case study on job redesign

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• Published: 20 January 2023

Job crafting interventions: what works, for whom, why, and in which contexts? Research protocol for a systematic review with coincidence analysis

• Marta Roczniewska   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0815-1455 1 , 2 ,
• Anna Rogala 3 ,
• Magdalena Marszałek 2 ,
• Henna Hasson 1 , 4 ,
• Arnold B. Bakker 5 , 6 &
• Ulrica von Thiele Schwarz 1 , 7  

Systematic Reviews volume  12 , Article number:  10 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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Recent challenges in the working world that resulted from the pandemic and technological advances have underlined the importance of flexibility in how jobs are designed. Job crafting (JC) refers to self-initiated changes that employees introduce to their jobs to optimize their job design and increase the fit between the job and their needs and preferences. These behaviors can be stimulated by job crafting training interventions, which aim to change how individual employees design, organize, or manage their work. However, since the interventions are implemented in various ways, we do not know which context and intervention factors are necessary or sufficient to achieve desired outcomes. Without this knowledge, benefitting from the potential of job crafting interventions is limited. The overall aim of this project will be to investigate what combinations of context, intervention, and mechanism factors are linked with effective JC interventions. Specifically, we will detect what factors are minimally sufficient and/or necessary to produce a successful JC intervention, how they combine, as well as what are the multiple alternative paths to their success.

We will perform a systematic review of the JC interventions literature combined with coincidence analysis (CNA). We will search electronic databases of journals and utilize Rayyan software to make decisions regarding inclusion. Data regarding context (e.g., fit), intervention (e.g., types of activities), mechanisms (e.g., intention implementation), and outcomes (e.g., employee well-being, job performance) will be extracted using a pre-piloted form and coded into a crisp-set (factor present vs. absent). Analyses will be carried out using the CNA package in R.

This review will address gaps in knowledge about the context, intervention, and mechanism-related factors that may impact the effects of JC interventions. Consequently, this review will help develop a program theory for JC interventions that explains what works, how and under which circumstances. Applying CNA to synthesize these complex solutions across multiple studies provides an innovative method that may be used in future review attempts evaluating the implementation of interventions. Finally, our synthesis will provide knowledge relevant to organizational practitioners and scholars who want to implement JC interventions.

Trial registration

https://osf.io/2g6yx

Peer Review reports

Economic pressures, technological advances, and changes within organizations themselves emphasize the importance of flexibility in the ways that jobs are performed in modern workplaces. To address these challenges, organizations often employ a top-down job redesign approach in which management optimizes the demands and resources of employees’ jobs to obtain desired organizational outcomes [ 1 ]. However, such top-down strategies are unsuitable to keep up with the rapid pace of current changes and often fail to recognize the diversity of the workforce and growing job specialization among employees. A top-down redesign may result in a poor fit between employees’ needs or abilities and the organizational environment, which poses a risk of low job satisfaction, increased turnover, and work-related ill-health among employees [ 2 ]. These negative outcomes jeopardize sustainable employment (i.e., the extent to which workers are able and willing to remain working now and in the future [ 3 ]), which is one of the main challenges in Europe [ 4 ]. Without proper approaches, organizations’ business goals are at risk.

Overall, societal changes, dynamic workplaces, and a diverse workforce, combined with the inadequacy of traditional top-down approaches, call for solutions that are driven by employees themselves. Employee-driven job redesign enables employees to “take charge” of their own work to achieve better person-job fit. Proactive employee job redesign is called job crafting (JC). This bottom-up strategy refers to self-initiated changes that employees introduce to their jobs to allow them to deal more effectively with the demands of the changing work environment [ 5 ]. With JC, employees proactively shape their jobs and align them with their own needs [ 6 , 7 ]. There are two main approaches to how JC is framed. Wrzesniewski and Dutton [ 6 ] describe JC as proactive changes in physical, relational, and cognitive job aspects. Simply put, people who craft their jobs change their task boundaries, social interactions (e.g., with colleagues or clients), and also how they think about their role. The second approach frames JC within the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model [ 8 , 9 , 10 ] and defined it as behaviors aimed at changing two types of job characteristics: job resources and job demands to find a better person-job fit [ 7 ]. Specifically, employees may seek more resources, increase challenging job demands, and reduce hindering job demands [ 11 ].

JC emerges as a possible solution to the challenges of the current job redesign. First, employees can flexibly react to organizational changes affecting their jobs more quickly as compared to top-down actions. Second, knowing the core of their jobs enables employees to shape them more effectively. Finally, the redesign accounts for individual needs and preferences and thus, is instrumental to achieving person-job fit. Hence, both employees and organizations could profit from employee proactivity in job redesign. Research on the outcomes of JC confirms its beneficial effects. JC has been linked with higher employee job satisfaction [ 12 ], engagement [ 13 ], job performance [ 14 ], person-job fit [ 15 ], work meaning [ 16 ], as well as lower job burnout [ 12 ] and intentions to leave [ 13 ]. Employees who craft their jobs adapt to changes better [ 17 , 18 ]. Such boosted adaptability was observed in the recent COVID-19 pandemic: when employees had to redesign their jobs to match the new circumstances, deal with the new demands, and achieve work-life balance, those who engaged in job crafting, dealt with telework better [ 19 ]. Overall, JC may be linked with more sustainable employment[ 5 , 20 ].

Given the positive outcomes of JC, it is important to understand how organizations can stimulate such proactivity. While JC concerns employees’ self-initiated actions, it can be supported through actions undertaken by an organization. Thus, organizations can introduce job crafting training interventions , by means of which employees learn about job crafting and are stimulated to use it in their work [ 21 , 22 , 23 ]. The research on job crafting interventions is relatively new. The Job Crafting Exercise booklet was first described by Wrzesniewski and colleagues in 2013 [ 22 ]. Another wave of job crafting, which derived from the JD-R model, proposed a corresponding job crafting training workshop in 2015[ 21 ]. To the best of our knowledge, there are two existing literature reviews published in 2019 that focus specifically on examining the effects of job crafting interventions. First, a systematic review summarized eight empirical quantitative studies examining the effects of job crafting interventions and demonstrated mixed findings for different types of job crafting behaviors, well-being variables, and job performance [ 24 ]. Second, a meta-analysis of 14 JC interventions revealed overall statistically significant results on global JC (i.e., total JC score composed of all dimensions), but not for all job crafting types when investigated separately; it also demonstrated an effect of the interventions on work engagement and on contextual performance [ 25 ].

While these reviews have been valuable, they focused on answering whether job crafting interventions worked (i.e., led to an increase in JC behaviors post intervention), but did not set out to answer the important questions of why they worked, when, and for whom . Yet, these process and context factors should be part of the evaluation to better explain the success and failure of workplace interventions [ 26 ]. Little is known about which employees may benefit from JC interventions and how these interventions are implemented at workplaces. In addition, more knowledge is needed on what workplace characteristics might impact the implementation and effect of such interventions. An exception was the moderator analyses in the aforementioned meta-analysis, which looked at two factors: the occupational sector and an intervention objective (individual goal vs. individual and organizational goals combined) [ 25 ]. Yet, these are only two possible aspects (related to context and intervention activities, respectively) that may affect the success of the JC intervention. Research has established an extensive list of potential contextual and intervention-related factors that may affect implementation and the intervention outcomes [ 27 ]. To move the field forward, we need to better understand what combinations of factors are relevant to elicit successful implementation of job crafting in the workplace as an outcome of the intervention. Job crafting interventions published in the literature are heterogeneous: Depending on the underlying JC theory, the contents of these interventions differ, as do the methods used (e.g., workshops, feedback sessions, booklets, medium used). These differences make it difficult to determine the true potential of a JC intervention by testing an overall meta-analytical effect. In addition, the heterogeneous context does not need to be viewed as a confounding influence that should be controlled, but rather as a factor that influences how the intervention brings about its outcome through certain mechanisms [ 28 ]. Additionally, JC interventions may have unique implementation characteristics. Namely, JC interventions combine a mix of approaches: by means of decisions and actions initiated by management that take a top-down form, they aim to introduce a continuous bottom-up change among individuals. Given that JC behaviors differ between individuals and may go unnoticed by managers[ 6 ], identifying elements of effective support for JC interventions is a challenge. Although extensive literature exists on the implementation of organizational interventions [ 29 ], less is known about introducing such unique combinations [ 30 ].

Aim and research questions

Overall, knowledge on JC interventions and their effects is still scarce and spread across distinct approaches. We have yet to determine which context and intervention factors are necessary or sufficient to achieve desired outcomes. The general aim of this project will be to investigate what combinations of context, intervention, and mechanism factors are linked with effective JC interventions. Specifically, we will detect what factors are minimally sufficient and/or necessary to produce a successful JC intervention, as well as the multiple alternative paths to their success. The following research questions (RQ) will be investigated:

RQ1. What program theories have been used for JC interventions?

RQ2. What activities have been used in JC interventions?

RQ3. What have been the proximal and distal outcomes of JC interventions for performance and health and well-being?

RQ4. Which Context-Intervention-Mechanism (CIM) factors are sufficient for successful JC interventions?

RQ5. Which Context-Intervention-Mechanism (CIM) factors are necessary for successful JC interventions?

RQ6. How do the factors combine to produce successful JC interventions?

RQ7. What are the (multiple) paths to successful JC interventions?

RQ8. Is a successful JC intervention (i.e., an increase in JC) a sufficient and necessary condition for effects for well-being and performance?

This protocol is reported according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis Protocols (PRISMA-P) 2015 checklist (see Additional file 1 ) [ 31 ].

We will perform a systematic review of JC literature and, to be able to address our research questions, we will apply CIMO logic, which aims to determine the combinations showing that in context C, an intervention I invokes generative mechanisms M that produces outcome O. In this way, we can establish what works, how, in what context and for whom. This will be achieved by applying a mathematical, cross-case method called Coincidence Analysis (CNA), which belongs to a broader class of Configurational Comparative Methods (CCMs; [ 32 ]). These methods have been designed explicitly to support causal inferences, answer research questions about combinations of conditions that are minimally necessary or sufficient for an outcome, and to identify the possible presence of multiple causal paths to an outcome [ 33 ]. CNA can be applied to large-n as well as small-n sets. It has recently been used in multiple projects which aimed at discovering minimally sufficient and necessary factors affecting successful implementation, as well as their combinations and multiple paths to outcomes [ 32 , 34 , 35 ]. Moreover, CCMs were applied in a recent Cochrane Review which aimed at identifying conditions associated with a successful implementation of school-based interventions for asthma self-management [ 36 ]. Finally, configurational methods have been included as a relevant method for implementation research in the Handbook on Implementation Science [ 37 , 38 ].

CNA operates based on the Boolean properties of causation, which encompass three dimensions of complexity. The first is conjunctivity : to bring about an outcome, several conditions must be jointly present. For example, the analysis may demonstrate that a job crafting intervention is successful when individuals are white-collar employees AND are provided with tasks to perform (homework) between workshop sessions AND when they are reminded to engage in these tasks. The second dimension of complexity is disjunctivity (equifinality) , which means that different paths can lead to the same outcome. For instance, a success in job crafting interventions can be achieved when there is alignment of the intervention with organizational aims and when reminders of JC activities are sent OR when there is no alignment present, but managers have been trained alongside employees. The third dimension of complexity is sequentiality , which points to a possibility that outcomes tend to produce further outcomes, propagating causal influence along causal chains. For instance, an increase in job crafting as a result of the intervention can, in turn, lead to an increase in job performance. Thus, CNA analysis will be instrumental in answering our questions about sufficient (RQ4) and necessary (RQ5) factors, as well as their combinations (RQ6), and potential multiple paths (RQ7) or sequences (RQ8) that lead to the intervention success.

