Learning from Employee Perceptions of Human-Work and Work-Organization in Digitized Production-Drilling Activity in Mines

Abstract

This paper discusses workers’ perception of human-work and work-organization in a digitized production-drilling activity in mines and its associated learning that could lead to the creation of harmony between the technical and the social system in the design of the mining-work environment. Underlined by the systemic structural activity theory, data was collected in a digitized mine through interviews and observations of workers engaged in production drilling activities. Using the systemic analytic approach, the workers’ perceptions of their digitized-world of work were analyzed functional. It was found that the workers perceive the mutuality of the exchanges, interactions, and understanding with the human-work and work organization design as lacking quality inputs from them, but which knowledge remains tacit and are not shared. It is concluded that by understanding workers’ perception of the human-work and work-organization designs of their autonomized work environment, an optimized work-system, entailing sociotechnical systemic characteristics can be formulated.