About the size of it… Andrew Chick | Senior Communications Advisor
W
hen you’re up against entrenched staffing shortages and battling to keep your head above water, job-sizing can be a useful way of matching staffing levels to service requirements. “Between MECA negotiations, job sizing is one of the most important things we do. It is a great organising opportunity and can give members a renewed sense of control over their work,” says ASMS Senior Industrial Officer Henry Stubbs. Clause 13 of the DHB MECA is the job sizing clause. It states any employee’s hours of work and job size “shall objectively reflect the requirements of the service and the time reasonably required for the employee to complete their agreed duties and responsibilities, as set out in their job description”. It is a provision that has been there since the first DHB MECA was negotiated in 2003. Importantly, the clause also says that a job size must be “mutually agreed” between employer and employees – neither can unilaterally change it. And the words “objectively” and “reasonably” mean the conclusion of any job sizing can be evaluated by a third party – it is not just a negotiation. “A mechanism that gives that kind of shared control over work and workloads is unusual for collective agreements in this country, let alone what most working people on an individual employment agreement experience,” says New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Legal Advisor Gayaal Iddamalgoda.
14 THE SPECIALIST | MARCH 2022
A mechanism that gives that kind of shared control over work and workloads is unusual for collective agreements in this country.
“Despite any ups and downs in actually doing job sizing, ASMS members should recognise the strength this job sizing process gives them and the level of high-engagement it encourages.” There is at least one job sizing review going on in most of our DHBs at any given time. Henry Stubbs says requests for job sizing have come up from groups of members when services feel they are under particular pressure. “As we see more and more pressure on DHBs, we have seen increasing demand for job sizing. But job sizing should be under regular review in all services for all DHB members.”
Job sizing should be under regular review in all services for all DHB members.
Valuable process Job sizing can take several months to complete.
ASMS Senior Industrial Officer Lloyd Woods says firstly all members of the team need to get together for the initial exercise, then review what they come up with, before finally presenting it to management. Management then has time to respond. “It is the best tool we have to increase staffing levels, but it can be a very slow process. Sometimes it can be fast but not often,” Lloyd says.
It is the best tool we have to increase staffing levels.
Henry agrees that despite the time commitment, job sizing is incredibly valuable. “To have an accepted process to objectively define how much work is required to do your job – agreeing on that is a massive step in tackling the endemic problems of excessive workload.” That said, a job-sizing exercise does not always result in a recommendation for more SMOs. “It can be more registrars, more nurse specialists or more administration,” says Lloyd. “And, even where it is more SMOs, it can be impossible to recruit. Then it can become a very challenging question of the size of the service being delivered and having to reduce that.”
