing the clock, but out of boredom rather than inexperience.
The old hand vs the noobe
The big difference between the two came when the experienced guy had forgotten something I asked for it. Then I got a big smile and “I am onto it Miss”. The younger guy would have snapped. And this is why.
Feedback cycles
Noobe vs old hand
The goal for the the ‘noobe’ was his own performance. The goal for the second man was my convenience and satisfaction. Multi-tasking was just the way he stopped dropping from boredom but he would drop multi-tasking in an instant if customer satisfaction was threatened.
Understanding the psychology of ‘noobishness’
This sounds as it the ‘noobe’ is being morally wrong in some way. A psychological analysis helps us out of that evaluative trap.
We see what goal is driving someone’s performance by watching what feedback they look for and respond to.
A rank ‘noobe’ attends to their own performance. They have to. Indeed, if we want to design a really bad job, we interfere with their do-check cycle. They cannot get good at a task until they have repeated the task often to their own satisfaction.
Customer service is not the place for ‘noobes’
The trouble is that customer service is one level higher. It is the same level as supervision. They have to judge a situation as well as execute work.
In a front line where a lot of customer situations are utterly predictable and require no attention whatsoever from the attendant, then it is OK to put a ‘noobe’ there. But a supervisor should be close to hand. The supervisor mustn’t micro manage, because that muddles up do-check feedback system. They must be there to step-in when the situation has changed from a ‘practice turn’ to a ‘choose the bundle of tasks that will lead to customer satisfaction’.
Training supervision
This distinction between situation and execution is the key to training a supervisor. Are they able to say clearly to their charge: the situation began like this – it has changed to this – now do this – or I’ll finish this and I’ll show you after ward what I did?
So how do ‘noobes’ get experience?
I’m a teacher and I also consult. All my life, I’ve tried to take on work that creates practice slots for juniors. But there have to be some rules.
- Confidentiality: I teach them to forget everything they see and hear in the office. Write it down. Put it in a file. Wipe your mental slate. Then when someone tries to find out things from you, you can honestly say they’ve forgotten. Everything is recorded and forgotten. (This may be less essential in other businesses but we deal with personal data.) The sweet line “Tell me again what you do” is anyway a great conversational opener.
- Rhythm: I teach them to look at me and make sure I have given them permission to speak before they open their mouths in front of a client. The reason is this. I might be following a conversational line that they don’t follow. If they interrupt, the client loses their train of thought.
- Alerts: If they believe there is something that I should know about, they can catch my eye. That look is very different from the look of “I would like to practice a little now.” I’ll immediately take them outside and ask what has concerned them.
With these three rules, ‘noobes’ can observe interactions with customer and gradually ease into bigger roles.
They earn their keep with carefully calibrated back room tasks following two principles: (A) Never give to a ‘noobe’ what cannot be redone and (B) Show them and make them practice over-and-over again until they can do it “with no hands”, so to speak.
Then they are able to handle the rapidly changing requirements of customer service. But they aren’t handling the customer on their own until they can do all the technical stuff with “no hands”. Their minds must be free to attend to the people they are speaking to.
Productivity is all the rage
We hear of drilling our inbox down to zero. We hear about agile sprints and personal kan bans.
All these productivity systems have one thing in common. Finish what you start and don’t start what you cannot finish.
Work cycles
Now some poor unfortunates have job cycles of 20 seconds. These jobs are mindless.
Others have job cycles of between 30 seconds to 10 minutes. They are called managers. (You didn’t know that? Now, you do. Professor Mintzberg of McGill University brought that to our attention a long time ago. When you work with managers, break things into small pieces for them!)
Others have long job cycles. University lecturers have “seasons” of 7 years – from sabbatical to sabbatical. That is the time it takes to write a proposal, get funding, do the work, write it up and publish it. They give lectures that are 50 minutes long.
If they are wise though, they remember that they are human and few of us can concentrate for longer than 10 to 15 minutes. Hence, a university lecture is broken into five parts.
- What this lecture is about.
- First chunk of theory
- Change-up – change pace, delivery style and activity of students
- Second chunk of theory
- Memorable conclusion
Design what goes in to your job cycle
The secret of any job, I think, is breaking it into parts that fit our ability to start-and-stop and link it to other parts.
3 components of jobs design
Job design is about modularization and all 3 things matter
- Our attention span and the features of our “box” – the human body.
- The size and shape of the piece that we are working on
- The way we link one piece to another to make a coherent whole.
The 4 time wasters in badly designed jobs
When we get any of the 3 features of job design wrong, then we create 4 inefficiencies.
- We spend the 15 minute chunk working out what we are supposed to be doing rather than doing it
- We do the wrong task because the linking mechanisms are sending us the wrong messages
- Our attention is split or frayed with fatigue and our work is poor and has to be re-done
- Or the task we are doing isn’t bundled properly and we cannot start, finish and put it back in the pool in one pass.
The job of managers and job designers
Inefficient managers tend to think that problems with productivity are to do with the way the task itself is done. Sometimes that is the case. To play tennis well, I practice the same shot over and over again. Training time is important.