Eligibility criteria

To systematize study selection, we will use the PICO (Population; Intervention;

Comparison; Outcome) approach. Specifically, to be included in our review, the study:

Has to involve active employees (i.e., not a student sample, not persons on leave) as participants (P);

Has to be a job crafting intervention (I);

Contains a comparator (intragroup, between group, or control group) (C); and

Contains measures of job crafting (general or specific types) as a proximal intervention outcome and/or contains health and well-being or performance as distal outcomes (O).

Search terms and strategy

The search will be executed by a professional team from the Karolinska Institutet (KI) library that specializes in literature reviews. It will be conducted in the following databases: PsycINFO, Web of Science, Academic Search Complete, MEDLINE, and CINAHL. The search will be conducted for research published with a lower time limit of 2001 because the first article about job crafting was published in 2001 (see draft search strategy in Additional file 2 ). The search terms will be based on the topic of this review, i.e., job crafting (e.g., “job crafting” as well as its specific types, such as “seeking challenges” or “increasing structural job resources”) and the intervention (e.g., “intervention,” “experiment,” or “workshop”). Footnote 1 Additionally, we will inspect the references of two published literature reviews on job crafting interventions: a systematic review [ 24 ] and a meta-analysis with utility analysis [ 25 ].

Review and extraction

All retrieved references will be uploaded to open-source Rayyan software [ 39 ]. Abstracts of the retrieved studies will be screened independently by 2 team members to identify studies that meet the inclusion criteria. Then, full texts of these studies will be independently assessed by the two authors for eligibility. Discrepancies in the screening at these two stages will be resolved by discussion, and when needed, a third person will be consulted.

A standardized, pre-piloted form will be used to extract data from the included studies. We conducted a feasibility test for 5 published articles that contained a job crafting intervention to derive factors of relevance within the CIMO logic. Four groups of data will be extracted: Context (e.g., alignment, participants, co-occurring changes), Intervention (e.g., workshop duration, action plans, feedback), Mechanism (e.g., theory of planned behavior, job demands-resources model, experiential learning), and Outcomes (e.g., effects for job crafting, health and well-being, performance). Each record will be extracted by two independent extractors in duplicate to ensure consistency and a high quality. Additional factors will be inductively added during data retrieval if they appear relevant for the CIMO logic. Authors will be contacted via e-mail to clarify or provide more information on the conducted intervention.

Risk of bias

Following the meta-analysis of JC interventions [ 25 ], we will use the Cochrane Collaboration tool [ 40 ] to evaluate the risk of bias. We will consider selection bias (i.e., sequence generation, allocation concealment), performance bias (blinding of participants/personnel), detection bias (blinding of outcome assessment), attrition bias (i.e., incomplete outcome data), reporting bias (selective outcome reporting), and other potential sources of bias. Each domain will be evaluated for each intervention as either a low, high, or unclear risk of bias. Consequently, the more domains are assigned low risk in a particular study, the higher their quality.

Synthesis/data analysis

Regularity theoretic causation, which will be applied in this synthesis using CNA, is a relation that holds between factors taking on specific values [ 33 ]. In our synthesis, we will use a crisp set, where each case will take on 0 and 1 as possible values for each factor. Thus, the extracted information for each factor will be coded as 1 (reflecting a presence of a factor) and 0 (reflecting a factor absence) based on clearly defined criteria.

The definitions and criteria will be developed by the research team, pilot-tested based on a sample of relevant articles, and refined if needed. Again, coding will be done by two independent coders in duplicate and codes will be compared. Table 1 presents examples of factors for each CIM category as well as coding criteria.

Data analysis will be performed in a devoted CNA package in R. The output will be interpreted in terms of conditions sufficient (RQ4), conditions necessary (RQ5), their combinations (RQ6), and possible alternative paths to the outcome (RQ7). We will also investigate whether a success in a JC intervention is sufficient and/or necessary with an increase in well-being and performance after the intervention (RQ8). The interpretation of the output from configurational methods will be done with specific attention to consistency (degree to which the solution always yields the expected outcome; [ 33 ]) and coverage (degree to which the solution covers all cases; [ 33 ]) of the results, non-redundancy of the factors, and consistency with logic, theory, and prior knowledge.

The strength of the body of evidence will be assessed using relevant domains from the Guide to Community Preventive Services [ 41 ], which serves as a framework to evaluate “confidence that changes in outcomes are attributable to the interventions” (p. 38). This framework is suitable for narrative synthesis. Based on this framework, evidence will be rated as strong, sufficient, or insufficient.

With JC repeatedly being linked with positive employee and organizational outcomes [ 13 ] it is not surprising that JC has drawn a lot of attention from scholars and practitioners alike. By considering individuals as active creators of their jobs, JC interventions may be a promising strategy for securing organizational and employee sustainability. However, to fully capitalize on the benefits of JC, organizations need to understand how to stimulate JC in their environments. Unfortunately, knowledge about JC interventions is still scarce and spread across distinct theoretical perspectives. It is not yet clear when and how these interventions produce desired outcomes. Without this knowledge, it may be futile to introduce JC interventions into everyday organizational practice. Thus, it is vital to understand when, how and for whom these interventions lead to desired outcomes. With this review, we will provide knowledge regarding JC interventions that have a chance to move the area forward. The results will illuminate which combinations of factors are necessary for succeeding with implementation of JC interventions, thereby providing organizations with guidelines for achieving sustainable effects of JC interventions. Additionally, given the uniqueness of JC interventions in that they are organizational interventions for individuals to intervene on their jobs themselves, this synthesis will allow us to better understand the uniqueness of such solutions and their implementation characteristics. The synthesis will also allow us to investigate what sort of information about the CIM factors in the JC interventions is volunteered by the researchers in the first place and may lead to proposing guidelines on how to report them more transparently by including information about all relevant factors.

By complementing the systematic review with CNA, we develop a novel way to assess how CIMO configurations play out to produce an aspired outcome. Thereby, this project will make a contribution both to the knowledge synthesis and the evaluation literature, as the approach can be used both for secondary data, in a synthesis, and primary data, as in an evaluation. Given the complex, multifaceted nature of organizational interventions, this approach is particularly suited to the synthesis of evidence about complexity in the implementation of JC interventions. By complementing the systematic review with CNA, the findings will be based on quantitative analyses—specifically, a Boolean algebra technique. This approach enables identification of multiple configurations that are sufficient to produce an outcome with enough consistency to illustrate that the same pathway will continue to produce the outcome. Interventions usually contain multiple components and are influenced by multiple contextual factors working through several possible mediators to achieve a sequence of outcomes. Thus, the number of possible combinations to analyze and make sense of them quickly exceeds what is possible for humans to overview. Applying a mathematical method that addresses this and additional dimensions of complexity, thus, extends the qualitative approaches often used in systematic reviews to help uncover “what works for whom and how”.

Availability of data and materials

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as this is a study protocol.

The final refined list of search terms will be included in the systematic review upon publishing the results.

Abbreviations

Context-Intervention-Mechanism

Configurational Comparative Methods

Coincidence analysis

Job crafting

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Emma-Lotta Säätelä from the team at Karolinska Institutet university library, who assisted with the development of the search strategy and with the database searches.

Open access funding provided by Karolinska Institute. This work was supported by a grant from the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working life and Welfare (FORTE), grant number 2019–00543. The funding body had no role in the design of the study and will have no role in the collection, analysis and interpretation of the data.

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PROCOME Research Group, Medical Management Centre, Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

Marta Roczniewska, Henna Hasson & Ulrica von Thiele Schwarz

Faculty of Psychology in Sopot, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Sopot, Poland

Marta Roczniewska & Magdalena Marszałek

Faculty of Psychology in Warsaw, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, Poland

Anna Rogala

Centre for Epidemiology and Community Medicine, Stockholm, Sweden

Henna Hasson

Center of Excellence for Positive Organizational Psychology, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Arnold B. Bakker

Department of Industrial Psychology and People Management, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

School of Health, Care and Social Welfare, Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden

Ulrica von Thiele Schwarz

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Contributions

MR initiated the project and obtained funding. UvTS, HH, and ABB reviewed and supported the funding application. MR, AR, MM, UvTS, and HH developed the study design. MR made the analysis plan for the studies. MR wrote the first draft of the manuscript. MR, AR, MM, UvTS, HH, and ABB read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Marta Roczniewska .

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Supplementary Information

Additional file 1..

PRISMA-P checklist.

Additional file 2.

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Roczniewska, M., Rogala, A., Marszałek, M. et al. Job crafting interventions: what works, for whom, why, and in which contexts? Research protocol for a systematic review with coincidence analysis. Syst Rev 12 , 10 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-023-02170-z

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Consider Work Redesign to Close Talent Gaps

​While some organizations are shedding jobs or instituting hiring freezes as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, others continue to search for in-demand talent. Yet rather than trying to find or develop these scarce "purple unicorns" through traditional approaches of recruiting or internal training, some enterprising organizations are using job redesign strategies to help fill their talent gaps.

Leah Johnson, vice president of advisory services for research and consulting firm Gartner, said organizations that are continuing digital transformation efforts through the pandemic often find their biggest obstacle isn't technology but talent.

"To address that challenge, they're trying to recruit talent that's still hard to find or considering upskilling strategies," she said.

About 90 percent of the S&P 100 recruit competitively for the same 39 job roles, according to a 2019 study by Gartner, and 30 percent of critical roles remain vacant after five months. Such data suggest organizations should consider additional means of closing talent gaps beyond simply using legacy recruiting or training approaches, Johnson said. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated the need for organizations to be able to quickly adjust to changing circumstances, and a 2020 survey of human resource leaders by Gartner found 63 percent report now using some variation of agile methods and principles—such as work or job design—within the HR function to help do so.

How Work Redesign Can Address Talent Needs

Johnson said organizations often fall into the trap of designing work and job roles in ways that create rather than lessen talent dependencies, making it harder to find or develop talent that can fill roles. For example, some job roles are designed with such a breadth of required competencies—this "competency creep" typically includes a growing number of technical and soft skills—that it becomes a Herculean task for recruiters to source talent among limited pools that fits that broadening bill.

One example is the data scientist role. Organizations increasingly tend to look for the rare combination of technical, data visualization and high-level communication skills in one person when filling these roles, Johnson said. But by using work redesign strategies, companies can identify competencies needed for data scientists and then break the role down into bite-size tasks and skills. They might then source multiple people for parts of the same job role, such as hiring contractors or using talent temporarily loaned from other parts of a company to handle specific aspects of that role.

"We know of one company who decided it could hire for a baseline of technical and mathematical skills for data scientists, and then either outsource or upskill for the business skills and communication abilities also needed in that role," she said. "Instead of chasing rare talent, these companies often change the work and the job roles instead."

Johnson said American Express used such a "fit for purpose" process to help minimize its talent needs for data scientists. The organization initially considered recruiting eight data scientists to help leverage its existing data and systems. But by using a work design approach that first automated some repetitive tasks and streamlined other technical processes, the company discovered it could contract with two resources instead of eight to fit its needs.

Another area where work design strategies can pay dividends is in hiring for diversity in senior leadership roles, Johnson said. One challenge in that effort has long been location. For example, an organization's headquarters may be in a place where it's harder to find diverse candidates or where such candidates are unwilling to relocate. "Because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the experiment with remote work, we're finding companies are redesigning more work out of necessity," Johnson said, including changing those location requirements.

Johnson said such a change could ultimately allow for a more diverse applicant pool for leadership roles because organizations may become more willing to forego a mandatory requirement about geographic location for those roles.

