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Background: Delivery of safe and reliable healthcare to patients and the healthcare workforce shortage amidst growing demand has been major challenge to the healthcare system. Addressing this challenge calls for designing or redesigning of healthcare work system. Work system design which is usually associated with productivity in manufacturing offers a wide spectrum of applicability in addressing this challenge of healthcare system. Despite the availability of primary studies on work system design in healthcare, there are sparse published reviews in specific contexts. This scoping review explores the existing evidence to understand the state of the art of work system design in healthcare. Methods: The scoping review adopts the methodology of Joanna Briggs Institute for scoping review which is based on the methodological framework of Arksey and O’Malley. The search will be done on PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science for the identification of eligible studies. A grey literature search will also be performed. A two-phase screening and extraction of data will be done by two independent reviewers. Data extraction will be done on a pre-piloted data extraction form. The findings will be presented in tables, figures, and a narrative summary. The scoping review will highlight the state of the art, gaps in knowledge and provide directions for future research. Ethics and dissemination: This is a scoping review of primary studies and therefore ethical approval is not required. The report of the findings will be presented in line with the PRISMA reporting guidelines for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR). The results will be submitted to a peer-reviewed scientific journal for publication and presented at relevant conferences.

Background: Delivery of safe and reliable healthcare to patients and the healthcare workforce shortage amidst growing demand has been major challenge to the healthcare system. Addressing this challenge calls for designing or redesigning of healthcare work system. Work system design which is usually associated with productivity in manufacturing offers a wide spectrum of applicability in addressing this challenge of healthcare system. Despite the availability of primary studies on work system design in healthcare, there are sparse published reviews in specific contexts. This scoping review explores the existing evidence to understand the state of the art of work system design in healthcare. Methods: The scoping review adopts the methodology of Joanna Briggs Institute for scoping review which is based on the methodological framework of Arksey and O’Malley. The search will be done on PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science for the identification of eligible studies. A grey literature search will also be performed. A two-phase screening and extraction of data will be done by two independent reviewers. Data extraction will be done on a pre-piloted data extraction form. The findings will be presented in tables, figures, and a narrative summary. The scoping review will highlight the state of the art, gaps in knowledge and provide directions for future research. Ethics and dissemination: This is a scoping review of primary studies and therefore ethical approval is not required. The report of the findings will be presented in line with the PRISMA reporting guidelines for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR). The results will be submitted to a peer-reviewed scientific journal for publication and presented at relevant conferences.

Psychological flow is a positive experience achieved through a near-balance of task challenge and skill capability, creating a merging of awareness and action and leading to an intrinsically rewarding feeling. Flow has typically been documented in persons who participate in work and leisure activities where they can exercise a large degree of creativity and agency over their actions in pursuit of their goals. The objective of the present study is to explore the lived experiences of flow in workers in roles where creativity and agency are typically not expected. An interpretative phenomenological analysis approach was employed to attain this objective. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 adults whose role is to perform transactional work, which by its nature affords less opportunity for creative execution. Common themes about participants' flow experiences are documented. Two broad types of flow are described and a connection is made that the present study's participants achieve one of those flow types while working. Participants' feelings, preferences, and actions are mapped to the nine conventional dimensions of flow. Specific non-task work system factors are discussed relative to their influence on participants' attainment of flow. Limitations of the present study and recommended future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychological flow is a positive experience achieved through a near-balance of task challenge and skill capability, creating a merging of awareness and action and leading to an intrinsically rewarding feeling. Flow has typically been documented in persons who participate in work and leisure activities where they can exercise a large degree of creativity and agency over their actions in pursuit of their goals. The objective of the present study is to explore the lived experiences of flow in workers in roles where creativity and agency are typically not expected. An interpretative phenomenological analysis approach was employed to attain this objective. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 adults whose role is to perform transactional work, which by its nature affords less opportunity for creative execution. Common themes about participants’ flow experiences are documented. Two broad types of flow are described and a connection is made that the present study’s participants achieve one of those flow types while working. Participants’ feelings, preferences, and actions are mapped to the nine conventional dimensions of flow. Specific non-task work system factors are discussed relative to their influence on participants’ attainment of flow. Limitations of the present study and recommended future research are discussed.

