THE IMPORTANCE OF NEW WAYS OF WORKING TO INFLUENCE WORKFORCE AGILITY IN THE MANUFACTURING SECTOR – A PANDEMIC OF COVID-19 LEARNING

• Main Author: Cicilia Pembayun N C, Fransiska
• Format: Theses
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/72735
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

The manufacturing sector is one of the prominent sectors in the world as it can produce products in large quantities and strives for efficiency in the production process to fulfil human needs in any situation. The performance of manufacturing as the prominent sector decreased because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, from the historical data, the manufacturing sector can survive the business in a devastating environment despite the pandemic of COVID-19. The question remains whether new ways of working take part in this agile behaviour of manufacturing employees in adapting to such a situation. Even so, what kind of new ways of working could be implemented in manufacturing since this sector has a specific processing system from input to output? This study aims to find the relevance between new ways of working and workforce agility and provide some preliminary guidelines to practitioners in manufacturing on how to deal with employees even in a destructive environment. Implementing new ways of working practices in manufacturing varies since manufacturing has primary and support activities. First, this study elaborates on the definition of new ways of working and the feasible practices that could be implemented in manufacturing. They are ICT, professional autonomy, flexible work time, physical workplace, and flexible workplace. This study uses proactivity, adaptivity, and resilience as the constructs for workforce agility. And for psychological empowerment, the constructs are meaning, competence, self- determination, and impact. Second, to build the conceptual model, this study uses the triadic reciprocal of social cognitive theory to find the relevance of new ways of working and workforce agility. Furthermore, based on previous studies, psychological empowerment plays an important part in implementing new ways of working regarding employee sustainability as a human being who needs intrinsic motivation. After the conceptual model was built based on the literature, this study surveyed 355 manufacturing employees in Indonesia. It used SEM-PLS to determine the relationship between new ways of working and workforce agility. The critical criteria of the respondents are they should work in the manufacturing sector and implement new ways of working for at least two years. The results indicate that NWW has a positive effect on Workforce Agility. At the same time, psychological empowerment also plays a role in mediating the relationship between new ways of working and workforce agility. However, the core process of the manufacturing industry is primary activities. Hence, for comparison, this study also analyses the hypotheses for data with respondents who work in primary activities only. The second analysis also shows that the proposed model is supported. But the results show that flexible working time becomes attention to the manufacturing industry in implementing new ways of working. This study contributes theoretically to the manufacturing industry in new ways of working and workforce agility. And for the practitioner's contribution is about how important the implementation of new ways of working for manufacturing is to attain its agility, particularly in the human factor. Thus, manufacturing will know that implementing new ways of working is not only to cope with the pandemic of COVID-19 but making pandemic of COVID-19 became a learning for the manufacturing industry to prepare their workforce for any destructive situation.