Case Study: How Unilever Uses Work Design Strategies

One organization that's applied such work redesign strategies is Unilever, the London-based consumer goods company. Raquel Suarez, global employer brand and talent channels director for Unilever, said the company launched an initiative to simplify roles and workflows in ways that make sourcing easier and more effective.

The process begins by "unbundling" job roles into competencies and bite-sized tasks. "Our message for line managers when it comes to finding talent is to be resourceful," she said.

For example, Unilever line managers and recruiters might analyze a job role to see which of its competencies could be addressed through loaned internal talent or external resources like freelancers or university students. Unilever used that process in examining competencies needed for some leadership roles. The analysis found that creating certain PowerPoint presentations was a task that could be outsourced to experienced contractors, freeing leaders to spend more time on strategic work.

Suarez uses the process in staffing her own department. "I could simply go out and hire a full-time brand manager with generalist skills without giving it much thought," she said. "But I use the process to think through my annual plan and my staffing needs. I might need someone with expertise in social media and LinkedIn, for example, and instead of trying to find an employer- brand generalist with those skills, I might source it separately and consider finding a specialist with social media skills."

Incremental Change Over Radical Restructuring

Johnson stressed that this work design process should be incremental and ongoing. "This isn't about blowing up an organization with radical restructuring," she said. "It's about continuously making small changes to job roles and processes that can have big impact. The idea is to use work design strategy as a supplement to recruiting or training so you can unlock more capability in your workforce."

Dave Zielinski is a freelance business writer and editor in Minneapolis.

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Work Redesign for the 21st Century: Promising Strategies for Enhancing Worker Well-Being

All of the authors were engaged in the conception, design, and writing of the article.

Work is a key social determinant of population health and well-being. Yet, efforts to improve worker well-being in the United States are often focused on changing individual health behaviors via employer wellness programs. The COVID-19 health crisis has brought into sharp relief some of the limitations of current approaches, revealing structural conditions that heighten the vulnerability of workers and their families to physical and psychosocial stressors.

To address these gaps, we build on existing frameworks and work redesign research to propose a model of work redesign updated for the 21st century that identifies strategies to reshape work conditions that are a root cause of stress-related health problems. These strategies include increasing worker schedule control and voice, moderating job demands, and providing training and employer support aimed at enhancing social relations at work.

We conclude that work redesign offers new and viable directions for improving worker well-being and that guidance from federal and state governments could encourage the adoption and effective implementation of such initiatives. ( Am J Public Health . 2021;111(10):1787–1795. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306283 )

Work is a key social determinant of population health and well-being. Work directly and indirectly shapes inequities in health and well-being by providing opportunities for economic attainment, access to benefits (including health care in the United States), and physical and social environments that profoundly shape health-relevant exposures. It is the place where most adults spend the majority of their waking hours. 1 Substantial research documents the health benefits of work, including not only income but also engagement, personal growth, opportunities for learning, and having a sense of purpose and meaning. 2

However, the COVID-19 crisis has sharply reminded the public that workplaces are sources of many important exposures that can harm health, including not only viruses, contaminants, and other physical risks but also significant psychosocial stressors. As COVID-19 reveals in painful detail, such exposures are not trivial and how work is designed and organized matters enormously. Moreover, work contributes to the long-observed social gradient in health in the United States, with unhealthy work conditions being more common (and health-enhancing conditions less common) among socially disadvantaged populations. 3 , 4 During the pandemic, workplace COVID-19 outbreaks have occurred primarily among low-wage workers and migrant populations in industries ranging from agriculture to food processing and manufacturing. Research conducted before and during COVID-19 has consistently demonstrated that exposure to adverse workplace conditions (e.g., job insecurity, long hours) leads to poorer physical and mental health for individual workers and their families and communities. 5

Despite the importance of work as a social determinant of health, our current ways of pursuing worker well-being are limited. Recent discussions related to improving worker health have focused largely on health promotion or “corporate wellness” programs, which use workplaces as venues for facilitating individual behavior change (e.g., increased exercise, practicing mindfulness). Such programs are problematic for several reasons. For example, they largely overlook the fundamental role of the work environment itself in shaping health. Also, they rest on the assumption that employees can and should manage stressful work conditions by engaging in personal wellness activities, thereby suggesting that employee stress is self-imposed.

Beyond these concerns, such approaches seem to be ineffective, with recent rigorous research revealing small or null effects for these programs on a wide range of employee health outcomes, medical expenditures, and productivity measures. 6 , 7 These findings, together with an understanding that the social organization of work directly and indirectly influences worker health and well-being, suggest that it is time for a new perspective. 8

In an important commentary, Schulte et al. 9 identified organizational conditions of the workplace as critical determinants of workforce well-being and argued for a broader definition of worker well-being beyond the traditional scope of occupational health. Recent National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) initiatives drawing on the Total Worker Health paradigm explicitly recognize that workplace conditions affect worker health, safety, and well-being through multiple pathways and that organizational environments may act synergistically with other health promotion efforts. 10–12 Guidelines and frameworks from Total Worker Health highlight how workplace factors affect worker well-being and identify successes with interventions derived from this approach. 10 Here we propose a work redesign approach that builds on these perspectives but explicitly shifts the focus from asking workers to adapt to their work environment regardless of how work is organized to reshaping work conditions and environments in ways that support employee well-being and improve population health.

Our redesign approach promotes identification of work conditions that affect well-being and is informed by (1) an understanding of the changing demographics of workers and working families and (2) an expanded view of health considering the full spectrum of well-being, including both negative and positive dimensions. This approach orients analyses to the everyday organization of work, with dual aims of enabling individuals to work productively and promoting health and well-being. An organizational approach to changing worker well-being is not new. A major focus on the health effects of psychosocial work environments emerged in the 1970s. 13 Since then, the “job strain model” has become highly influential in occupational health, linking the combination of high work demands with low job control and low social support to poor health and greater stress. 14 Although these ideas continue to be important, dramatic changes in the day-to-day organization of work, workforce demographics, and the relationship between labor and capital occurring in recent decades are less well accommodated by the original model.

Technological advances, global competition, and employers’ strategic responses to pressures from financial markets have radically transformed the nature of work in many organizations. For example, new technologies present employers with increased capacities to monitor and “control” the pace of work, simultaneously creating less discretion for workers in decision making. With the dominance of shareholder-centric business models and the declining power of unions in recent decades, employers have achieved greater flexibility and reduced labor costs through organizational restructuring, downsizing, outsourcing, and a shift to “nonstandard” employment contracts (i.e., temporary, contingent, and gig work). 15–17 These changes have eroded the more stable working conditions of the mid-20th century. Furthermore, many workplaces are increasingly diversified according to race, gender, ethnicity, and age. 5 In light of these changes, updating and renewing existing models of work and health is essential.

Three key dimensions of the job strain model—job demands, control, and social support—remain highly relevant to worker well-being. By considering these dimensions in light of current workplace conditions, we develop a more refined understanding of ways in which demands, control, and support influence worker well-being today. For instance, the job strain model defines control in terms of having the freedom to decide how to perform and organize tasks. However, less emphasized is where and when people work. With technology and other changes in the nature of work, where people work (home or workplace) and when have become more variable, and therefore new areas related to control must be addressed.

In addition, this model focuses primarily on psychosocial conditions in the workplace. It does not address other key features of the work environment that also significantly affect worker well-being (e.g., physical hazards, wages and benefits) or the ways in which the organization affects systems outside of the workplace (e.g., community or environment). Thus, efforts to understand the effects of work conditions on worker well-being must look beyond even an updated job strain model.

Here we present a work design for health framework and highlight evidence-based work redesign strategies focused on organizational and group-level changes to improve worker well-being. Although highly valuable, we did not consider individual- or leader-level interventions because they are less clearly focused on primary prevention and changing workplace conditions. Our framework is informed by key findings from a systematic review of experimental research on work redesign for worker well-being 8 and by a review of relevant nonexperimental research.

UPDATING THE JOB STRAIN MODEL

Figure 1 provides an overview of the original job strain model, our proposed updates to each of its three dimensions (i.e., the work design for health model), and examples of evidence-based workplace redesign strategies that effectively target expanded aspects of the framework.

Work Design for Health: Updating the Classical Occupational Health Model

Source. Authors’ update and expansion of the classical occupational health model.

Job Control: Expanding to New Forms

The level of discretion workers exercise over daily work tasks (i.e., job control) is a powerful lever for enhancing health and well-being. 14 The job strain model defines job control as the level of autonomy workers have over how they do their work, including autonomy in task-related decisions (“decision authority”) and opportunities to use a wide range of job skills (“skill utilization”). Schedule control, or autonomy over when and where work happens, is also important. One aspect of schedule control is schedule flexibility, or the extent to which workers can vary their working time (e.g., start and end times, time off) and work location (i.e., office or home) to manage the work–life balance more effectively. Recent surveys document unmet needs for schedule flexibility among workers, with the strongest needs among single mothers and those with primary caregiving responsibilities. 15 Stress associated with managing the needs of both work and family has well-documented health consequences, including hypertension, sleep difficulties, and other health problems. 18

A second aspect of schedule control is schedule predictability. Particularly relevant for low-wage workers, predictability provides stable schedules (i.e., quantity or timing of hours worked), making it possible to coordinate the demands of work with life outside of work and to have a more predictable income. Employers in service industries are increasingly using scheduling software to make “just-in-time” adjustments to workers’ shifts, with hours cut or extended at a moment’s notice. These practices purportedly save labor costs but can harm workers, as they are associated with adverse mental and physical health and poor family functioning. 16

Worker voice is another important element of job control. Worker voice goes beyond task autonomy and captures the broader ability of employees to influence their work conditions. Alternative channels for worker voice are needed given the relatively weak nature of US federal labor policies and the fact that union membership has shrunk by about half since the 1980s, to 11% of US workers. 19 In a recent national survey, nearly 50% of nonunion workers reported that they would vote for a union, suggesting a sizable gap between workers’ desired and actual voice in US workplaces today. 20

Job Demands: Expanding to Reflect Intensification

Significant and broad-based intensification of work has occurred since the 1970s. Individuals are working faster and harder and are more likely to say they have “too much work to do everything well.” 15(p157) Whereas the original job strain theory characterized demands according to how fast work needs to be done and how difficult it is, 14 intensification of work is accompanied by a proliferation of new kinds of demands.

First, some employees are working longer hours than ever before, primarily driven by expanding workloads. The upswing in “overwork” among some workers largely results from downsizing and lean staffing trends among white-collar professionals; 21 however, because of employers’ increased use of mandatory overtime, some blue-collar and low-wage service workers are working longer as well. 22 Long work hours are associated with an increased risk of poor outcomes, including cardiovascular disease and heightened work–family conflicts. 18 , 23

Second, low-wage blue-collar and service workers are experiencing intensified time pressure as a result of the enhanced surveillance made possible by new technologies. For example, technology for tracking productivity increases the pressure to work quickly by gathering information on individuals’ performance in real time. 24

Third, work demands have become increasingly unbounded by time and place. New communication technologies permit constant connectivity, and, combined with lean staffing trends, employers often expect white-collar workers to be available for work anywhere at any time. 21 For lower-wage workers, just-in-time scheduling creates a similar unbounded effect, with unpredictable schedules and increased pressure to be available at any time. 16 If work redesign efforts are to be effective, they must tame excessive work demands and increase worker autonomy and support.

