All posts by : Alejandra Rojas

On February 13th and 14th I attended the Centre for Transformative Work Design Conference 2024 in Perth, Australia to enjoy all the presentations and share my research on work design as a catalyst to foster meaningful work during the implementation and use of mobile telepresence robots in healthcare settings. This conference set the stage for dynamic conversations on cultivating healthier, happier workplaces through the art and science of work design. 

EXPERT PANELS

I had the chance to attend different panels of experts where topics related to work design were discussed. It was great to learn from leading scholars and practitioners in the field of work design, gaining invaluable insights and practical knowledge from those at the forefront of innovation.

For example, Rob Baker, Founder of Tailored Thinking, led an engaging conversation with a panel of experts who delved into the current landscape of workplace quality improvements. Dave Burroughs, Chief Mental Health Officer at Westpac Group, highlighted the importance of shifting workplace mental health discussions towards prevention and offered practical advice for successful implementation. Professor Karina Jorristma, a Professor of Practice at the Future of Work Institute, Curtin University, shared insights from her experience implementing the Thrive at Work model and SMART work design across various organizations. Finally, Jim Kelly, Executive Director – Operations & Enforcement at SafeWork NSW, provided a regulatory perspective, discussing innovative initiatives to foster better work designs within industries.

SYMPOSIUMS

Symposiums were held for group presentations that were topic-related. I was especially interested in a symposium about “A practical approach to SMART work (re)design in the care sector” where multiple projects were presented. However, the one from Dr Jane Chong (University of Western Australia) was particularly interesting for me as it showed the outcomes of a participatory work redesign intervention and its success in alleviating job demands within an aged-care environment, which is related to my Ph.D. project as I am exploring how mobile telepresence robots (MTRs) can/should assist healthcare workers in settings like a nursing home. It was wonderful to explore real-world examples of successful work redesign initiatives that have enhanced employee well-being and organizational performance.

MY PRESENTATION

My presentation “Enabling Meaningful Work Through Work Design: A Study on Robots in Healthcare Settings” was on the 14th of February in a timeslot shared with Milan Wolffrgamm and Qi Fang, PhD colleagues who are also focused on the use of technologies and work design.

MTRs enable remote interactions between healthcare workers, patients, and family members in healthcare settings. However, it remains unclear how their implementation could affect meaningful work in such settings. Our qualitative study aims to investigate the types of interactions afforded by MTRs in healthcare and their implications on meaningful work. The data consisted of 25 interviews with and observations of healthcare professionals in three types of settings, where two different MTRs were tested. Findings show that substitution and coexistence interactions afforded by MTRs play a multifaceted role in meaningful work, as they simultaneously promote and inhibit it. However, we also find that meaningful work can be promoted through proper work design. Recognizing work design as a catalyst for fostering meaningful work during the implementation of MTRs in healthcare settings offers practical guidance to practitioners seeking to design, develop, implement, and utilize these robots while prioritizing meaningful work.

Overall, it was a great conference with lots of learnings and insights that helped me understand work design from different angles. Thanks to the organizers and sponsors!

Here, I refer to AI as any ‘intelligent’ system, mainly embodied but also virtual, that allows the automation of tasks with minimum or no human intervention in uncontrolled social environments. The type of AI that is or might be clearly displacing humans in some tasks at work. While some suggest that AI could stimulate economic development and create new jobs, others fear that it may devastate the economy [1]. Work is a very important part of our life, mainly because we spent most of our lifetime working but also because it is one of the main sources of meaning in life [2] and is considered a fundamental human need [3]. Through our day-to-day work, we can achieve things that will make us feel fulfilled and complete.

Then, what if AI takes that opportunity away from us?