Background: Delivery of safe and reliable healthcare to patients and the healthcare workforce shortage amidst growing demand has been major challenge to the healthcare system. Addressing this challenge calls for designing or redesigning of healthcare work system. Work system design which is usually associated with productivity in manufacturing offers a wide spectrum of applicability in addressing this challenge of healthcare system. Despite the availability of primary studies on work system design in healthcare, there are sparse published reviews in specific contexts. This scoping review explores the existing evidence to understand the state of the art of work system design in healthcare. Methods: The scoping review adopts the methodology of Joanna Briggs Institute for scoping review which is based on the methodological framework of Arksey and O’Malley. The search will be done on PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science for the identification of eligible studies. A grey literature search will also be performed. A two-phase screening and extraction of data will be done by two independent reviewers. Data extraction will be done on a pre-piloted data extraction form. The findings will be presented in tables, figures, and a narrative summary. The scoping review will highlight the state of the art, gaps in knowledge and provide directions for future research. Ethics and dissemination: This is a scoping review of primary studies and therefore ethical approval is not required. The report of the findings will be presented in line with the PRISMA reporting guidelines for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR). The results will be submitted to a peer-reviewed scientific journal for publication and presented at relevant conferences.

BACKGROUND: Errors can have dangerous consequences, resulting in a preventive strategy in most company-based technical vocational education and training (TVET). On the contrary, errors provide a useful opportunity for learning due to mismatches of mental models and reality and especially to improve occupational safety and health (OSH). OBJECTIVE: This article presents a didactic concept for developing a learning system based on learning from errors. Learners shall directly experience the consequences of erroneous actions through presenting error consequences in augmented reality to avoid negative, dangerous, or cost-intensive outcomes. METHODS: Empirical data prove errors to be particularly effective in TVET. A formal description of a work system is systematically adopted to outline a connection between work, errors concerning OSH, and a didactic concept. A proof-of-concept systematically performs a use case for the developed learning system. It supports critical reflections from a technical, safety, and didactical perspective, naming implications and limitations. RESULTS: By learning from errors, a work-based didactic concept supports OSH competencies relying on a learning system. The latter integrates digital twins of the work system to simulate and visualise dangerous error consequences for identified erroneous actions in a technical proof-of-concept. Results demonstrate the ability to detect action errors in work processes and simulations of error consequences in augmented reality. CONCLUSION: The technical learning system for OSH education extends existing learning approaches by showcasing virtual consequences. However, capabilities are limited regarding prepared learning scenarios with predefined critical errors. Future studies should assess learning effectiveness in an industrial scenario and investigate its usability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In any work system design intervention—for example, a physical workplace re‐design, a work process change, or an equipment upgrade—it is often emphasized how important it is to involve stakeholders in the process of analysis and design, to gain their perspectives as input to the development, and ensure their future acceptance of the solution. While the users of an artifact or workplace are most often regarded as being the most important stakeholders in a design intervention, in a work‐system context there may be additional influential stakeholders who influence and negotiate the design intervention's outcomes, resource allocation, requirements, and implementation. Literature shows that it is uncommon for empirical ergonomics and human factors (EHF) research to apply and report the use of any structured stakeholder identification method at all, leading to ad‐hoc selections of whom to consider important. Conversely, other research fields offer a plethora of stakeholder identification and analysis methods, few of which seem to have been adopted in the EHF context. This article presents the development of a structured method for identification, classification, and qualitative analysis of stakeholders in EHF‐related work system design intervention. It describes the method's EHF‐related theoretical underpinnings, lessons learned from four use cases, and the incremental development of the method that has resulted in the current method procedure and visualization aids. The method, called Change Agent Infrastructure (abbreviated CHAI), has a mainly macroergonomic purpose, set on increasing the understanding of sociotechnical interactions that create the conditions for work system design intervention, and facilitating participative efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Participatory simulation (PS) is a method that can be used to integrate ergonomics and safety into workplace design projects. Previous studies have mainly focused on tools and methods for the simulation activities. The subsequent process of transferring and integrating the simulation outcomes into the design of workplaces is poorly understood. OBJECTIVE: This study sets out to study the role of actors and objects in the transfer of ergonomics knowledge generated in PS events and in the integration of this knowledge into a design project. The study identifies factors that influence what part of the simulation outcomes are integrated. METHODS: The empirical context of the study was six PS events that were part of a hospital design project. The events were investigated based on knowledge transfer theory, observations, interviews and document studies. RESULTS: Actors and objects with abilities of transferring ergonomics knowledge from the PS events to the hospital design project were identified. The study indicated that persons producing the objects functioned as a filter, meaning that not all ergonomics knowledge was transferred from the PS events. The main influencing factors on the integration were: predetermined building dimensions and room interdependency. CONCLUSIONS: Four recommendations were proposed for ergonomists and safety professionals when planning PS events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial organisations increasingly face problems with recruiting its workforce. Recent years have seen the most acute labour shortages. To overcome this challenge, organisations must provide work that is attractive to a new and wider workforce. This article thus argues that the