Identifying characteristics of jobs of front-line personnel that affect abnormal idle time: A case study on a popular amusement center in the Philippines

摘要

A number of studies in manufacturing have investigated on the factors that affect worker productivity. Some of these, for example, have shown that flexible working environments cause productivity loss due to the behavioral effects resulting from the flexible design of work. Although studies have mostly focused on manufacturing systems, the problem on productivity loss is also heavily affecting service organizations. Inspired by the studies in manufacturing and with the objective of increasing productivity of workers in service organizations, this research takes a look at the factors that affect the productivity of service workers. Specifically, the aim is to increase productivity through the decrease of abnormal idle time of workers in service environments. This is done by investigating closely the workers in an amusement center in the Philippines. Characteristics of the job of the worker such as the amount of supervisory/managerial work, the flexibility of the job and the amount of normal idle time are investigated for correlation with the amount of abnormal idle time. Initial results show that among these, the amount of supervisory/managerial work seems to affect abnormal idle time.