For example, healthcare is a very vulnerable setting where AI can step in. Handing over activities that healthcare workers find meaningful to embodied AI technologies such as robots can lead to a loss of meaningfulness in their lives [2]. A nurse could find herself or himself asking “How to connect with patients if there is an intelligent robot taking care of them instead of me?” or “How am I going to be able to contribute to the patient’s well-being if this robot is doing what I used to do before?”. AI may represent a threat to meaningful work because tasks that were meaningful for them are not part of their routine anymore, however, there is another possibility: intelligent robots being an opportunity for meaningful work [4]. In that case, the nurse could be thinking “These robots are helping me with some tasks that I actually liked, but, in the end, it benefits the patients and that makes me feel good. Also, I have more time to focus on other meaningful activities”. As Sven Nyholm and Markus Rüther [2] put it, if AI systems take over activities that we find meaningful, then we have to find other meaningful activities or, otherwise, we will have a meaningfulness gap. According to the authors, the other option is that AI displaces humans only on mundane tasks. For this, it is necessary that AI technologies can take over these less meaningful activities without interfering with the activities that we consider meaningful [2].

Co-designing interactions for meaningful work with AI.

As we can see, there are many possible scenarios and “what if’s” for the many ways in which humans may feel about the automation of work. However, I believe that a design approach can help to give more certainty and direction to promote meaningful work. Design can be seen and defined from different perspectives; here, I talk about design as a process arrangement or rearrangement of elements in the best possible way to solve a problem. Thus, when I propose co-designing interactions, I refer to a collaborative organization and reorganization of the elements that form human-robot interactions. What are these elements? the features of the AI systems, the humans involved, the bystanders, the physical space, the role of the interactants, and the allocated tasks [5]. This list is not exhaustive, but it is a good start.

I think that interdisciplinarity may be key in navigating the ‘meaningful work with AI’ challenge. AI systems’ design, development, roles, and task allocation could be done by a group that involves or at least represents all stakeholders. Having a discussion on what tasks are meaningful, what tasks to automate, and how to balance the trade-offs can allow AI designers and developers to test their assumptions on what they thought could work in real life [1], and thus automate work in a dynamic and democratic way. The dynamism is based on the fact that many iterations and sessions with dialogue and negotiations have to be constant as part of a holistic process [6]. Meaningful work is a complex concept that most people may find difficult to define or understand if and how their own work is meaningful. Thinking about meaningful work invites self-reflection, so I think designing AI systems with meaningful work in mind is not an easy task, but it is relevant if we want a sustainable use of AI at work.

Is co-designing robotized interactions an ethical or an organizational endeavor?

We need mindful task allocation that considers the meaningfulness of work. But, who decides what tasks should be assigned to AI systems? Is it an ethical or an organizational discussion? I think it is both. Ethics can provide a list of the general criteria we should base our decisions on how to design human-robot interactions. For example, general criteria for good care involve a relevant amount of human contact [7]. Therefore, when assigning tasks between robots and healthcare workers we need to make sure that the workers have enough human contact, and for that, we need to consult them and not just assume that people from management know the answer.

Ethical discussions will allow us to design a more human work. We don’t need AI technologies to be the ones designing our work for us with systems that can predict and manage workflows for the sake of efficiency. As Kate Crawford [8] puts it, “Rather than representing a radical shift from established forms of work, the encroachment of AI into the workplace should properly be understood as a return to older practices of industrial labor exploitation established in the 1890s and early 20th century”. Indeed, research has shown that when work is designed only to improve efficiency, there is a decrease in satisfaction, but when both efficiency and satisfaction are considered, the tradeoffs are avoided [9]. This is why we need humans behind the redesign of work. Humans need to be engaged in the co-creation of meaning to feel that our lives are valuable [3].

References

[1] A. Rojas and A. Tuomi, “Reimagining the sustainable social development of AI for the service sector: the role of startups,” JEET, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 39–54, Nov. 2022, doi: 10.1108/JEET-03-2022-0005.

[2] S. Nyholm and M. Rüther, “Meaning in Life in AI Ethics—Some Trends and Perspectives,” Philos. Technol., vol. 36, no. 2, p. 20, Jun. 2023, doi: 10.1007/s13347-023-00620-z.

[3] R. Yeoman, “Conceptualising Meaningful Work as a Fundamental Human Need,” J Bus Ethics, vol. 125, no. 2, pp. 235–251, Dec. 2014, doi: 10.1007/s10551-013-1894-9.

