Improve work design in your organisation
Use SMART work design to strengthen leadership and improve systems, reducing psychosocial risks at their source.
SMART work design addresses issues at the source
SMART work design is more than a framework for designing individual jobs and teams. It provides a practical lens for improving how work is led, organised and supported across your organisation.
Common responses to identified issues usually treat the symptoms of poor work design without addressing root causes, limiting their effectiveness. In contrast, SMART shifts the focus to improving the conditions in which people work.
| Organisational issue | Common response | SMART systems response |
|---|---|---|
| High stress | Resilience training | Review workloads, role clarity, autonomy and support |
| Poor engagement | Employee survey | Redesign jobs, workflows and decision-making processes |
| Change fatigue | Wellbeing campaign | Improve participation, communication and employee influence over change |
| Psychological injury claims | Individual intervention | Address root causes in work design, governance and systems |
The 2 core strategies for implementing SMART work design across the organisation are:
- strengthening leader capability
- improving policies, processes and systems.
Strengthen leader capability
Leaders play a critical role in shaping peoples’ experience of work. Their everyday decisions influence priorities, role clarity, support, autonomy, team relationships and workload.
Organisations can use SMART to strengthen leader capability, encouraging leaders to build SMART into team discussions, planning, change processes, performance conversations and day-to-day decision-making. This helps leaders create conditions that support safer, healthier, motivated and high-performing teams.
Examples:
- A leader gives team members opportunities to solve problems, contribute ideas and take ownership of meaningful pieces of work.
- A leader provides clear expectations, regular feedback and helps people understand how their work contributes to broader outcomes.
- A leader gives people flexibility in how they organise, prioritise and complete their work while maintaining accountability for outcomes.
- A leader creates opportunities for collaboration, consultation and connection, particularly during periods of change.
- A leader regularly reviews workloads, priorities and competing demands, and adjusts expectations when resources are constrained.
Get started with SMART for leaders
To help leaders strengthen their capability you can encourage them to review Comcare’s work design resources, particularly the:
- SMART work design: team talk (1.73 MB)
- topic-based better practice guides that explore what great managers do.
You can also nominate Australian Public Service (APS) leaders to attend the Australian Public Service Commission’s Edge leadership development programs. Both programs help leaders use SMART work design in their roles.
- APS Management Edge is for APS6 and EL1 leaders who want to build their everyday management judgement, lead confidently through complexity and strengthen their teams in APS contexts
- APSC Leadership Edge is for EL2s to develop their leadership and management skills through a range of learning sprints and activities.
Improve policies, processes and systems
SMART can also be applied when developing or reviewing policies, processes and systems. Using SMART as a design lens helps organisations identify and address psychosocial risks at their source, rather than relying on individuals to manage the consequences of poor work design.
Examples:
- Project, governance or approval processes are designed to support professional judgement and minimise low-value administrative tasks.
- Role descriptions, governance frameworks and performance systems clearly define responsibilities, decision rights and accountabilities.
- Policies focus on outcomes and principles rather than prescribing every step, enabling appropriate discretion and decision-making.
- Change, workforce planning and decision-making processes include meaningful worker participation and cross-functional collaboration.
- Planning, governance and reporting processes reduce duplication, remove unnecessary complexity and align workload expectations with available resources.
You don’t need to redesign everything at once. Start by reviewing one leadership practice, policy, process or system using a SMART work design lens.
You can also take Comcare’s work design resources and adapt them for your organisation.
If you’d like to build in house specialist capability, Curtin University offer a credential in using work design and the SMART work design model: SMART Work Design Curtin Credential.
Case studies
Every day, people are using SMART work design to improve their work. See how they’re doing it in these work design case studies.