task of designing attractive work systems should be a task of ergonomics. To this end, the article positions the notion of attractive work within sociotechnical systems theory. It then shows how current perspectives on attractive work, while important, do not address the complex issues of actually designing attractive work systems. In doing so, the article expands on sociotechnical systems theory and theories on attractive work to suggest a conceptualisation that allows for the understanding of the notion of attractive work with reference to different actors and their position in relation to the work system and socio-organisational context. The conceptualisation is then applied to a case from the mining industry to investigate its applicability. The analysis finds that designing attractive work systems necessitates a user-centric approach with a widened scope. Concern must include all users, even those who in fact will not directly use the designs. In short, a sensitivity to the larger society, the external environment, is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the need for developing long-term learning abilities in Lean production: dynamic capabilities. Despite Lean’s remarkable popularity, implementation efforts often emphasize short-term efficiency over developing dynamic capabilities necessary for long-term success. This article advances the understanding of dynamic capabilities in Lean based on a longitudinal in-depth case study at a manufacturing facility. The article shows that dynamic capabilities develop through the development of an organizational setting for improvement activities, termed the improvement system. The improvement system’s effectiveness is characterized by the coherence between participants, technology, management, and organization, and between the improvement system and the work system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Open plan offices have proliferated for the past several decades with more and more workers being concentrated in office buildings. Several studies have identified a number of negative factors associated with open plan offices, and those include noise, speech interference, lack of privacy, and a perceived loss of control over work. While negative factors have been identified several times in the literature, many studies rely on either surveys or highly controlled environments. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to use a quasi-naturalistic environment based on a scaled world model to test three hypotheses of the impacts of office interference on editing and web navigation performance and mental workload. METHOD:Amixed factor designwas used that utilized continuous speech recordings, discontinuous speech recordings, and a quiet condition. Individual differences questionnaires were administered to measure focused attention, stress, and cognitive failures. After task completion, participants recorded mental workload ratings. RESULTS: Participants had higher performance accuracy in the document editing task across the speech interference conditions. Mental workload ratings were higher in the web navigation task in the discontinuous speech condition compared to the continuous speech condition. In contrast to the hypothesis, those reporting stronger focused attention performed more poorly across all speech conditions. Overall, the results were mixed. CONCLUSIONS: OPO work design must focus on individual differences among workers to determine how to customize design to facilitate performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims To identify fatiguing tasks and develop a model of sources of fatigue in nursing work. Background Research has identified multiple factors contributing to occupational fatigue; however, comprehensive consideration of diverse factors identified by nurses as contributing to fatigue in nursing work systems is lacking. Methods Content and frequency analyses were performed on previously unpublished data from an online survey of registered nurses. Responses from 100 registered nurses to questions related to the most fatiguing tasks in their work and factors that cause those tasks to be most fatiguing were analysed. Results Physically demanding patient care tasks, and organisation, management and logistics tasks, respectively, were listed as the most frequent physically and mentally fatiguing. Time and multitasking demands were listed frequently as sources of both fatigue dimensions. Conclusions Registered nurses reported working in environments that include physically and mentally fatiguing tasks. They identified factors related to work content demands, including physical and mental task demands as well as time and multitasking demands, as most frequently contributing to fatigue. Implications for nursing management This work and our conceptual model of sources of fatigue provide a framework to support nurses, nursing managers and administrators to develop strategies to reduce fatigue among RNs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: There is a growing discussion concerning sustainability. While this discussion was at first mainly focused on a society level – and sometimes regarding especially environmental problems, one can now see that this topic is of increasing relevance for companies worldwide and even the social dimension of this three pillar approach is gaining more and more importance. This leads to some questions: Is sustainability already a part of human factors thinking or do we have to further develop our discipline? How can we define sustainable work systems? What are the topics we have to consider? Do we need a new systems ergonomics perspective regarding whole value creation chains and a life-cycle perspective concerning products (and work systems)? How can we deal with potential contradictions about social, ecological, and economic goals? [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper presents a conceptual framework that can support efforts to integrate human factors (HF) into the work system design process, where improved and cost-effective application of HF is possible. The framework advocates strategies of broad stakeholder participation, linking of performance and health goals, and process focussed change tools that can help practitioners engage in improvements to embed HF into a firm's work system design process. Recommended tools include business process mapping of the design process, implementing design criteria, using cognitive mapping to connect to managers’ strategic goals, tactical use of training and adopting virtual HF (VHF) tools to support the integration effort. Consistent with organisational change research, the framework provides guidance but does not suggest a strict set of steps. This allows more adaptability for the practitioner who must navigate within a particular organisational context to secure support for embedding HF into the design process for improved operator wellbeing and system performance. Practitioner Summary: There has been little scientific literature about how a practitioner might integrate HF into a company's work system design process. This paper proposes a framework for this effort by presenting a