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

Purpose of the article: 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 organizational environment need to be adjusted to the worker, to obtain optimal performance. Hence it is important that jobs are designed in a way that the environment of the worker becomes ergonomically better. Methods: Seventeen interviews were taken from employees of call centres of three major telecom companies in Islamabad. The interviews were semi-structured and NVivo 10 was used for analysis. Results: The results indicated the influence of the following ergonomic factors on job design. 1. Force, mental well-being, and supervisor and peer support acted more on complexity of task. 2. Inappropriate postures, mental well-being, characteristics of work, supervisor and peer support and work environment acted on skill and efforts required. 3. Repetitiveness, workstation design, mental well-being, supervisor and peer support, work environment and characteristics of work acted more on degree of worker control. Conclusion: It was concluded that the issues related to these factors should be addressed, to improve job designs at workplace.