Once a direction is chosen, journeys tend to take on a momentum of their own. Nevertheless there’s a point, somewhere between when you’re confronted by a bright yellow ROAD CLOSED sign and the moment your tires finally slide across the surface of the rain-slick dirt track to churn in the mud, at which it becomes pertinent to question the omniscience of your GPS.

This is a point a family of four and their long-suffering pooch failed to note last Thursday, when their GPS advised “At the next available intersection, turn left”, onto a road marked ‘closed’, near Wilcannia, NSW.

Eventually finding themselves bogged, the family called the local police for assistance only to discover that the road was, indeed, closed for a reason. Poor weather prevented police from rescuing the family until Sunday evening, and even then the rescue crew “slid off the road quite a few times and almost got bogged themselves."

Thus Ma, Pa and assorted dependents had four damp, uncomfortable days to ponder what Sergeant Fisher from Broken Hill later described as the “serious lessons” to be learned from the incident: use a decent map, don’t always believe your Navman, and pay attention to bright yellow ROAD CLOSED signs; particularly on dirt roads, in unpopulated areas, after heavy rain.

It’s tempting to translate Sergeant Fisher’s wise words into a more concise statement along the lines of, “You’ve got a brain; please use it.” But who hasn’t fallen for bad advice once or twice? And who hasn’t seen signs that they were headed in the wrong direction and yet still continued blithely on their way, until the forces of nature brought them to a standstill?

We‘ve all gone gung-ho down the wrong track in our personal lives and sometimes we—as individuals and organisations—do it in the workplace.

Consider, for example, a different kind of signage: empirical research. According to the 2009 Good Jobs report by The Work Foundation in the UK,  the consensus of research conducted within a range of disciplines including epidemiology, occupational health, labour economy, education, human relations and OHS is that “job quality, employee health and an employee’s ability to perform productively at work are closely linked”.

Job quality, this report acknowledges, is influenced by factors both internal and external to the workplace, including:

• Employment security;
• Whether the work is characterised by monotony and repetition;
• Whether employees have autonomy, control and task discretion;
• The extent to which there is an appropriate balance between the efforts that workers make and the rewards that they receive;
• Workers having the skills they need to cope with periods of intense pressure;
• Whether workplace procedures are seen to be fair;
• The strength of workplace relationships – or ‘social capital’;
• The capacity to balance work hours and responsibilities with other responsibilities and interests, including family time; and
• The work being as safe as is reasonably practicable.

Industry, employment sector and macroeconomic forces obviously affect an organisation’s capacity to offer employees “good work” as defined above. However, industry, sector and macroeconomics are not the end of the story. Organisational direction, as interpreted and implemented by management and supervisors, also helps determine the availability of “good work”.

In addition to reviewing the existing empirical evidence, the UK researchers interviewed stakeholders occupying prominent positions in government, academia, employee representation and healthcare. These stakeholders identified “weak management skills” as a key reason why many UK organisations do not fulfil their potential to provide employees with “good work”.

Inconsistency and unfairness, a lack of trust in employees, too much emphasis on organisational tradition (“This is how we’ve always done things here”), an unwillingness to empower staff to make decisions and innovate, and a lack of imagination about how jobs might be restructured with an eye to providing “good work” were all given as examples of the “weak management” in question.

Is this research applicable to the Australian context?

In 2009, the Centre for Corporate Health listed the main factors “leading to distress and the subsequent submission of a psychological injury claim in Australian workplaces today”. These are:

• Performance management;
• Formal investigations;
• Interpersonal conflict;
• High workload;
• Lack of manager competence;
• Poor person / job fit; and
• Exposure to critical incidents.

Management (including middle management and supervisors) exert influence over all of these factors, with the possible exception of exposure to critical incidents.

One barrier to “good work” identified by UK stakeholders is the promotion of technically proficient individuals who lack management training and aptitude. Another potential barrier is an organisational culture in which employer and employees see themselves as adversaries.

Even if an organisation sets out with a decent map (i.e. puts appropriate policies in place), it is bound to get bogged down if those in charge of implementing policy don’t see or pay attention to the signs saying ROAD CLOSED, WRONG WAY GO BACK.

These are signs worth paying attention to—not only to avoid poor outcomes, but to promote good ones.

According to the UK report’s reading of the research, organisations that begin to offer “good work” can not only expect a reduction in stress claims, but also in musculoskeletal claims. Other benefits mooted include less sickness absence, increased productivity and reduced staff turn-over.

So where to from here?

Many Australian organisations get the value of offering work that is as "good" as possible and strive to do so, but this is not always the case.

Karen Jacobsen, the New York-based Australian who is the voice of GPS systems worldwide, says that she is often asked to repeat typical GPS phrases for people who know about her employment history.

Her own favourite GPS saying, she told the Brisbane Times in February 2010, is “Recalculating.”

''Because not only can you recalculate if you've missed a turn while you're driving, but in your life you can always stop and recalculate and start all over again,'' she said.

The Good Jobs report is available here.

The Centre for Corporate Health’s report on Improving Organisational Performance by Building Emotional Resilience is available here.