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Professor Sharon Parker’s illustrious career began by accident.
When the opportunity to complete a Doctor of Philosophy in the UK arose in 1990, Sharon thought it would be a great chance to travel the world.
Instead, it took her to the industrial heart of the historic steel works city of Sheffield. On a factory floor of a manufacturing facility, Sharon found her inspiration.
“I was really fortunate to work with some people that were working in factories whose jobs were redesigned from the traditional way of doing assembly lines to what’s called self-managing teams,” says Sharon.
“I saw an amazing transformation and use of human potential through that process.”
“Those early experiences convinced me of the power of great work, and that passion has sustained me over many, many years.”
TRANSFORMATIVE WORK
Sharon now leads the Centre for Transformative Work Design in Perth. She founded the Centre in 2017.
“We are a group of researchers that share this passion around how to create healthy, productive and safe work through this process of work redesign,” says Sharon.
“When people have got terrible work that is of poor quality … it is soul destroying, erodes people’s confidence and impairs their mental health.
“If you can create good-quality work for people, they can really thrive and that’s amazing to witness.”
“That’s why I called it the Centre for Transformative Work Design – because quality work is transformative for people and for the organisations they work in.”
WORKING SMARTER, NOT HARDER
Work design relates to the content and organisation of all of the tasks, activities, relationships and responsibilities a person has at their workplace.
Research in this field focuses on how to best organise work design to improve worker outcomes.
Sharon developed the SMART Work Design Model to assist individuals and organisations to refine and improve their work design.
The model was based on decades of research. It outlines five key themes that are vital for creating healthy and productive work: Stimulating, Mastery, Agency, Relational and Tolerable demands (SMART).
“One of the things we know from decades of research is if you design work to be SMART, it’s not only mentally healthy, it’s actually more productive and more effective,” says Sharon.
“If we design work well, it’s good for people themselves and it’s also good for the business or the organisation that the people are in.”
ON THE RADAR
There has been a growing appetite by organisations to use the SMART model in recent years, particularly during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Prior to COVID, working from home was the province of a privileged few, mostly only the workers who could be trusted,” says Sharon.
“It took the forced experiment of people needing to do their work from home during the pandemic to show some employers that people can work effectively outside of the office, so it was an exciting time for us in the Centre. In a sense, it put work design on the radar.
“Organisations are still struggling with questions like should we mandate people into the office full-time, should we allow people to work from home 5 days a week and what is the right balance of working from home versus in the office?
“For most types of work, there are pros to being in the office such as more connection (Relational) and pros to being at home such as more autonomy (Agency), so for many people, a bit of both in the form of hybrid work is likely to be optimal.
“But one of our overarching conclusions is if you’ve got badly designed work, it’s going to be bad whether you’re working from home or in the office.
“For instance, if you have intolerable demands due to chronic excess workload, you will likely be stressed irrespective of where you are working.”
SHIFTING THE DIAL FOR INDUSTRY
Sharon’s work goes beyond the home and office.
In WA, Sharon has investigated work design in the state’s largest industry – mining.
Her research includes a landmark study into sexual harassment of women in the mining industry – 40% of the women surveyed regularly experienced derogatory and misogynistic comments.
“What our research showed is that exposure to that sort of undermining type of language and hostile comments is very damaging for people,” says Sharon.
“That was a piece of research that’s had quite a bit of impact and hopefully will continue to have value in terms of inspiring companies to improve the situation.
“In our research, we try to go beyond merely documenting the problem. We also try to shift the dial and improve things, from redesigning work in aged care or improving the culture of mining organisations.”
SCIENCE ON THE NATIONAL STAGE
Sharon is one of Australia’s most highly respected and recognised researchers. Her research has been cited more than 49,000 times
In 2016, Sharon received the Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship, one of the nation’s most prestigious research fellowships.
She was awarded two more accolades at the 2024 Premier’s Science Awards.
Sharon was one of two joint winners of this year’s Scientist of the Year. This category recognises outstanding individuals in a field of science, scientific research or technological advancement who have been active in their field, particularly over the past decade.
Sharon also received the People’s Choice Award, which was awarded to the 2024 finalist with the most votes and celebrates contributions to the WA STEM sector.
LOOKING AHEAD
Sharon was surprised by the awards but says they reflect the growing importance of work design research.
“I was surprised partly because this is not your traditional layer or science, it’s not that classic STEM … but it was very, very gratifying,” says Sharon.
“All of this work has been done with teams including postdoctoral researchers and students and many others. I would like to thank the many people who have been on this journey with me.”
Sharon encourages anyone to consider a career in work design. She predicts the field will continue to grow, particularly with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace.
“There are these questions around who should make decisions,” says Sharon.
“Should AI make decisions or should a human make decisions? Or should a human and AI make decisions and, if so, how do they work together?
“Those are classic work design questions, but instead of it being tasks being shared across people, it’s about tasks being shared between technology and humans.
“We are going to see more and more importance of work design into the future because of this.”