coherent conceptual framework, process tools, design tools and procedural advice that can be adapted for a target organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents the case for the need for ‘Action Research’ (AR) approaches to gain understanding of how ergonomics considerations can best be integrated into the design of new work systems. The AR researchers work collaboratively with other stakeholders to solve a real-world problem: gaining insight into the problem and factors influencing solution building from an embedded position in the development process. This experience is interpreted in terms of available theory and can support further theory development. This non-experimental approach can help provide practical new approaches for integrating ergonomics considerations into real work system design processes. The AR approach suffers from a lack of acceptance by conventionally trained scientists. This paper aims to help overcome this weakness by developing the underlying theory and rationale for using AR approaches in ergonomics research. We propose further development of hybrid approaches which incorporate other evaluation techniques to extend the knowledge gains from AR projects. Practitioner Summary: Researchers should engage directly with organisations in ergonomics projects so that they can better understand the challenges and needs of practitioners who are trying to apply available scientific knowledge in their own unique context. Such ‘Action Research’ could help develop theory and approaches useful to improve mobilisation and application of ergonomics knowledge in organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is a well recognized understanding that workers whose voice needs to be heard should be actively encouraged as full participants and involved in the early design stages of new ergonomic work system which encompass the development and implementation of new tools, workplaces, technologies or organizations. This paper presents a novel participatory strategy to evaluate three key psychological factors which are respectively mental fatigue, spiritual stress, and emotional satisfaction in work system design based on a modified version of Participatory Ergonomics (PE). In specific, it integrates a PE technique with a formulation view by combining the parallel development of PE strategies, frameworks and functions throughout the coverage of the entire work system design process, so as to bridge the gap between qualitative and quantitative analysis of psychological factors which can cause adverse or advantageous effects on worker's physiological and behavioral performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Obesity within today’s workforce is increasingly recognized as a challenge for both public health professionals and ergonomists. The two disciplines share a scientific, evidence-based approach to practice and now have the opportunity to address a common health issue, namely obesity. This paper shows, through an overview of the current literature, how and where obesity is impacting on the workplace and how the health of the workforce is being affected. Ergonomics and public health priorities have been mapped and challenges suitable for the application of existing knowledge and further research have been identified. Areas of common endeavour, for example how sedentary work may be exacerbating obesity, have been identified as candidate topics for joint activity by ergonomists and public health professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The primary lesson for a company in an industrially developing country that desires to build its competitive capabilities is that investing and focusing solely on the technical side of the work system results in disruptive technological and organizational change. The managers should take into account broader prerequisites and be aware of the potential pitfalls of work system incompatibilities. Past experiences indicate that, to be successful, the work system design has to match certain requirements of major sociotechnical systems. Thus the matching process has to consider multiple criteria and the opinions of several managers. This work attempts briefly to identify factors affecting the success of work system design to reduce the potential for incompatibilities with respect to macroergonomics and to optimize the decision process of managers. The objective of the presented decision model in this article, based on the fuzzy analytic network process, determines the global weights (highest degree of importance) for different sociotechnical subsystem components/elements and examines the critical factors and benefits that affect the successful application of macroergonomic work system designs from a manager's point of view. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Attending to the larger system components such as organizational design and management is not novel for ergonomists. In Europe, there has been a strong tradition to investigate ergonomic problems within a holistic, systems context. “Macroergonomics” builds upon this tradition by providing specific methods and tools that yield large-scale results. It is believed that meaningful and large-scale results are needed in today''s competitive and turbulent work environments. Macroergonomics is defined, its history is uncovered and focus is given to a key methodology, macroergonomic analysis and design. Case studies are used to validate the method and illustrate that performance results in the 60–90% range can be expected. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Work system improvements are implemented in various manufacturing processes to prevent problems caused by human errors. However, they are almost always applied to problems which have already occurred. This paper examines a method of identifying latent human errors existing within the work systems beforehand. A procedure for applying failure mode and effect analysis to this identification problem was defined based on over 1000 empirical errors: a work system decomposition criterion and fundamental error modes for listing latent human errors, and then applied to three practical manufacturing processes in order to evaluate its effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The origin and initial development of macroergonomics as a formal area of research and practice is reviewed, including initial methodologies and applications. Macroergonomics is defined. The synergistic nature of systems and the potential of macroergonomics for effecting 60% or greater improvements in various organizational effectiveness criteria are described. Macroergonomic interventions that have achieved these kinds of results are cited as initial validation of the synergism hypothesis. Future directions in macroergonomics are postulated, including the empirical basis or rationale for each. Included are macroergonomics as a change agent function, total quality management (TQM) strategy, human-centred work system design approach, and preventive occupational health methodology. Macroergonomics is seen as being in a period of rapid development and expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]