Name: DEISI DEFFUNE
Sector: Vocational Education and Social Service of Industrial Workers Affiliated Organization: (optional)
E-mail: ddeffune@uol.com.br
DEISI DEFFUNE is a Brazilian economist specialized on economic and social planning. She now works for the corporative board of the Industrial Social Service-Sesi and the National Service of Industrial Apprenticeship – Senai, in the state of São Paulo. She worked in the Industrial Economics Department of the Technical Research Institute of the State of São Paulo (IPT) during the 1970s and as occupational analysis and labour market researcher at Senai during the 1980s. From 1990 to 2003 worked as independent consultant in the fields of professional profiles, national standard classification of occupations and labour market.
CVA Report - December 2010
Limits of professional polyvalence
In the last decades, various kinds of professional polyvalence have been emphasized and appreciated, such as job rotation, enlargement of functions, enrichment of tasks. There is much talk about the multifunctional worker, and its multiple skills. We hear that the employee should be a super professional, competent, polyvalent, multiskilled. We also hear some questions on the effects of the increase of the work content on the workers personal and social life. My goal in this paper is to raise some points about the limits of polyvalence in the professional practice, so that the discussion of the topic can be expanded with the contribution of those who might be interested on it.
A first point to consider is the relativity of the polyvalence term. A welder can operate multiple processes in order to weld a single product. Therefore, he is polyvalent in relation to the process and monovalent in relation to the product. He can operate a single process in order to manufacture several types of product. In the last case, he is monovalent with respect to the process and polyvalent with respect to the products. In the apparel industry, the professional can operate multiple machines to make a single product, if he is in a production cell, or he can operate only one machine to make parts of various products. He could also sew one type of fabric or several types of fabric, for making one or more products. Thus, polyvalence can be typified regarding the product, the row material, the machine operations, the tasks, or the functions, and so on. In Brazilian industries, there is a metalworking professional called “multifunctional polyvalent operator” that operates several types of milling machines, setup and maintain the equipment, among others functions. This is one of the many examples of work reconfiguration on the shop floor, originated from different forms of work organization.
On question to be answered is: what is the physical and emotional limit of the employee with respect to the expansion of its field of work? It is known that when more content is added to the job, more physical-psychological efforts are requested from the worker because he will try to do his best in order to achieve the expected performance of his new challenge. In all fields of knowledge and professional practices, the conscience of the ignorance guides the employee to seek new technical knowledge continuously. However, he is not always successful in this pursuit, which may cause him to suffer. However, this suffering is not easily observable. It can take the form of accidents, depression or other illnesses.
To address this issue in a schematic way, imagine the following scheme: action, activity, or task are the most visible part of the job. To perform it, the worker mobilizes knowledge, skills and attitudes. The work will do better or worse, depending on his motivation, his personality traits, his level of mood or fatigue. As the range of activities or tasks broaden, new skills and new knowledge are required. Expanded unevenly, work activities may "suffocate" the most profound aspects of personality of the individual, causing a sort of "death of the soul". His struggle in order to keep-up to date can scarce leisure, recreation, social and family life, endangering social cohesion.
It is healthy that the worker could have a broad view of the possibilities of his job. But in today's world, where many activities are such that requires an increasing volume of information to be performed, to what extent is the worker becoming a factotum, a “Jack of all trades”?
>> Historicity as pedagogical tool for vocational education - May 2010