Social Support: Expanding to Social Relations

Social networks and the resources that flow from them are essential to health and well-being; 25 however, workplace relationships are less commonly seen as sources of support. Relationships between managers and employees, among employees acting in teams, and between employees and clients affect health and well-being independently and can buffer stressful conditions. 25 , 26 Social support was incorporated as a key component in the job strain model, with research demonstrating improved well-being among workers receiving managers’ and coworkers’ support. 14 However, given the growing number of workers who are also primary caregivers, the updated framework identifies new types of social resources needed to support employees’ personal or family life more broadly. 26 , 27

Beyond social support, informational, financial, and skill-related resources also flow through networks. 25 A recent study suggests that quality of interpersonal collaboration affects employee engagement more strongly than employee sense of purpose. 28 Moreover, because of the growth of the health care and service sectors, an increasing proportion of jobs require substantial interdependence among workers and between workers and their patients or customers. For example, health care workers’ strong focus on patient care and teamwork can be rewarding but can also provide more opportunities for negative interactions. 29 As workforces become increasingly diverse, more opportunities for subtle bias arise, and diversity requires deliberate work to build close and productive teams. Thus, in our updated framework, we move beyond an emphasis on individual-level social support to emphasize a relational focus for group-level task coordination.

PROMISING WORK REDESIGN STRATEGIES

Following our model refinements and drawing on the strongest evidence available, we have identified promising organizational change strategies to improve worker health.

Enhancing Job Control

Training and tools to facilitate increased schedule control.

With growth in the service sector and technology pushes for around-the-clock availability, workers need more control over schedules and location. Several rigorous studies have shown that this approach improves worker health.

For example, the Work, Family and Health Network conducted randomized controlled trials in two industries, an information technology division of a US Fortune 500 firm and a long-term care industry. The intervention aimed to increase employees’ control over when they did their work and, in the information technology division, where work was done. Information technology workers in treatment groups reported better outcomes 18 months postrandomization, not only with regard to lower turnover but also across a number of health-related factors, including reductions in cardiometabolic risk. 21 , 27 , 30 In the long-term care setting, the intervention improved cardiometabolic risk and organizational engagement; however, results across other outcomes were more mixed, perhaps because there was less latitude to alter scheduling within a highly structured setting. 31 Taken together, these findings highlight the promise of increasing schedule flexibility but also point to the importance of tailoring interventions to occupational contexts.

Two other high-quality studies evaluating schedule interventions in lower-income workforces revealed positive effects. 32 , 33 For instance, Garde et al. found that a self-rostering system in which employees chose their own work schedule within certain parameters led to decreased distress. Several studies have shown promising effects of interventions aiming to increase schedule predictability. For example, a randomized controlled trial in Gap stores evaluated changes in multiple aspects of scheduling. 34 , 35 Among other practices, the treatment included increasing the consistency of associates’ shifts and offering part-time employees a soft guarantee of 20 or more hours a week. Treatment group employees had more schedule stability and better sleep quality, and parents and second job-holders reported decreased stress. Notably, the new practices were good for business, resulting in better retention of experienced employees, a 7% boost in median sales, and a 5% increase in labor productivity.

Worker participation and union involvement in work redesign

Increasing worker voice is another promising strategy for improving worker well-being. Several studies have evaluated participatory approaches in which employees engage in a facilitated process of problem identification and implementation of workplace changes. Both experimental and observational research demonstrates that structured interventions incorporating a participatory process are particularly effective. 8 For example, some organizations are implementing “unit-based teams,” in which union representatives and management jointly lead workers through a participatory change process designed to identify and test solutions to workplace problems in which all parties have a common interest. Preliminary evidence is promising, showing that team members are more likely than nonmembers to feel that they can influence their work environments. 36

Taming Job Demands

Adding targeted staffing and other resources.

Work demands have intensified in part as a result of lean staffing. Although employers may be reluctant to increase staffing for fear of compromising profit margins, emerging evidence suggests that strategically growing staff could be good for both business and worker well-being. Operations scholar Ton 37 has found that slack staffing (i.e., staffing with enough labor hours to meet demand at peak times), along with other operational strategies that fully engage workers, boosts profits and worker morale. The Gap study provides compelling experimental evidence for positive effects; a key intervention component was adding staff in a targeted manner. This change contributed to increased sales and labor productivity and outweighed added labor costs, producing a positive return on investment. 34 , 35

Adding workplace resources strategically can also ease work demands and improve well-being. Several rigorous interventions in health care settings have alleviated staff demands by improving training and support for new hires, increasing primary care visit times, and adding support staff and a new prescription telephone line to free up nurses’ time. At follow-up, clinicians in intervention groups showed reductions in psychosocial and physical demands, improvements in mental health, and reductions in intention to leave. 38 , 39

Streamlining work to reduce demands

Making work processes more efficient can reduce workloads and may improve worker well-being. The health care interventions just described 38 , 39 included strategies to remove bottlenecks to patient care, such as standardizing certain clinical processes so that nurses could act independently of doctors. A study of Danish postal workers showed that Kaizen—a continuous improvement strategy that focuses on reducing unnecessary tasks in work processes—predicted higher job satisfaction and better mental health when it was used in promoting productivity and worker well-being. 40 However, when employing “lean management” practices, it is critical to orient toward worker well-being as a goal and to build in time for healthy socializing and some staffing slack to adjust to seasonal or other variations in work demands; otherwise, these practices can easily increase work pressure and reduce well-being. 41

Enhancing Workplace Social Relations

Supervisor support for family and personal life.

Several intervention studies that enhanced manager support for employees’ family life showed promising effects on worker well-being. 27 , 30 , 31 For example, a study with supermarket workers revealed that family-supportive supervisor behaviors predicted improved job satisfaction and physical health among employees with high levels of work–family conflict. In the intervention, employees and managers discussed work–family concerns and managers were encouraged to develop new, more explicitly supportive habits. 42

Training and support for effective teamwork

The growth of highly interdependent jobs in the 21st century has spawned work environments where employees must frequently interact with clients or patients and coordinate with each other. Experimental evaluations of initiatives designed to improve relational and team dynamics are generally promising. The ARC (Availability, Responsiveness, and Continuity) intervention improves teamwork and communication by fostering collaboration within and across related social service organizations, thereby developing trust and support. Teams work together to identify and implement processes that will improve organizational climate, reduce turnover rates, and improve the quality of client services. In randomized controlled trials conducted in two different settings, Glisson et al. 43 , 44 found that the study intervention led to improvements in numerous factors related to well-being and productivity, including employee morale, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment, as well as reductions in employee turnover, emotional exhaustion, and role overload.

A quasi-experimental study of health care workers revealed that various strategies designed to build teamwork and enhance communication improved employee mental health. Tactics included establishing overlapping nursing schedules to improve communication about patient conditions, revising information and messaging systems to address communication gaps between management and nurses, and instituting team meetings to discuss problems and solutions to relational issues. 39 Another line of work has identified “relational coordination” as a promising approach to improving teamwork dynamics through facilitated interventions aimed at fostering high-quality communication, shared goals, and mutual respect. 29 Although experimental work is warranted, numerous observational studies have linked training for teamwork, creating shared accountability, and coordinating information systems with multiple positive performance and well-being outcomes. 29

REFLECTIONS

As vividly demonstrated by the COVID-19 pandemic, work conditions can have a significant impact on health. It is time for a more creative and courageous approach to improving workers’ health and well-being, one that aspires not only to mitigating misery but also to fostering positive mental health. As noted by Schulte et al. 9 and outlined in the Total Worker Health approach even before the pandemic, maintaining worker well-being and paying attention to the mental and physical health consequences of work environments must be a priority, both for public policy and for employers. Work redesign points to the possibility of moving upstream to address conditions of work that contribute to ill health and foster health inequities.

Workplace intervention studies consistently demonstrate that the current organization of work is malleable and real improvements are feasible. Documented benefits of redesigning work with regard to control, job demands, and social relationships are substantial, including reduced cardiometabolic risks, improved mental health and job satisfaction, and productivity-related benefits such as reduced employee turnover. 8 That said, a key limitation of this growing field is that redesign research has tended to focus on certain industries (e.g., health care, social services) and groups of workers (e.g., higher wage, white collar); there is less research on small businesses, although emerging observational evidence suggests that useful approaches can be applied. 45 , 46

Although the model should be broadly relevant, additional research is needed to be confident in stating which redesigns will be most effective for workers from different income groups or occupational contexts. Moreover, research on improving the health of individuals whose workplaces are less “fixed,” such as temporary or gig workers, is missing altogether, a significant gap given the growth of this workforce. Accordingly, NIOSH Total Worker Health now recognizes nonstandard work arrangements as a priority area for future research. 47 Furthermore, contingent workforces may require public policies that more fully incorporate them into companies as employees if redesign strategies are to gain traction.

Despite some limitations, the evidence base is sufficient to motivate action. Employers can do more than pay for new wellness programs with questionable impact. Executives and managers can look carefully at how their organizational processes and practices affect the health and well-being of workers and their families. Work redesign may be less expensive, in terms of upfront costs to a firm, than wellness initiatives. These costs usually involve a vendor and financial incentives paid to participating employees; spending on wellness programs now averages more than $700 per employee. 48 By contrast, existing staff can and do operate redesign initiatives with little or no costs incurred from vendor support. Even with outside consultants and all labor time included, one extensive redesign initiative cost $340 per employee. 49

However, a redesign approach requires openness to scrutinizing current practices and day-to-day operations. Effective initiatives require managers’ willingness to foster participation from the bottom up, in a collective process of constructive change. Although the prospect of work redesign may seem daunting, employers should weigh its promise against the often unrecognized costs of business as usual. Such costs include reduced productivity, higher absenteeism and turnover, and higher health care expenses from stress-induced erosion of employee health.

Motivating employers to do what is right for the health and well-being of their workers will require support from federal and state governments. In one recent article, it was concluded that the United States has limited awareness of the detrimental health effects of job strain and few coordinated governmental actions to reduce it. 50 By contrast, over recent decades EU governments have initiated various effective actions, some of which could be easily adopted by US public agencies (e.g., NIOSH, state health departments), to help organizations reduce workplace stressors and create nonbinding standards for managing psychosocial workplace risks. 50 Although NIOSH has a leadership role to play in this effort, effective implementation requires public–private partnerships between federal regulatory agencies (Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Office of Management and Budget, US Department of Health and Human Services) and businesses, unions, and other voluntary organizations to develop incentives for sustaining these changes. The private sector has also begun to recognize these issues through such declarations as the Business Roundtable statement on investing in employees and communities. 51

We will need to develop clear, publicly available tools (e.g., business case studies, toolkits, briefs) that target communications to a broad spectrum of stakeholders, including business leaders, unions, and worker advocacy groups. For the most enduring effects on worker health, voluntary work redesign initiatives must be complemented by updated labor regulations that ensure healthy workplace protections for all, such as paid family and medical leave and “fair work week laws” granting workers greater scheduling control in jobs with unpredictable hours.

CONCLUSIONS

Decades of research have documented persuasively that work is a critical social determinant of health. Now evidence is mounting that work redesign adapted for the 21st century is an important lever to improve worker well-being and health equity in this country. Leveraging an updated model—Work Design for Health—we propose a range of concrete strategies that can significantly enhance worker well-being. The need for action is ever more imperative. Although more research is needed to confirm the value of these strategies, in the meantime we can build networks of experts, labor advocates, and employers to facilitate shared learning and look to other countries and “high road” employers for effective models. In these ways, we can begin to prioritize the most promising approaches to redesigning work for well-being.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The work on this article was supported by pioneer grant 74575 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

We thank Kimberly E. Fox of Bridgewater State University for her contributions to the aforementioned grant, including the systematic review of experimental research on work redesign for worker well-being on which this paper is partially based. We also thank Nicole Goguen of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies for developing the graphic in Figure 1 .

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report.

HUMAN PARTICIPANT PROTECTION

No protocol approval was needed for this research because no human participants were involved.

