The role that our workplaces play in encouraging and enabling our relationships at work, was largely taken for granted, until they were taken away from us.

A silver lining of the pandemic, we realised the impact of our workplaces and the role they play in our establishing and supporting the social & support networks in our lives.

And social connection is a foundation for building any community.

Today’s guest ARC Laureate Fellow Sharon K. Parker. I was first introduced to Sharon and her work through my friend and Colleague Dr Meg Hooper of Carousel Consulting, and her S.M.A.R.T Work Design Model, to develop meaningful and motivating work. This piece of work has been instrumental in underpinning our approach to work design and workplace design, a difference that Sharon will elaborate on in today’s podcast.

Meg has been following Sharon’s work for a very long time, and such I’ve invited her along to co-host today’s episode!

ARC Laureate Fellow Sharon K. Parker is a John Curtin Distinguished Professor, Director of the Centre for Transformative Work Design at Curtain University, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences and Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Organisational Psychology.

Sharon has published more than 250 internationally refereed articles on topics such as work design, proactive behaviour, mental health, and job performance, has over 46,500 citations, and is ranked in the top .15% of global scholars in her field.

She is the founder of the S.M.A.R.T model, cofounder of the Thrive at Work Initiative, and has contributed to policy on work design in Australia and internationally.

With the breadth of research that Sharon has done, this podcast could go in any direction, but as we are focused on the role of community in the workplace this season, we’ve narrowed in on this topic and explored how the work she does overlaps with this ability to build community.

So today, we are exploring;

• Her view on the relationship that exists between our workplaces and the role they play in building community
• Her S.M.A.R.T work design model and what the important factors are to consider in building community and where organisations could be letting themselves down
• The role of autonomy in buffering the effects of poor workplace design
• The definition of work design and the overlap to workplace design
• Some of the key consideration that designer, Culture Leaders and property managers/specialists should be looking at when it comes to workplace design
  

Sharon’s perspective on this is fascinating and Meg & I were loving this conversation - we honestly could have chatted for hours. So, I hope you love listening to this episode as much as we loved recording it!