Most times, we are wasting time because we cannot start and finish something completely. And on big tasks, we haven’t broken the task into modules that can be started, finished and handed over.
There is a genius to managing work. And there is an explanation about why some teams get done more than others.
They aren’t having to redo work. Everything is handled once, by the first person who touches it. And never again.
Do you make any of these mistakes of job design and sabotage your organization?
Posted September 15, 2009
on:- Image via Wikipedia
I’ve just been reading a post from an ambulance driver (woops, they don’t like that title).
It is a privilege, because I might not otherwise have the chance to observe the nuances of their job, and even if I did, to learn the same might take hours of interviews and hours of rewriting.
So we are lucky to have this blog. It also teaches lessons for the general practice of job design – which it did today.
Briefly, feedback is a key idea in job design. Yet, it gets forgotten for procedures and targets.
This is what is critical. For every task anyone does, they must get feedback on how well they have done before they begin that task again.
Experts often get feedback as they move from one part of a large task to another. That’s what makes them expert. The ability to detect feedback that will mean nothing to anyone else.
But at some point a task is handed over to someone else. When and how do they get feedback on how well their work fitted into the next process down the line?
If they don’t get feedback, what sense are the supposed to make of their work? What sense will they make of their work? And what of evidence-based practice, if the people doing the work do not get ‘knowledge of results’ before they start the same task again?
This is the story
The ambulance man and his colleague raced a severely dehydrated child to hospital rather than attempt to re-hydrate the child themselves. They drop off the child, but hear nothing more about what happened next.
There appears to be no mechanism to tell them if their decision was correct and whether equally trained people would have made the same decision.
The blog post talks about the decision points in the job. It is worth reading in the original for the pattern of thinking that is typical in skilled people. We are constantly on the look out for this thinking to inform our understanding of the information that experts use and need. And indeed, who is an expert and who is not.
You will also see the confusion and overload that’s caused by not getting feedback quickly.
So what can the organization do to provide adequate feedback?
I don’t know what the NHS does. I’ve never worked with the NHS in a professional capacity and I don’t know any work psychologist who has.
What I would expect to be happening is a regular psychological audit of each and every job to look out for situations like this.
We want to know that in each and every situation, a skilled and experienced worker is able to set a goal, lay out a plan, and obtain feedback before they begin that task again.
Why might that feedback not be available?
1. The task is handed over, and for some reason, the feedback loop is not in place. It might have gone AWOL (in which case alert the line managers and check that they put it back). It might never have existed (in which case which psychologist slipped up). The job might have drifted (in which case re-analyse it and adjust the feedback system).
2. There is one other scenario that is more tricky. Managers have been known to hijack feedback because making people wait for information makes them feel powerful (and sometimes allows them to distort what is said). An organization has to come down on such practices like the proverbial ‘ton of bricks.’ Withholding information causes stress and overload, delays learning, and potentially causes accidents, which in an organization, like the NHS, may lead to loss of life. If managers are intercepting feedback, that has to be reversed. In a hierarchical organization, usually we have one meeting with the manager concerned, and if that does not produce immediate redress, we have an urgent meeting with his or her manager.
Who guards the guards, so to speak?
The system does not stop with psychologists keeping jobs properly balanced. The file on the job (not the person – the job) should have the internal auditor’s signature on it confirming they have checked that the psychological audits are taking place and are being conducted properly.
And there should be another file with copies of the report that the internal auditors routinely send to the Chief Psychologist to report on the quality of the psychological audits.
A lot of work?
Organizations are a lot of work. That’s why we have to consider whether we want one at all. But once we have one, we have to run them properly and ‘prevent rather than cure’. Good systems reduce crises, problems and accidents.
I don’t know what the NHS does exactly but as the largest employer in the world, I imagine they have sophisticated management systems in place. Feedback failures are one of the many things that ‘staff managers’ count, monitor and resolve.
Does anyone know how the NHS, or other large British employers, manage their feedback systems?
For further reading on the 3 tier system of
- Doing
- Directing
- Reviewing
.
In Edinburgh last week I got the EasyJet treatment.
According to the loyal regulars, our experience on Wednesday last week was a RyanAir story and not a common experience on EasyJet. That is good to hear. So if you are not EasyJet checking these details (!), just note where I am going with this and skip over to the next heading!
I think, we shouldn’t put young people in the front line without proper training and support. It will cripple their soul as surely as a road side bomb blows up young men in inadequately amoured vehicles. We shouldn’t do this, morally.
And we shouldn’t do this because we are capable of managing much better.
Who agrees?
The back story
At 6pm, EasyJet groundstaff at Edinburgh Airport knew their 8pm flight to Luton would be delayed. They were telling passengers who were checking in at the airport.
They didn’t change the Boards though till 7.30pm, after the passengers were due at the gate at 7.25pm.
EasyJet were loading a Belfast flight shortly before and it would have been quite easy for someone to shout out that the flight was delayed, or put up a paper sign, and most of all to provide some information and hand out vouchers.
Very simply, passengers who had checked in online were not informed and nor was there a reasonable attempt to inform us.