See also Hammer, p. 1784 .

Getting organizational redesign right

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.” If W. E. Hickson, the British author known for popularizing that familiar proverb in the mid-19th century, were alive today, he might easily be applying it (disparagingly) to the efforts of modern corporations to redesign their organizations.

Recent McKinsey research surveying a large set of global executives suggests that many companies, these days, are in a nearly permanent state of organizational flux. Almost 60 percent of the respondents, for example, told us they had experienced a redesign within the past two years, and an additional 25 percent said they experienced a redesign three or more years ago. A generation or two back, most executives might have experienced some sort of organizational upheaval just a few times over the course of their careers.

One plausible explanation for this new flurry of activity is the accelerating pace of strategic change driven by the disruption of industries. As a result, every time a company switches direction, it alters the organization to deliver the hoped-for results. Rather than small, incremental tweaks of the kind that might have been appropriate in the past, today’s organizations often need regular shake-ups of the Big Bang variety.

Frustratingly, it also appears that the frequency of organizational redesign reflects a high level of disappointment with the outcome. According to McKinsey’s research, less than a quarter of organizational-redesign efforts succeed. Forty-four percent run out of steam after getting under way, while a third fail to meet objectives or improve performance after implementation.

The good news is that companies can do better—much better. In this article, we’ll describe what we learned when we compared successful and unsuccessful organizational redesigns and explain some rules of the road for executives seeking to improve the odds. Success doesn’t just mean avoiding the expense, wasted time, and morale-sapping skepticism that invariably accompany botched attempts; in our experience, a well-executed redesign pays off quickly in the form of better-motivated employees, greater decisiveness, and a stronger bottom line.

Why redesign the organization?

Organizational redesign involves the integration of structure, processes, and people to support the implementation of strategy and therefore goes beyond the traditional tinkering with “lines and boxes.” Today, it comprises the processes that people follow, the management of individual performance, the recruitment of talent, and the development of employees’ skills. When the organizational redesign of a company matches its strategic intentions, everyone will be primed to execute and deliver them. The company’s structure, processes, and people will all support the most important outcomes and channel the organization’s efforts into achieving them.

When do executives know that an organization isn’t working well and that they need to consider a redesign? Sometimes the answer is obvious: say, after the announcement of a big new regional-growth initiative or following a merger. Other signs may be less visible—for example, a sense that ideas agreed upon at or near the top of the organization aren’t being translated quickly into actions or that executives spend too much time in meetings. These signs suggest that employees might be unclear about their day-to-day work priorities or that decisions are not being implemented. A successful organizational redesign should better focus the resources of a company on its strategic priorities and other growth areas, reduce costs, and improve decision making and accountability.

The case of a consumer-packaged-goods (CPG) company that chose to expand outside its US home base illustrates one typical motivation for a redesign. Under the group’s previous organizational structure, the ostensibly global brand team responsible for marketing was not only located in the United States but had also been rewarded largely on the performance of US operations; it had no systems for monitoring the performance of products elsewhere. To support a new global strategy and to develop truly international brands and products, the company separated US marketing from its global counterpart and put in place a new structure (including changes to the top team), new processes, new systems, and a new approach to performance management. This intensive redesign helped promote international growth, especially in key emerging markets such as Russia (where sales tripled) and China (where they have nearly doubled).

Avoiding the pitfalls

That CPG company got it right—but many others don’t, and the consequences can be profoundly damaging. Leaders who fail to deliver the benefits they promise not only waste precious time but also encourage employees to dismiss or even undermine the redesign effort, because those employees sense that it will run out of steam and be replaced by a new one, with different aims, two to three years down the line.

We believe that companies can learn from the way successful redesigners overcome challenges. By combining the results of our research and the insights we’ve gained from working with multiple companies on these issues, we’ve identified nine golden rules. They cover everything from early alignment, redesign choices, and reporting structures to performance metrics, the nature of effective leadership, and the management of risks.

Individually, each of the rules is helpful. Our research shows, though, that 73 percent of the executives whose companies followed more than six of them felt that the organizational redesign had succeeded. Executives at these companies were six times more likely to “declare victory” than those at companies that adopted just one or two.

Following all nine rules in a structured approach yielded an even higher success rate: 86 percent (exhibit).

The rules, it’s important to make clear, are not self-evident. We tested more than 20 common approaches and found that upward of half of them weren’t correlated with success. We expected, for example, that benchmarking other companies and trying to adopt some of their structural choices might be an important ingredient of successful redesigns—but there is no evidence from the research that it is. Our rules, incidentally, are broadly relevant for different industries, regions, and company sizes. They also hold true for redesigns prompted by different types of organizational change, including end-to-end restructurings, postmerger integration, or more focused efforts (such as cost cutting or improvements in governance).

1. Focus first on the longer-term strategic aspirations

Leaders often spend too much time on the current deficiencies of an organization. It’s easy, of course, to get fixated on what’s wrong today and to be swayed by the vocal (and seemingly urgent) complaints of frustrated teams and their leaders. However, redesigns that merely address the immediate pain points often end up creating a new set of problems. Companies should therefore be clear, at the outset, about what the redesign is intended to achieve and ensure that this aspiration is inextricably linked to strategy. One retail company we know, strongly committed to creating a simple customer experience, stated that its chosen redesign option should provide “market segment–focused managerial roles with clear accountability” for driving growth. The specificity of that strategic test proved much more helpful than simply declaring a wish to “become customer-centric.”

2. Take time to survey the scene

Sixty percent of the executives in our survey told us they didn’t spend sufficient time assessing the state of the organization ahead of the redesign. Managers can too easily assume that the current state of affairs is clear and that they know how all employees fit into the organizational chart. The truth is that the data managers use are often inaccurate or out of date. A high-profile international bank, for example, publicly announced it was aiming to eliminate thousands of staff positions through an extensive organizational redesign. However, after starting the process, it discovered to its embarrassment that its earlier information was inaccurate. Tens of thousands of positions, already referenced in the press release, had been inaccurately catalogued, and in many cases employees had already left. This new organizational reality radically changed the scope and numbers targeted in the redesign effort.

Knowing the numbers is just part of the story. Leaders must also take time to understand where the lines and boxes are currently drawn, as well as the precise nature of talent and other processes. That helps unearth the root causes of current pain points, thereby mitigating the risk of having to revisit them through a second redesign a couple of years down the road. By comparing this baseline, or starting point, with the company’s strategic aspirations, executives will quickly develop a nuanced understanding of the current organization’s weaknesses and of the strengths they should build on.

3. Be structured about selecting the right blueprint

Many companies base their preference for a new structure on untested hypotheses or intuitions. Intuitive decision making can be fine in some situations but involves little pattern recognition, and there is too much at stake to rely on intuition in organizational redesign. Almost four out of five survey respondents who owned up to basing decisions on “gut feel” acknowledged that their chosen blueprint was unsuccessful. In our experience, companies make better choices when they carefully weigh the redesign criteria, challenge biases, and minimize the influence of political agendas.

Interestingly, Fortune magazine found that its Most Admired Companies had little in common when it came to aspects of their organizational design, beyond a flexible operating model. 1 1. Mina Kimes, “What admired firms don’t have in common,” Fortune , March 6, 2009, archive.fortune.com. This finding is consistent with our experience that off-the-shelf solutions aren’t likely to work. The unique mix of strategy, people, and other assets within a company generally requires an individual answer to things like role definition, decision-making governance, and incentives, albeit one based on a primary dimension of function, geography, or customer segment. The key is to get the right set of leaders reviewing options with an open mind in the light of redesign criteria established by the strategic aspiration.

Take a large public pension system we know. Its leaders convinced themselves that a new organization must be set up along product lines. Challenged to reconsider their approach, they ultimately arrived at a functional model—built around health, pensions, and investment—that has served the system well over the past five years and underpinned significant cost savings and the launch of innovative new products.

4. Go beyond lines and boxes

A company’s reporting structure is one of the most obvious and controllable aspects of its organization. Many leaders tend to ignore the other structure, process, and people elements that are part of a complete redesign, thereby rearranging the deck chairs but failing to see that the good ship Titanic may still be sinking.

Companies such as Apple and Pixar are well known for going far beyond lines and boxes, taking into account questions such as where employees gather in communal spaces and how the organizational context shapes behavior. One small but fast-growing enterprise-software player we know made some minor changes to senior roles and reporting as part of a recent organizational redesign. But the biggest impact came from changing the performance-management system so that the CEO could see which parts of the company were embracing change and which were doing business as usual.

Surveyed companies that used a more complete set of levers to design their organizations were three times more likely to be successful in their efforts than those that only used a few. The strongest correlation was between successful redesigners and companies that targeted at least two structural-, two process-, and two people-related redesign elements.

5. Be rigorous about drafting in talent

One of the most common—and commonly ignored—rules of organizational redesign is to focus on roles first, then on people. This is easier said than done. The temptation is to work the other way around, selecting the seemingly obvious candidates for key positions before those positions are fully defined.

Competition for talent ratchets up anxiety and risk, creating a domino effect, with groups poaching from one another to fill newly created gaps. This is disruptive and distracting. A talent draft that gives all units access to the same people enables companies to fill each level of the new organizational structure in an orderly and transparent way, so that the most capable talent ends up in the most pivotal roles. This approach promotes both the perception and the reality of fairness.

Powerful technology-enabled solutions allow companies to engage hundreds of employees in the redesign effort in real time, while identifying the cost and other implications of possible changes. One web-based tool we’ve seen in action—full disclosure: it’s a McKinsey application called OrgLab —helps leaders to create and populate new organizational structures while tracking the results by cost, spans, and layers. Such tools expand the number of people involved in placing talent, accelerate the pace, and increase the level of rigor and discipline.

6. Identify the necessary mind-set shifts—and change those mind-sets

Leaders of organizational-redesign efforts too often see themselves as engineers and see people as cogs to be moved around the organizational machine. Organizations, however, are collections of human beings, with beliefs, emotions, hopes, and fears. Ignoring predictable, and sometimes irrational, reactions is certain to undermine an initiative in the long run. The first step is to identify negative mind-sets and seek to change the way people think about how the organization works. Actions at this stage will likely include communicating a compelling reason for change, role modeling the new mind-sets, putting in place mechanisms that reinforce the case for change and maintain momentum, and building new employee skills and capabilities.

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One company in the payments industry—beset by changing consumer habits, technology-led business models, and regulatory pressure—understood the importance of shifting mind-sets as part of its recent redesign. The group’s sales team traditionally worked well with large retailers and banks. But looking ahead, the company knew it would be important to establish a new set of relationships with high-tech hardware and software players. Simply appointing a new boss, changing role descriptions, and drawing up a revised process map wasn’t enough. The company therefore embarked on a program that consciously sought to shift the thinking of its sales experts from “we create value for our customers” to “we create value with our partners.”

7. Establish metrics that measure short- and long-term success

Nobody would drive a car without a functioning speedometer, yet a surprising number of companies roll out an organizational redesign without any new (or at least specially tailored) performance metrics. Some older ones might be relevant, but usually not the whole set. New metrics, typically focusing on how a changed organization is contributing to performance over the short and long term, are best framed at the aspiration-setting stage. Simple, clear key performance indicators (KPIs) are the way forward.

During the redesign effort of one high-tech manufacturer, it set up a war room where it displayed leading indicators such as orders received, orders shipped, supply-chain performance, and customer complaints. This approach helped the company both to measure the short-term impact of the changes and to spot early warning signs of disruption.

