About 11 years ago, I stepped into what seemed like a dream role – except it wasn’t.
I’d just led a major transformation project at a university, collaborating across departments and delivering meaningful impact. The change project had just ended and I was excited to join a new, specialist talent and capability function at the university led by a recently appointed director, tasked with shaping leadership and talent strategy. On paper it looked like the perfect next step. My personal confidence and commitment to the university was high.
But within months, my excitement had faded. I felt flat, underconfident, and uninspired. I couldn’t understand why. Today, with the benefit of distance, experience and research, I can explain what went wrong: my new role simply wasn’t Smart enough.
Introducing Smart work design
Most of us know what poor work feels like – whether it’s being disengaged, overwhelmed or disconnected. But it can be hard to articulate why a job doesn’t feel right.
That’s where Smart work design comes in. Developed by Professor Sharon Parker, the Smart model gives HR professionals and leaders a practical framework for understanding the elements that make work energising, engaging, and sustainable.
Read more: Our work paradox: why HR is solving everything – except work itself (part one)
Drawing on decades of work and job design research, the Smart model highlights five critical ingredients of good work:
● Stimulating: Work that provides variety, challenge, and opportunities to learn and grow.
● Mastery: Clear goals, regular feedback, and understanding how our work has impact and purpose.
● Autonomy: Control over how, when, and where we work.
● Relational: Meaningful social connections and a sense of making a difference to others.
● Tolerable demands: Workload and emotional demands that are manageable and sustainable.
When these five elements are present, work energises us. When they’re missing, even a role that looks great on paper can leave us feeling drained, disengaged, and full of self doubt.
My personal lesson
Looking back on my associate HR director role through the Smart lens, it’s easy to see why I struggled:
● Stimulating: I expected challenge and strategic input. Instead, I was writing policies and taking notes. The work felt routine rather than rewarding.
● Mastery: I assumed I’d be helping shape strategy. But my manager viewed the role as operational support. I felt underused and overlooked.
● Autonomy: I had previously worked independently, but now every task came with step-by-step direction. It felt limiting, not liberating.
● Relational: Previously, I thrived through campus-wide collaboration. In this new structure, my manager held the key relationships. My influence and visibility shrank.
● Tolerable demands: The workload itself was manageable but I was also adjusting to new parenthood. The absence of energising factors felt even more noticeable.
None of these issues alone would have derailed me. But the accumulation of small design flaws across the Smart elements left me doubting myself, and ultimately fuelled my decision to leave.
Read more: Beyond burnout: How HR can help build better jobs (part two)
How HR can help
This isn’t a story of managerial failure; my manager had their own vision and priorities. The issue was that we lacked a shared language to surface and align expectations.
With the Smart framework, we could have opened up a shared conversation about role expectations; explored opportunities for autonomy, growth, and connection; and co-created a role that matched both strategic needs and personal strengths.
That’s the opportunity for HR leaders today. We can use Smart principles to:
● Diagnose roles: Help managers explore these five elements with their teams, and identify how we can help them thrive.
● Embed into informal check-ins and regular reviews: We’ve worked with organisations to incorporate Smart into performance check-ins and reviews.
● Enable managers: Equip leaders with an understanding of the importance and power of the Smart framework; it can help to spot when disengagement and underperformance is a design issue, rather than a personal one.
A call to action
Sometimes, it’s not the person, it’s the work.
By embracing Smart work design, HR can help leaders shift from firefighting burnout to proactively creating roles where people thrive.
The future of work depends not just on filling jobs, but on designing work that energises, engages and endures.
In the next, and final, article in this series, we’ll explore how and where HR can design work that fits the future of work.
By Rob Baker, founder of the Tailored Thinking consultancy
This is the third of a four-part series. Read the rest of the series here.
