Shahbazi, B; Akbarnezhad, A; Rey, D; Ahmadian Fard Fini, A and Loosemore, M (2019) Optimization of job allocation in construction organizations to maximize workers' career development opportunities. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 145(6): 04019036, ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
Workforce planning in the construction industry too often ignores the symbiotic relationship between employee and employer objectives by overly concentrating on corporate objectives such as maximizing productivity at the expense of construction workers' career development needs. Overall, the consequence of this approach is suboptimal performance. To address this problem, this paper presents an innovative multiobjective model that enables managers to optimize the relationship between these interdependent corporate priorities. The proposed model was implemented and solved using mixed-integer nonlinear programming on a case study involving the allocation of tasks to employees with different skill levels in a multidisciplinary engineering consulting company. While leading to a small loss of productivity, the results show a significant improvement in the career development of workers compared to conventional productivity-oriented workforce planning models, with on average 8.6% improvement in employees' closeness to their ideal skill set. Furthermore, the model produced Pareto-optimal points and a Pareto curve that enabled client-model users to select optimum job allocation based on their preferences. This research represents a paradigm shift toward a new class of socially responsible workforce planning models in which the objectives of both employees and employers are optimized.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | career development opportunity; human resource management; job allocation; mathematical optimization modeling |
| Index terms: | case study, construction organization, productivity, workforce planning, paradigm, construction worker, modelling, construction industry, manager, human resource management, programming, career, preference |
| Subjects: | professional development, decision-making and reasoning, management, education and knowledge transfer, industry analysis, practitioner, programming, organization, data collection methods, analytical methods |
| Topics: | Engineering Principles, Information Management, Research Practice, Business Strategy, Roles and Professions, Human Resources, Digital Applications |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTE |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here