One utility business decided that the key metric for its efficiency-driven redesign was the cost of management labor as a proportion of total expenditures on labor. Early on, the company realized that the root cause of its slow decision-making culture and high cost structure had been the combination of excessive management layers and small spans of control. Reviewing the measurement across business units and at the enterprise level became a key agenda item at monthly leadership meetings.

A leading materials manufacturer introduced a new design built around functional groups, such as R&D, manufacturing, and sales, but was rightly anxious to retain a strong focus on products and product P&Ls. To track performance and avoid siloed thinking, the company’s KPIs focused on pricing, incremental innovation, and resource allocation.

8. Make sure business leaders communicate

Any organizational redesign will have a deep and personal impact on employees—it’s likely, after all, to change whom they report to, whom they work with, how work gets done, and even where they work. Impersonal, mass communication about these issues from the corporate center or a program-management office will be far less reassuring than direct and personal messages from the leaders of the business, cascaded through the organization. An interactive cascade (one that allows two-way communication) gives people an opportunity to ask questions and forces top leaders to explain the rationale for change and to spell out the impact of the new design in their own words, highlighting the things that really matter. This can take time and requires planning at an early stage, as well as effort and preparation to make the messages compelling and convincing. When a top team has been talking about a change for weeks or months, it’s all too easy to forget that lower-ranking employees remain in the dark.

One financial-services company encouraged employee buy-in for an organizational redesign by staging a town-hall meeting that was broadcast in real time to all regional offices and featured all its new leaders on a single stage. The virtual gathering gave them an opportunity to demonstrate the extent of their commitment and allowed the CEO to tell her personal story. She shared the moment when she realized that the organization needed a new design and the changes she herself was making to ensure that it was successful. All employees affected by the changes could simultaneously talk to their former managers, their new managers, and the relevant HR representatives.

9. Manage the transitional risks

In the rush to implement a new organizational design, many leaders fall into the trap of going live without a plan to manage the risks. Every organizational redesign carries risks such as interruptions to business continuity, employee defections, a lack of personal engagement, and poor implementation. Companies can mitigate the damage by identifying important risks early on and monitoring them well after the redesign goes live. The CPG company mentioned earlier, for example, realized that rolling out its reorganization of sales and marketing ahead of the holiday season might unsettle some of those involved. By waiting, it made the transition with no impact on revenues.

Tracking operational, financial, and commercial metrics during a design transition is helpful, as are “pulse checks” on employee reactions in critical parts of the company. Clear leadership account-ability for developing and executing risk-mitigation plans is so important that this should be built into regular appraisals of managers.

In our experience the most successful organizations combine stable design elements with dynamic elements that change in response to evolving markets and new strategic directions. Corporate redesigns give organizations a rare opportunity to identify the stable backbone and set up those elements ripe for dynamic change. Successful leaders and successful companies take advantage of such changes to “rebuild the future”—but a landscape littered with failed efforts is a sobering reminder of what’s at stake. Following the nine simple rules described in this article will increase the odds of a happy outcome.

Steven Aronowitz is an associate principal in McKinsey’s San Francisco office, Aaron De Smet is a principal in the Houston office, and Deirdre McGinty is an associate principal in the Philadelphia office.

The authors wish to thank McKinsey’s Wouter Aghina, Lili Duan, Monica Murarka, and Kirsten Weerda for their contributions to this article.

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Job Redesign: A Fundamental Element of the Organizational Change

What is the purpose of job redesign.

Job redesign tailors employee positions to an organization’s current functions and needs.  During times of change, job redesign ensures that organizational needs are filled by proficient employees.  Job redesign can involve something as simple as adding a single job function, or it can be as complex as completely overhauling the position.

Job redesign can also involve the addition of new tasks to provide employees with variety and challenges.  This can contribute to increased employee satisfaction in workplace experience.   The process can also be purposed to holistically balance the tasks and abilities of a group of employees.

What are the advantages of job redesign?

• Creates the best match between an employee’s abilities/experience and a position
• Establishes lean organizational efficiency
• Increases employee productivity and workplace satisfaction
• Increases employee retention

When are jobs redesigned?

Workforce optimization job redesign.

Job redesign is an important part of optimizing an organization’s workforce , especially if:

• There has been a major shift in an organization’s use of technology.
• Employees are being transferred from one department to another.
• Employees are taking on additional job functions after organizational or departmental right-sizing.

In situations like those described above, the following process is most effective:

• Competency mapping of current employee functions
• Functional analysis of new employee functions
• Gap analysis of current and new employee functions
• Reassign job functions elsewhere, as necessary
• Identification of custom training to bridge the employee’s transition

Succession Planning Job Redesign

Some organization may find that a retiring employee’s job functions have become too diverse to fill with standard succession planning practices.  This is especially pertinent when a retiring senior employee has been with the organization for many years. In a case like this, the following process is ideal:

• Competency mapping of retiring employee functions
• Determine logical groupings of employee functions and whether these groupings warrant the organization of new positions
• Functional analysis of successors’ current employee functions
• Gap analysis of skills required by new positions and potential successor’s current employee functions
• Selection of successors best equipped to take on new job functions
• Identification of custom training to bridge the successors’ transitions into new job functions

• What is Succession Planning Anyway?
• 4 Reasons Why Your Staff Training May Not Work
• A Seven Step Succession Planning Template

How To Conduct A UX Redesign

No matter what context you work in as a UX designer, at one point or another, you’ll probably be asked to redesign a user experience. At the start of your UX career, you might even conduct an unsolicited redesign to help build up your portfolio.

Either way, you might find yourself redesigning a website, an app, or the interface of a device. No matter what you’re redesigning, though, your process should follow a similar series of steps and encompass a similar set of questions and concerns.

In this article, we’ll cover the following topics:

• Redesigns from refresh to complete overhaul
• Reasons to conduct a redesign
• Steps for conducting a UX redesign
• Showcasing redesigns in your UX portfolio
• Key takeaways

Let’s jump in!

1. Redesigns from refresh to complete overhaul

UX redesigns can have vastly different degrees of complexity. On the one hand, the product may simply require a visual refresh to make it seem more modern and visually interesting. If this is the case and no noteworthy user experience changes are needed, the UX designer’s job may be to simply review the art director’s work and ensure nothing about the user experience is broken by the aesthetic overhaul.

You might also be tasked with redesigning the user experience for a specific part of a product’s user interface . For example, perhaps the users of a specific website are having trouble navigating through a shopping cart or finding information on shipping and handling. If that’s the case, the UX designer’s job is not only to redesign that piece of the user experience; it’s also to make sure the redesigned interface fits in seamlessly with the original interface and doesn’t break any links or other functionality on the product.

So if you’re redesigning the way a user books a table on a restaurant’s website, for instance, you need to make sure users can successfully navigate to your redesigned reservation system and that they can navigate away to a different part of the website once they’ve completed their booking.

Finally, a product might require a complete overhaul. That means the UX designer will be responsible for understanding every single piece of information that must go into the redesign and how that information fits together. Then the UX designer must determine how to improve upon the prior design while avoiding changes that are so radical that they confuse and frustrate the product’s existing users. It’s a tough balancing act that requires attention to detail and a deep understanding of users’ goals.

2. Reasons to conduct a redesign

The very first question a UX designer should ask clients or stakeholders about a redesign is why they want to conduct it. There are many legitimate reasons to conduct a redesign, according to the Nielsen Norman Group . These include:

• The site looks outdated
• New branding needs to be implemented
• Technological advances have made the site seem antiquated
• The site isn’t optimized for mobile or social media
• The information architecture of the site is a mess and many links are broken
• The user experience is confusing and there is no unified structure
• Analytics show users have trouble doing what they need and don’t stick around

While the first two reasons on the list may simply require a visual refresh, the others involve important UX changes.

You may be tasked with conducting a redesign following a UX audit . However, sometimes a client or stakeholder will request a complete UX redesign simply because they look at their product’s user interface all day and are bored. This can lead a client to focus on the things they don’t like about their product’s user experience. On the other hand, users probably feel differently. Users are creatures of habit. And since they’re spending far less time with a product’s user interface than the client, they’ll typically see the familiarity of the UI as a positive.

Consider this: If Amazon.com completely overhauled its website in order to make the website seem more innovative or interesting, but in the process changed how to find items, how to add them to your shopping cart, and how to check-out, what would be your response? If you’re like most people, you’d be frustrated. You already know how to complete tasks successfully on Amazon. Anything outside of an incremental change will make that more challenging and time-consuming. No matter how cool the newly implemented changes may seem, most users won’t be impressed. Their goal when they go to your website, app, or other UI is to complete their task and meet their goals in as little time as possible.

So if a client or stakeholder wants to completely rehaul a product’s user experience but they don’t have a good reason for doing so, you as the UX designer must make sure to advocate for the product’s users. This could mean discussing other options, like a visual refresh or small UX changes with your client.

One way or another, it’s essential to make sure any changes you make, even on a complete overhaul, are not made for the novelty of the changes. It can be tempting to be as creative as possible. However, you’re better off understanding what users are already familiar with from the product (based on their mental models ) and implementing changes that respect what your users like while mixing in some new but understandable evolutions.

Unsolicited redesigns

If you’re a fresh-faced UX designer just starting out, you might also conduct a hypothetical—or unsolicited—redesign. This is a great way to put your newly acquired design skills into practice, and also gives you a case study to add to your portfolio in the absence of a real client project.

An unsolicited redesign is, quite simply, a hypothetical project of your choice . Perhaps there’s a particular website you use regularly that you think could benefit from an overhaul, or a certain app that could be upgraded with a few simple tweaks. Just like a “real” client project, you’ll redesign the experience and document your process from start to finish in your portfolio—just like Priyanka Gupta does in her unsolicited redesign of the Sephora iOS app . Just remember to clearly state that you’re not affiliated with the company in any way, and that you haven’t actually been hired to conduct a redesign. Otherwise, the process is the same as for a real UX redesign. Let’s take a look at that now.

3. How to conduct a UX redesign: Step-by-step

1. understand existing users.

In an ideal world, all UX redesigns would start with user research and analytics. Analytics for an existing product will help you understand how users are currently using the product, and identify the biggest pain points they encounter based on how long they use the product and how many screens they visit. This also gives you hard data that will help you make specific recommendations for where to focus the efforts of your redesign.

Whether you have access to analytics or not, you should perform user research on the product you are redesigning. As Nielsen Norman’s Hoa Loranger explains, “Your old site is the best prototype for your new site.” Make sure you take advantage of that by learning from the existing product. Gather user feedback on what they dislike about it, while also making sure to ask about what users like about the current product. All of this information will help fuel your redesign.

2. Understand business goals

It’s essential to understand what the business wants to get out of the redesign. What do they know about their existing users that can help you conduct your redesign? The UX redesign solution should be specific to the business’ goals while keeping user needs in mind. If the business wants to make it easier to navigate to specific information, increase page views, or complete more sales, the user experience must be designed to support those goals by making it easier and more beneficial for users to do those things.

3. Competitive analysis

Another source of information for a redesign: analyze competitors’ products . Take a look at competitor’s UIs to see what they’re doing that’s different. What works? What doesn’t work? Are there innovative solutions that you can borrow that will better engage your users? Are there things they’re doing that you want to avoid?

In addition to researching users’ reactions to the product you’re redesigning, you can also perform a study to see how users respond to competitors’ products. Explore how users interact with the interface and navigate through the user experience, including what they find clear and easy to use and where their pain points are.

4. Redesign

After gathering data from the existing product and competitors and ensuring you understand the business goals for the project, you should be ready to start redesigning in earnest. You’ll often want to start with a site map of the redesigned information architecture. You’ll also want to make sure you understand the various ways users may work through the site to meet different goals by creating user workflows. Once you have a handle on these top level issues, you can start wireframing and creating prototypes for the redesign. Ideate on potential user experience options until you come up with a solution that works best for both the business and users.