[4] J. Smids, S. Nyholm, and H. Berkers, “Robots in the Workplace: a Threat to—or Opportunity for—Meaningful Work?,” Philos. Technol., vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 503–522, Sep. 2020, doi: 10.1007/s13347-019-00377-4.

[5] K. Fischer et al., “Integrative Social Robotics Hands-on,” IS, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 145–185, Jan. 2020, doi: 10.1075/is.18058.fis.

[6] R. V. Zicari et al., “Co-Design of a Trustworthy AI System in Healthcare: Deep Learning Based Skin Lesion Classifier,” Front. Hum. Dyn., vol. 3, p. 688152, Jul. 2021, doi: 10.3389/fhumd.2021.688152.

[7] M. Coeckelbergh, Robot ethics. Cambridge, Massachettes: The MIT Press, 2022.

[8] K. Crawford, Atlas of AI: power, politics, and the planetary costs of artificial intelligence. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021.

[9] F. P. Morgeson and M. A. Campion, “Minimizing Tradeoffs When Redesigning Work: Evidence from a Longitudinal Quasi-Experiment,” Personnel Psychology, vol. 55, no. 3, pp. 589–612, Sep. 2002, doi: 10.1111/j.1744-6570.2002.tb00122.x.

Originally published at: https://www.alejandrarojasblog.com/codesigning-interactions-for-meaningful-work

For the past month and a half, I have been collecting data for my first research project about robotics and meaningful work. Collecting data means gathering information, in my case, by conducting interviews, observing in a real setting, and reading internal communication files. I really like the experience because it is a process of constant learning, where I get to interact with people and obtain new insights that take me to new concepts and understandings.

The data collection took place at a nursing home in Málaga, Spain. It was very interesting to interview the staff and observe the dynamics of the nursing home called Vitalia Teatinos, where there are a couple of mobile telepresence robots being tested (GoBe and CLARC, I will tell you more about them). Vitalia Teatinos is a nursing home that centers its attention on the residents’ personal needs and quality of life. That is why they are looking into novel technologies that allow them to improve residents’ well-being and connect them to their loved ones in new and effective ways.

I was able to collect data there thanks to Blue Ocean Robotics, EINST4INE’s industry partner, and thanks to the University of Málaga and the Andalusian Health Service, who are working together on a project called SUSTAIN. In the past, the University of Málaga has been testing CLARC, a robot with a humanoid form that has a touch screen at the torso, a shotgun microphone, speakers, and a webcam that is able to perform autonomously routinely geriatric tests and thus leaving clinicians with more time for doing other tasks that seem more meaningful for their work purpose. Nowadays, CLARC is being tested to help residents video call their family members, which is a need that intensified during the COVID-19 lockdown, where the staff had to organize video calls for around 100 residents and their families. This situation was a turning point to finding technology that helps to overcome loneliness in isolation times.

The other robot, GoBe, is a technology developed by Blue Ocean Robotics that has proven to be effective in facilitating telepresence. Its video calling features to facilitate doctor-patient and patient-family interaction is a breakthrough innovation that needs to be tested in healthcare settings to understand how safe and effective it can be. That is the main objective of SUSTAIN project: to evaluate the effectiveness of this technology to make video calls safely and also evaluate the medical, patient, resident, and family satisfaction of such interactions. Mobile telepresence robots are not new on the market, but they have not been tested in the healthcare sector with an emphasis on the potential to assist in crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

It has been a great experience for the academic research opportunities and, of course, for the place and the people. Málaga is a very vibrant city with amazing food and friendly people. The Málagueños are very welcoming and will try to do anything so that you feel comfortable. It is also a student city with multiple faculties and a General Library, where I go to transcribe and code the interviews.

I am looking forward to continuing writing for this project. Having empirical studies in real settings is a great opportunity, and even more relevant in the field of robotics, where the majority of studies are in labs. It is true that there is a need to focus more on the effect of implementing robots in organizations from an employee perspective. It was an opportunity that I am very grateful for!