Adam Smith and the modern workplace

When a task is created, it is always meant for a specific worker or a set of workers. It should bounce down the right path and be handed over to the right person at each stage of completion. Skipping a step or moving too fast on to the next step leads to loss of quality or absolution. With so many little specializations in the modern workplace, it is equally as challenging to divide labour as it is to unite the workforce to achieve success. 

 The idea of division of labour as understood in the traditional sense was first popularised by the economist and thinker Adam Smith in the late 18th century. His treatise encapsulated the idea behind making a more significant task achievable by breaking it into parts that singular workers could complete. The industrial model adapted this idea into systems of mass production, explicitly breaking down parts of a product on the assembly line to be completed individually at different steps. Later economists and industry experts criticized such a model, pointing to the possibility of such machinery's unjustifiable cost without consistent and heavy demand for output. 

 Of course, the modern-day industry sprawls over many more aspects of daily life than it did at the advent of industrialization. While there are many clear benefits to working with this model, there are also disadvantages that entail this system's whole-hearted adaptation. 

 A company that manufactures clothes for swimwear, for example, might benefit from it. Breaking up the cutting, sewing, labelling, packaging and despatch of each article can become tedious if done by humans. It would involve a lot of slow movements, concentration on the seams and hemming, and, of course, result in slight variations in every article. This might lead to returns and translate into losses. Having a machine take fabric and turn it into ten items of identically constructed clothing in a matter of minutes is efficient and saves on labour, raw materials and power.  

 For a newer, more eclectic company focused on building its brand and establishing goodwill, it may make more sense to invest in people than in machinery. Organic foods, handmade personal hygiene items, gifting products, and even corner shops such as bakeries, boulangeries and patisseries thrive on creating connections with regular customers in the neighbourhood. Making fresh products, packaging them a little roughly but authentically in locally sourced papers, even changing everyday items' prices to reflect the market trends and cost-to-market differences makes for unique and welcoming experiences for the buyers, and these things are simply not possible to emulate in a mass-production model. 

In more intellectually intensive work, however, the same rules do not apply. The importance of ideation and execution of work is much higher in such places, creating a bubble of external pressure. In hospitals, clinics and veterinary practices, individual assessment is tantamount to effective results every time. The time taken to identify the problem, consider treatment, advise medication and monitor the improvement is essential and immovable. If a doctor or surgeon advises specific steps to be fulfilled by a subordinate (such as a nurse or an on-call practising physician) but still has to guide or supervise as the latter carries out these tasks, then the total manpower used in that task doubles. The handoff in such cases will result in time loss. But on the other hand, such tasks cannot afford the quality loss, so they will always need to be completed in this labour-intensive manner. 

In academic institutions such as universities, a typical workforce model includes more than just teachers/professors and the administrative staff. They have teaching assistants, lab assistants, academic managers, curriculum managers, extra-curricular in-charges, department heads, and committees. This is done to preserve an order that goes above and beyond seniority and/or expertise. A teaching assistant might be good enough to be an assistant professor but is choosing to work fewer hours to finish their doctoral dissertation and still earn a living. That person would assist students in their research work far better than someone who would be hired for their ability to be an assistant in office work but not necessarily for that of being good with research and analysis. Parallelly, someone skilled at ensuring optimal usage of classrooms, equipment and the teaching workforce will only be suited as an academic manager and may not do as well as a substitute teacher or a curriculum manager, as they might not be adept at lesson planning or only classroom management despite having the necessary qualification (a certification in teaching, etc.). A thorough and insightful division of labour in such a workplace can result in the smooth running of large departments full of year-round work and demanding deliverables.  

Put simply, the idea behind the division of labour is assuring appropriate assigning of tasks to individuals and groups and yielding the best output possible. Weighing the good and the bad, so to speak, of this model is vital for each business and each workforce since no two workplaces are alike, even if they are in the same line of work. Treating individuals as such and creating a network or a hierarchy that works to include and enthuse them to work better is perhaps the best lesson one can derive from the drier interpretation of Smith's original idea of labour division. 

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