5. User testing

Finally, test your redesign with users, preferably users of the previous iteration of the product. Get feedback on what they like about the new design and what may frustrate them. Keep in mind that any redesign is likely to ruffle some users’ feathers. But user testing will help determine if there are any real usability problems with the redesign. If there are, continue to iterate on the redesign until the user experience is working the way it should.

4. Showcasing redesigns in your UX portfolio

While it’s not essential, it is valuable to include at least one redesign project in your UX portfolio. To most successfully showcase a redesign, make sure you can explain why the redesign was done, what your solutions were to the challenges presented by the client, and why you decided to implement any noteworthy features. Showcase the redesign process in the order it was conducted—from studies on the previous and competitors’ sites, right through to user workflows and information architecture overhauls to page-level redesigns—in order to tell the story of the redesign. You don’t have to include everything, just enough to make sure the process you went through is clearly represented. Your goal should be to clearly communicate to someone looking at your portfolio how you improved on an existing product with your redesign and the journey you took to get there.

5. Key takeaways

Now you have a clear process to follow in order to conduct a UX redesign—be it a real client project, or an unsolicited redesign for your UX portfolio. To sum up:

• Redesigns can run the gamut from a visual refresh to a complete user experience overhaul.
• The most important question to ask before starting a redesign is why the client or stakeholder wants to conduct it.
• There are many reasons to conduct a UX redesign including a product that is no longer optimized for new technology, convoluted information architecture and a confusing user experience.
• The kind of redesign that is undertaken should be based on user needs, not boredom on the part of clients or stakeholders who work with the user interface regularly.
• A good UX redesign starts with studying the existing UI, as it is the best prototype for your new product.
• Make sure you understand your clients’ business goals and how they can be seamlessly integrated into the redesigned user experience.
• Research competitors’ products to see what works and doesn’t work about their UX.
• A UX redesign should consist of a variety of deliverables including user workflows, site maps of the information architecture, wireframes, and prototypes . Iterate on the new design and perform user testing until the user experience is working as it should.
• It’s ideal to include at least one redesign in your UX portfolio that tells the story of the challenges of the project.

Now that you know how to approach a UX redesign, you might want to learn more. If so, you’ll find the following articles useful:

• 9 Awesome UX Portfolios From UX Design Graduates
• What is a Wireframe? A Comprehensive Guide
• The 5 big differences between UX and UI design

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Starbucks Case Study Starbuck's Job Design

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Long Covid at Work: A Manager’s Guide

• Katie Bach,
• Ludmila N. Praslova,
• Beth Pollack

Nearly 18 million U.S. adults have long Covid, a multisystem illness that sometimes appears after a bout of Covid-19. Its wide range of symptoms vary from person to person, veer from mild to severe, and can wax and wane over time. There are no official treatments for long Covid; while some people see their symptoms resolve, others remain chronically ill. For those employees, the right workplace support can be transformative. Employers must not only help these individual employees but also build disability inclusion into their cultures and talent practices. A menu of accommodations along with individual job redesign efforts will help companies retain employees with long Covid and other chronic illnesses and enable them to contribute more than they could otherwise.

It’s time for organizations to be inclusive of employees with chronic illnesses. Here’s how.

Before the pandemic, Dara was a research engineer, thriving in a job that involved complex technical design and problem-solving. (Names in this article have been changed for privacy.) She was also an avid baker and a voracious reader. Then in March 2020, she got Covid-19. Even after the acute illness had passed, many symptoms remained: Dara struggled to sit up for more than half an hour, was too breathless and lightheaded to walk even short distances, and had severe brain fog that left her unable to hold a conversation or write an email. She used all of her paid and unpaid leave to rest and try to recover. Eventually she improved enough to return to work — but she knew her job needed to change.

• Katie Bach works with companies to improve job quality and employee experience. She has written extensively about the labor market impact of long Covid, including as a former nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and serves as board chair of PolyBio Research Foundation , which focuses on complex chronic conditions. Follow her on LinkedIn . kathrynsbach
• Ludmila N. Praslova , PhD, SHRM-SCP, uses her extensive experience with neurodiversity and global and cultural inclusion to help create talent-rich workplaces. The author of The Canary Code , she is a professor of graduate industrial-organizational psychology and the accreditation liaison officer at Vanguard University of Southern California. Follow Ludmila on LinkedIn .
• Beth Pollack is a research scientist at MIT . She studies long Covid and associated illnesses and leads research on their overlaps and shared pathophysiology in MIT’s Tal Research Group. Beth is the chair of the ME/CFS Less Studied Pathologies Subgroup and a member of the ME/CFS Research Roadmap Working Group at the National Institutes of Health, working to create a national plan to advance research on the illness toward clinical trials. Currently collaborating on three clinical studies on long Covid and associated chronic illnesses, she is a member of the Patient-Led Research Collaborative and a former senior researcher at Harvard University. Follow Beth on LinkedIn .

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Practice of law: case studies

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The seven sets of case studies showcased here feature examples of the most innovative work and legal services that lawyers have developed in the Asia-Pacific region for clients, whether operating in the region or globally.

All of the case studies were researched, compiled and ranked by RSGI. “Winner” indicates that the organisation won an FT Innovative Lawyers Asia-Pacific award for 2024.

Read the other FT Innovative Lawyers Asia-Pacific ‘Best practice case studies’, which showcase the standout innovations made for and by people working in the legal sector:

Business of law In-house

Unlocking capital

Winner: Linklaters Originality: 9; Leadership: 8; Impact: 8; Total: 25 The firm helped advise on the creation of Swap Connect, which allows international investors to tap into China’s onshore interest rate swap market via links with Hong Kong. The initiative, launched May 2023 with the backing of Chinese President Xi Jinping, aims to support Hong Kong as a financial trading hub while delivering a bigger and more efficient derivatives market for China’s own domestic market. It follows the creation of similar “Connect” programmes for stocks and bonds. Lawyers at the firm advised bourse operator Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing on the design of the Swap Connect clearing link agreement, which allows foreign investors to remotely trade and clear renminbi interest rate swaps to hedge their debt exposure.

A&O Shearman O: 8; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 24 The firm helped China-backed telecoms company Dito Telecommunity secure a 15-year $3.9bn loan arrangement to fund the rollout of its telecoms network in the Philippines. The long-term financing deal, struck last September, was supported by a group of international banks. The funds raised are to pay for expansion of the network — the launch of which, in 2021, was backed by former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte, in an attempt to challenge the historic duopoly of the country’s two dominant suppliers.

Sullivan & Cromwell O: 8; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 24 The firm advised Japan’s SoftBank on last September’s initial public offering of its UK chip designer, Arm, in the US. The lawyers helped SoftBank acquire an additional 25 per cent of Arm from its Saudi-backed investment partner Vision Fund to obtain full control of Arm ahead of the flotation, which then saw the Japanese company retain 90 per cent of the business while raising about $5bn.

Highly commended

Dechert O: 7; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 23 The firm advised ACEN, the energy arm of Philippines conglomerate Ayala, on securing project finance for its 24 per cent stake in the $1bn 600-megawatt Monsoon Wind development in Laos. Work has begun on installation of the wind farm, which will export generated electricity to Vietnam under a 25-year offtake agreement.

Hogan Lovells O: 7; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 21 The firm helped Indian car parts maker Samvardhana Motherson International acquire an 81 per cent stake in Japan’s Yachiyo Industry, a subsidiary of Honda Motor. The deal required Honda to buy out minority shareholders in the Tokyo-listed company to allow it to be taken private, with Honda maintaining a minority stake.

Allen & Gledhill O: 7; L: 6; I: 6; Total: 19 The firm acted as Singapore adviser to Bayfront Infrastructure Capital on the complex launch, last September, of infrastructure asset-backed securities valued at $410mn. It worked alongside international counsel Latham & Watkins. The transaction was the fourth such issuance by Bayfront.

Deacons O: 7; L: 6; I: 6; Total: 19 The firm advised asset manager BEA Union Investment on the reclassification of its Asian bond fund as an impact fund last July. The changes, authorised by Hong Kong regulators, will see the renamed Asia Impact Bond Fund primarily invest in bonds backing environmental and social improvement projects.

Responsible business

Winner: Trilegal Originality: 9; Leadership: 8; Impact: 8; Total: 25 The firm advised the education charity SGBS Unnati Foundation on becoming the first organisation to list on India’s Social Stock Exchange in December. The government-sponsored platform — created last year as a sub-category within India’s existing stock exchanges — is designed to help charities and other social enterprises subject to its oversight to raise funds, by strengthening confidence among potential donors and investors.

The lawyers advised Unnati on meeting regulatory conditions to launch the debut fundraising on the exchange, which secured Rs2 crore ($240,000) to finance training for 10,000 underprivileged young people.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer O: 8; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 24 The pro bono team helped the Hong Kong branch of global children’s charity Plan International to create a safeguarding framework for kindergartens, in 2023. The lawyers advised on the compilation of guidelines, which have been circulated to more than 1,000 kindergartens via a manual and e-learning platform for free.

The initiative also offers tests and accreditation to caregivers. The lack of official guidance on safeguarding had recently been highlighted, publicly, by cases such the prosecution of 34 staff for mistreatment of children in a care home.

Gilbert + Tobin O: 7; L: 10; I: 7; Total: 24 The firm supported the Yes23 campaign, which sought improved constitutional recognition for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people through Australia’s 2023 “Voice” referendum. Gilbert +Tobin’s co-founder and chair, Danny Gilbert, co-chaired one of the leading groups campaigning for the change, and the firm helped with fundraising, hosting meetings, and providing administrative and legal support. Early support faded as the proposal failed to secure the majorities required to pass despite government support, but 40 per cent of Australians supported the campaign.

DLA Piper O: 7; L: 8; I: 7; Total: 22 Lawyers at the firm have represented East Timor pro bono at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) and, subsequently, the International Court of Justice to argue for mitigations over the impact of climate change.

The firm advocated for obligations on other states that would still protect the right of East Timor and other small island developing countries to further industrial development, as part of a fairer global transition to net zero greenhouse emissions.

Lander & Rogers O: 7; L: 8; I: 6; Total: 21 As one of the first Australian law firms to commit itself to achieving net zero emissions by 2030, Lander & Rogers supported several initiatives under its “climate and just transition” pro bono programme. Efforts included seconding law firm staff to a number of climate activist and litigation organisations to work pro bono.

Morrison Foerster O: 5; L: 6; I: 8; Total: 19 Marcia Ellis, global co-chair of the firm’s private equity office, worked with a team of associates to support Justice Centre Hong Kong, a charity that advises refugees and asylum seekers. They worked together to develop a public database of case law covering detention of immigrants in the territory. Since its launch in June 2023, the resource has been used by Justice Centre staff, researchers, other campaign groups and immigration lawyers.

Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu O: 6; L: 7; I: 6; Total: 19 Tokyo English Language Lifeline (Tell), a Japanese philanthropic organisation offering mental health support, was considering closing one of its clinics because rules governing its prescription of medicines looked too ambiguous. But the law firm secured a clarification from regulators that meant it could continue to operate.

Dispute resolution

Winner: MinterEllison Originality: 8; Leadership: 8; Impact: 10; Total: 26 The firm successfully defended Australian media company Nine Entertainment and investigative journalists Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters in a protracted, high-profile, and politically contentious case when they were sued for defamation by Australia’s most decorated living soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith.

In June, the Federal Court found that the lawyers had substantially proved the truth of the allegations contained in articles from 2018 that Roberts-Smith had committed war crimes, including the killing of unarmed civilians in Afghanistan. The lawyers also dealt with challenging secrecy requirements relating to documents and witness testimony.