We were delayed twice more. Vouchers for a princely 3 pounds were handed-out to those who asked at 10pm (with which you could buy a stale sandwich or a glass of wine – one or the other).
We eventually took off at 11pm, three hours late on a 75 minute flight, and suffered one more delay in Luton when the steps broke.
The steps broke? By this time, the passengers had begun to giggle. It did seem as if EasyJet was in business well beyond its pay grade.
I departed north from the airport after midnight leaving stranded tourists who hadn’t eaten and who had no idea how to get to London.
The saving grace was a remarkably cheerful Purser who solved the problems of people stubborn enough to ask for assistance. And many regulars were loyal to the airline despite the shoddy service – that’s good but as a first time EasyJet flyer I remain skeptical as did my foreign companion who has departed for another continent convinced of our total imcompetence.
But why I ask, were the ground staff so ill equipped to communicate the basics to the passengers?
Delays happen. This is not news in the airline industry. What are EasyJet’s procedures for rescheduling aircraft and crews? What are their procedures for informing passengers already in the airport and on their way to the airport? What are their procedures for informing people who they persuaded to check in online? Why do they ask us for our mobile numbers if they don’t intend to use them?
And most of all, why don’t they train their staff in some basic active listening?
A one hour class in active listening skills will turn the the sulky staff at the airport into the cheerful Purser.
A customer service representative who protests her own innocence in the unfolding events doesn’t have a personality problem. She has a management problem.
No one has ever explained to her that we don’t care who is to blame within EasyJet.
We want to know three things.
1. When will we get home and how firm is the ETA?
2. How can we recorganize our ground arrangements (where are the train tables)?
3. How can we pass the intervening time and where can get refreshments?
Their backstory of a medical emergency in Nice was useful but the real story was that a medical emergency in France has knocked out the plane and crew schedules – not convincing is it?
I wouldn’t tell that story. I swould simply say – we’ve screwed up. A medical emergency has tripped our schedules. We are only going to get you to London by midnight. Now this is what we are going to do. Let’s sort the passengers out. Who will be connecting on – and get a passenger with an internet connection to look up the times? Who needs a voucher? This is where you find us if you need us. Etc.
Keep it concrete and no excuses.
If a passenger is distressed, all they have to do is acknowledge the distress. That is what the Purser did so well. Even when the stairs broke inconveniencing passengers for the 4th time that evening, all he did was announce that he needed to apologize one more time. He told us factually what the problem was and when we might receive a solution. He didn’t need to be defensive. He wasn’t defensive. Active listening is so easy when someone has shown you how. And so effective too.
We shouldn’t put young people in the front line without proper training. It will cripple their soul as surely as a road side bomb blows up young men in inadequately amoured vehicles. We shouldn’t do this. It is not good for our souls either. We are better than this. We know how to do this. We should insist on better for our young people.
Who else agrees that we should stop putting young people in poorly structured jobs, with insufficient support and inadequate training?
During the last general election in New Zealand, the National Party (conservatives) made a spirited move for power by offering sizeable tax cuts. So keen we all were to find out our share, we crashed the Nats’ site within hours of their announcement.
My share was considerable: NZD2000 or in purchasing power parity terms, twice what I spent on clothes per year. The Nats didn’t win though. And the big question was why not? We were obviously interested. And the amount was significant.
So why didn’t the Nats win? And is this story relevant to the UK as we climb out of the credit crunch and the threatened recession in a slow recovery?
People don’t like the bashing of people who are unemployed or on the benefit
Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. There but for the grace of God, etc. etc. Both NZ and UK are individualistic, masculine cultures (each to his own) but both countries dislike power differentials and huge disparities of wealth. We knew full well what would pay for those tax cuts and in my case, NZD2K was not enough to persuade me to take bread off the table of someone who is unemployed.
Voters understand that our economic policy requires a million or so people to be out-of-work
Voters are not economics experts but most of us know the basics. We know that if everyone has a job, inflation would take off. Both NZ and UK have policies of keeping inflation down to around 3%. Our economic prosperity depends on several percentage of the population being out-of-work. So how can we take a blaming tone?
We have new attitudes to work and employment
Jane McGonigal, alternate reality games designer described games as “happiness engines”. And she asks an important question: why don’t we design work that is as compelling, engaging and as fun as games?
We do know how to design jobs that are enjoyable. Indeed the basic techniques have been in the textbooks on management and psychology for over 30 years. And games designers use these principles every day.
We want work that is so much fun we have to pay people NOT to work and to go home and play games! That is the doable demand from the citizenry of the 21st century!
Can politicians rise to the challenge of work that is more fun than games?
I think the first step is a social media solution: set up happiness surveys on the internet. When we feel so moved, we log on and say “I love this job”.
Then we will know which sectors are getting the thumbs-up from their employees, and as the saying goes, what gets measured gets done!
And we can worry about how much to pay people to stay at home!
What do you think?
Hat-tip to Sirona recruitment consultants who inspired this post.
UPDATE: For an HR Managers perspective on the Recession, I have written a summary on a new post.
Recent Comments