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Multi-skilling and its Implications for Work Design

Otago University, New Zealand

In the early 1980s considerable interest developed amongst practitioners and academics working in the areas of industrial relations and organizational development in an approach to training and work organization which was being tried at the Woodlawn mine in New South Wales (Coles, 1983). This approach, termed "multi-skilling", has since been hailed in some quarters as providing a breakthrough in attempts to 'humanise' the workplace (e.g. AMWSU, 1983) and as a major step towards improving industrial relations (McGeough, 1983). However, when one attempts to examine the concept of multi-skilling and its operationalization more closely, two things become immediately apparent. First, there seems to be no published literature dealing with the exact meaning of the term multi-skilling and placing it within contemporary perspectives on work, training and organization design. Second, something of a conspiracy of silence seems to have emerged in relation to the introduction of this practice within Australian enterprises. Though the author is aware of a number of instances, other than Woodlawn, where an approach which might be termed multi-skilling has or is being tried, little is being said about such efforts publicly, even when such attempts have been formally constituted into an industrial award.

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