Hogan Lovells O: 8; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 24 The firm helped Lego sue Chinese competitor Longteng for infringement of the Danish toymaker’s copyright. The lawyers persuaded a Chinese court to make a judgment based on inspection of a sample of 54 units out of 1.6mn boxes of seized goods. In December, the court in Shanghai ordered Longteng to pay Rmb600mn ($83mn) to Lego and sentenced five individuals to up to nine years in prison.

Numen Law Offices O: 7; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 23 Lawyers persuaded the High Court of Kerala to issue guidelines for tighter handling of sexually explicit evidence by law enforcement agencies and state courts. The move came after illegal access was gained to visual evidence during proceedings that followed the assault of the firm’s client, Indian actress Bhavana Menon, in 2017.

WongPartnership O: 7; L: 7; I: 8; Total: 22 The firm helped German telecoms group Deutsche Telekom enforce an award in Singapore of $93.3mn plus costs against India over the breach of a bilateral investment treaty, originally granted through arbitration in Geneva. Lawyers persuaded the Singapore Court of Appeal to apply the legal principle of “transnational estoppel”, which prevented India from relitigating claims already rejected by the Swiss court.

Anand and Anand O: 7; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 21 The firm won an interim order for Indian actor Anil Kapoor before the High Court of Delhi when he sued 16 defendants last year for misusing artificial intelligence. They were accused of exploiting his image and voice to create deepfakes for commercial gain, in ringtones and other merchandise. The case has led to increased scrutiny over the legality of deepfake practices in India.

Rajah & Tann Singapore O: 7; L: 7; I: 6; Total: 20 The firm’s lawyers defended Chinese tech company NetEase Games against an application for an interim injunction in Singapore in December 2022 to force withdrawal of a video game from sale.

Rival US video developer Riot Games had claimed NetEase’s game Hyper Front infringed the copyright of its similar Valorant combat game, as part of a campaign of action in several jurisdictions. However, NetEase did withdraw the game from the market last April, following legal challenges in various jurisdictions.

Restructuring

Winner: Sidley Austin Originality: 8; Leadership: 9; Impact: 8; Total: 25 The firm advised Chinese developer Sunac through a $10bn offshore debt restructuring last year, one of the first of its kind among China’s distressed property companies, following a widespread wave of defaults since 2021. It narrowed down the company’s complex creditor structure to a single class by use of a court-led scheme of arrangement and refinanced the existing debt into convertible bonds — in line with Hong Kong regulation.

Clifford Chance O: 8; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 24 The firm advised Italian construction group WeBuild on the rescue and restructuring of Clough, the troubled Australian building company, last year. The lawyers helped strike a deal with Clough’s administrator and creditors, preventing the collapse of the business. This required the renegotiation of hundreds of contracts in a 12-week period and saved more than 1,100 jobs. Among the projects saved were Snowy 2.0, a multibillion-dollar hydro power extension project.

Pinsent Masons O: 8; L: 8; I: 7; Total: 23 The firm advised the International Finance Corporation, the investment arm of the World Bank, on its $67mn financing of a transport terminal in Laos. This involved separating the contractual agreements of the project in the country’s capital from a wider logistics development. The deal, which closed in December, is designed to divide the project into two “bankable” concessions to encourage further additional funding.

Morgan Lewis O: 9; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 23 The firm advised PNG Air, Papua New Guinea’s second-largest domestic airline, in securing a vital writedown of debts under a court-approved creditor scheme to avoid bankruptcy. The lawyers teamed up with other advisers to secure backing for the restructuring, formally approved in December, through which major creditors swapped debt for equity in the business.

Rajah & Tann Singapore O: 8; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 22 The firm worked as lead counsel for DeFi Payments following the collapse of its crypto exchange, Vauld, in July 2022 when a surge of withdrawals by customers forced it to reveal a $70mn shortfall of funds. Lawyers worked alongside new management on a court-supervised scheme approved in August last year, to retrieve what remains of its assets and provide customers with the means to retrieve part of the value of funds originally invested.

Corrs Chambers Westgarth O: 8; L: 7; I: 6; Total: 21 The firm advised Mineral Resources on last year’s acquisition of the Bald Hill lithium mine in Western Australia, for A$260mn including assumed debt, after its previous owner went into administration four years earlier. The lawyers helped strike the deal by using independent experts to value the mine — despite hopes among some former shareholders of a higher premium.

Science and technology

Winner: Trilegal Originality: 8; Leadership: 8; Impact: 9; Total: 25 The firm drafted a policy for India’s Open Network for Digital Commerce, a government-backed scheme designed to encourage ecommerce expansion and competition. The network aims to connect different platforms through technology, enabling all buyers and sellers to transact with each other regardless of which app they are on.

The scheme was created by India’s commerce ministry to encourage small traders to move their businesses online and promote competition with established platform providers. The policy is designed to be fit for future regulatory changes.

MinterEllison O: 7; L: 8; I: 9; Total: 24 The firm helped Genomical, an Australian genomics data collaboration between hospitals and academic groups, become a commercial enterprise. The firm devised a structure to balance the interests of investors with stakeholder control over product development. It structured shareholder rights and negotiated intellectual property rights to take account of the platform’s potential use by hospitals around Australia for genetic tests and other medical applications.

Sidley Austin O: 8; L: 8; I: 7; Total: 23 The firm represented Chinese chip developer BaTeLab in the vetting process for listing on the Hong Kong stock exchange in December. The lawyers drew on their drafting of the legal prospectus and specialist knowledge of the semiconductor industry to inform the HKEX about the company and its products.

Tilleke & Gibbins O: 6; L: 7; I: 8; Total: 21 The Thai firm’s local expertise helped global tech companies Amazon and Google navigate foreign investment restrictions to take part, alongside Microsoft, in investing $8.5bn to build data centres in Thailand.

Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co O: 6; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 20 The firm helped telecoms operator Reliance Jio secure financing to buy equipment worth over $2.bn from Sweden’s Ericsson through a loan facility with several banks. Syndicated loans of its scale are rare in India, requiring the lawyers to liaise closely with regulators.

Anand and Anand O: 7; L: 7; I: 6; Total: 20 The firm helped US tech groups Microsoft and Amazon pursue a case against an India-based scam that involved impersonating support staff and defrauding customers of both companies. The lawyers convinced India’s Central Bureau of Investigation to register this as a rare joint case.

Winner: Morgan Lewis Originality: 8; Leadership: 8; Impact: 9; Total: 25 The firm assisted Singapore-based global port operator PSA International in setting up a joint venture with Kazakhstan’s state-owned railway operator, Kazakhstan Temir Zholy.

To satisfy PSA’s preference, the business is subject to the AIFC Court, an independent jurisdiction following English common law based in the Kazakh capital Astana that is separate from the country’s domestic judicial system.

The combined entity, KPMC, was unveiled last May and aims to improve rail route connections and trade flows from China and the rest of Asia to Europe via Kazakhstan.

Gilbert + Tobin O: 9; L: 8; I: 7; Total: 24 The firm advised Sigma Healthcare in striking a proposed reverse takeover deal with its larger Australian pharmacy rival, Chemist Warehouse. Under the terms of the deal, announced in December, shareholders in privately owned Chemist Warehouse would hold an 85 per cent stake in the combined business, which would take on the Australian Securities Exchange listing of Sigma and have an indicative market capitalisation of A$8.8bn.

The company obtained “in principle” advice from the ASX that it would not need to repeat compliance with the exchange’s admission and quotation requirements following its effective takeover by the larger Chemist Warehouse. The deal remains subject to approval by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

Dechert O: 7; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 23 The firm advised Capital Square Partners on its merger with Basil Technology Partners in 2023. The deal created a merged fund valued at $700mn that provides investors with access to a larger pool of technology assets, or the ability to cash out of original investments. The assets are spread across multiple jurisdictions in south-east Asia and it has become one of the largest technology funds in Asia.

Nishimura & Asahi O: 8; L: 8; I: 7; Total: 23 The firm advised Toshiba, the Japanese electronics conglomerate, on reverting to private ownership following 74 years as a public company and, latterly, eight years of accounting and governance turmoil.

The lawyers helped to secure a $15bn offer from a consortium led by private equity firm Japanese Industrial Partners, following a protracted sales process that paved the way for the country’s biggest ever take-private deal.

Ensuring transparency with the shareholders and encouraging competition among bidders was crucial in concluding the sale of the business, given the heightened scrutiny of Toshiba prompted by the recent controversies.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer O: 7; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 21 The firm helped Zurich Insurance acquire an enlarged majority stake in Indian insurer Kotak Mahindra General Insurance for $488mn. The proposed stake rose from 51 per cent plus additional considerations to 70 per cent outright, requiring the lawyers to design a structure to comply with regulatory limits on foreign ownership of Indian insurers. If the deal goes ahead, it will represent the largest foreign investment into India’s non-life insurance market.

Resolüt Partners O: 6; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 20 The firm advised Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC on the creation of a joint venture with Genus Power Infrastructure, an Indian smart meter maker. GIC holds 74 per cent, with Genus holding the remainder of the business, which is committing $2bn in capital to supply smart metering across India.

Fintech and digital assets

Winner: DLA Piper Originality: 8; Leadership: 8; Impact: 9; Total: 25 A team of lawyers based in Hong Kong helped Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (Vara) create a compliance framework for all cryptocurrency and other digital asset businesses. Lawyers worked with the emirate’s regulator to draft a rule book aimed at promoting Dubai as a hub for cryptocurrency investment while ensuring consumer protection. By April 2023, the regulator had granted 19 licences.

Allen & Gledhill O: 8; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 24 The firm advised Singapore-based global carbon exchange Climate Impact X ahead of its first trading day, in June 2023. The venture — which aims to establish Singapore as a regional hub that can challenge other global exchanges in voluntary carbon emission trading — is backed by Singapore Exchange, state investor Temasek, and the banks DBS, Standard Chartered and Mizuho. The exchange aims to attract international carbon traders keen to buy credits created by the accredited projects designed to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Ashurst and Linklaters O: 8; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 24 When the Hong Kong government issued a $750mn green, multi-currency digital bond, Linklaters acted for global bank HSBC, and Ashurst represented its blockchain platform HSBC Orion, where the bond is hosted. Lawyers from both firms liaised with regulators and helped redesign the bond documentation to reflect its use of blockchain.

The lawyers ensured the hosting digital platform was directly connected to Hong Kong’s central clearing house so investors could subscribe to the bond without having to open new accounts.

Baker McKenzie O: 7; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 23 In November 2023, the firm helped Singapore’s DBS Bank, Switzerland’s UBS, and Japan’s SBI Digital Asset Holdings to structure the world’s first cross-border repo and natively-issued digital bond fully executed and settled on a public blockchain. The transaction, which was sponsored by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, aimed to test the feasibility of applications in asset tokenisation and decentralised finance deploying distributed ledger technology.

Clifford Chance O: 8; L: 8; I: 6; Total: 22 The fintech team advised on Singapore’s first live cross-border transaction using tokenised deposits between financial services company JPMorgan and Japanese digital asset service provider SBI Digital Asset Holdings, in November 2022. The lawyers contributed to the development of new regulation that clarifies that these tokenised deposits will not be classed as securities.

Howse Williams O: 7; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 21 The firm helped Tykhe Capital investment group win approval from the Hong Kong securities regulator to tokenise a real estate asset fund through a subsidiary, Pioneer Asset Management. The rarity of tokenised real estate asset funds in the region meant lawyers had to show how it complied with existing regulation. The transaction aims to set a blueprint for future tokenisation projects in Hong Kong.

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