Designed to Fail: How Work Design Is Letting Down Sri Lanka's Construction Workers
Image 1 — A worker refilling the site drinking water supply on a construction site in the Middle East. Access to clean water is one of the most basic work design requirements — and one of the most frequently overlooked.
Introduction
Every morning at 7.30 am, construction workers throughout Sri Lanka turn up for work. They work until 4.30 pm — an hour for lunch, and two 15-minute tea breaks. A large proportion then stay on for overtime as without doing so their take-home pay does not provide a living wage. When they eventually return home at the end of the day they are exhausted, hungry, and are in many instances denied even access to a toilet or clean drinking water. This is not just an issue of worker welfare — it is a work design failure and HRM must take responsibility.
What Is Work Design?
Armstrong (2020) defines work design as the way tasks, responsibilities and relationships are organised to meet both organisational objectives and individual employee needs. Proper work design delivers benefits such as increased productivity, engagement and wellbeing, while poor work design — as is commonly the case in Sri Lanka's construction sector — creates exhaustion, disengagement and serious safety risk.
Hackman and Oldham (1976) presented their Job Characteristics Model, asserting that meaningful work requires five core dimensions — skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback. Construction workers performing the same monotonous task every day, with no autonomy, no feedback and no opportunity to develop new skills, score poorly on every single dimension. The resulting impact is low motivation, disengagement and high employee turnover.
Figure 1 — Hackman and Oldham's Job Characteristics Model (1976) Applied to Sri Lanka Construction
| Core Dimension | Ideal Workplace | Sri Lanka Construction Reality |
|---|---|---|
| Skill Variety | Different tasks requiring different skills | Same repetitive task every day |
| Task Identity | Worker sees whole piece of work completed | Workers complete only a small fragment |
| Task Significance | Work feels meaningful and impactful | Workers rarely told why their task matters |
| Autonomy | Worker has say in how job is done | Instructed exactly what to do — no input |
| Feedback | Regular performance feedback given | No feedback unless something goes wrong |
Source: Adapted from Hackman and Oldham (1976)
Video 1 — Hackman and Oldham's Job Characteristics Model Explained
Source: YouTube
The Reality on Site
The physical conditions encountered on a construction site in Sri Lanka represent some of the most significant examples of poor work design found in any sector.
Toilet facilities are either minimal or inaccessible — on a high-rise project, a worker at the eighth floor must travel all the way to the ground floor to use them. Clean drinking water is similarly scarce, and the food served during breaks is frequently of poor quality. While these may appear to be minor concerns, Maslow (1943) argued that basic physiological needs — food, water, rest and hygiene — must be met before any higher level motivation is possible. When these needs go unmet, both productivity and safety suffer.
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Image 2 — A water dispenser on a construction site. It is worth noting that such provisions are commonly available in site offices for management staff — yet the same standard rarely extends to labourers working several floors above in direct heat. This two-tier welfare system is itself a work design failure.
Workers exposed to direct sunlight for extended periods without access to shade or chilled drinking water face serious heat stress — a basic work design failure that violates fundamental occupational health standards (ILO, 2023).
Fatigue is another critical issue. Many workers stay on for overtime just to earn a living wage. Herzberg (1959) identified salary as a hygiene factor — its absence causes dissatisfaction, but increasing it alone does not create motivation. When workers must work excessive hours simply to survive, the work design is fundamentally broken.
Safety equipment also presents a work design problem. Although PPE is available on construction sites across the country, workers often cannot use it effectively throughout the working day. Safety equipment has not been integrated into the design of the work itself — it remains an additional complication rather than a natural part of how the job is performed.
The Sri Lanka Context
Karasek (1979) predicted through his Job Demands model that high job demands combined with low job resources would create chronic stress and burnout. For Sri Lankan construction workers, demands are extremely high — physical labour, heat, long hours, repetitive tasks — while resources are extremely low — poor facilities, no autonomy, no skill development and inadequate rest. This combination creates severe physical and psychological pressure. The ILO (2023) has linked such conditions to increased accident rates and worker attrition in developing economies. For Sri Lanka, which already struggles to attract and retain a skilled construction workforce, the implications are even more severe.
A Fair Criticism
It can certainly be argued that improving work design on construction sites is inherently difficult. Providing adequate sanitation facilities across the upper floors of a high-rise building, for example, requires significant planning and financial commitment. For smaller Sri Lankan contractors operating on thin margins, meeting these standards may prove genuinely challenging.
However, many of the issues raised are not primarily about cost. Making tasks rotational, scheduling genuine rest breaks, ensuring access to clean drinking water and shade — these require a commitment to management change rather than significant additional capital investment. Armstrong (2020) argues that effective work design is a strategic HR responsibility that brings its own long-term productivity rewards.
Conclusion
Sri Lanka's construction workers are not failing their jobs. Their jobs are failing them.
When work is structured such that workers must arrive before sunrise and leave after dark simply to make ends meet — with none of the basic physiological requirements of daily life met — the work has not been designed. It has simply been assembled. HRM must be at the forefront of changing that.
The changes required are neither revolutionary nor costly. Greater task variety, genuine rest breaks, access to clean water, shade from direct sunlight, proper sanitary facilities and safety equipment integrated into the work itself — these are not unreasonable demands. They are the basic requirements of decent human work.
Work design is not just about productivity. It is about dignity. And in Sri Lanka's construction industry, both are long overdue.
References
Armstrong, M. (2020) Armstrong's Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. 15th edn. London: Kogan Page.
Hackman, J.R. and Oldham, G.R. (1976) 'Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory', Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 16(2), pp. 250–279.
Herzberg, F. (1959) The Motivation to Work. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
ILO (2023) World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2023. Geneva: International Labour Organization.
Karasek, R.A. (1979) 'Job demands, job decision latitude, and mental strain: Implications for job redesign', Administrative Science Quarterly, 24(2), pp. 285–308.
Maslow, A.H. (1943) 'A theory of human motivation', Psychological Review, 50(4), pp. 370–396.
Insightful article! It clearly shows how poor work design—like unclear roles and inefficient structures—can reduce productivity even with strong effort . Do you think redesigning workflows and decision-making processes is more important than simply improving individual performance?
ReplyDeleteThank you Ashan! That is a really important question. In my view, redesigning the work system itself is far more powerful than focusing on individual performance. You can have the most motivated worker on site — but if the work is poorly designed, facilities are inadequate and the job structure creates unnecessary stress, that motivation will not last long. As Hackman and Oldham (1976) showed, the characteristics of the job itself drive motivation more than individual effort alone. Improving individual performance is a short-term fix — redesigning workflows and structures is the long-term solution.
DeleteThis is a very thought-provoking blog. I particularly liked how you highlighted that employee failure is often a result of poor work design rather than individual capability. Research also supports that unclear roles, excessive processes, and weak decision structures can reduce engagement and performance . It would be interesting to explore how organisations can redesign work systems to better support both productivity and employee experience.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the thoughtful engagement. Exactly right — the system shapes the person, not the other way around. Karasek (1979) makes this point well. Redesigning work is ultimately a leadership responsibility, and organisations that treat it as such tend to see the biggest gains in both productivity and engagement.
DeleteInteresting point, when basic worker needs are ignored, poor performance should not come as a surprise. Work design that exhausts employees and denies proper conditions reflects weak management, not weak workers. How can organisations expect commitment when they fail to provide even minimum dignity at work?
ReplyDeleteThank you for this. That question answers itself — commitment is a two-way relationship. When organisations strip work down to its most exhausting and undignified form, they have already withdrawn their side of the deal. What they receive in return is the minimum required to avoid dismissal, nothing more. Dignity at work is not a reward for performance — it is the foundation that makes performance possible
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