“Pestilence is in fact very common, but we find it hard to believe in a pestilence when it descends upon us. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.” - Albert Camus, The Plague ‘COVID-19, it hit us quick, and it hit us hard’ – This pandemic sentiment is historical in modern days. Governments around the globes were forced to impose lockdowns and movement control orders to contain the outbreak. The World Health Organization (WHO) had officially declared COVID-19 outbreak as a global pandemic on March 11, 2020. Since then, COVID-19 has spread to more than 200 countries, causing more than 5 million cases and almost 400,000 mortality cases (Hiscott et al., 2020). “…..Perhaps you dislike something which is good for you and like something which is bad for you. Allah knows and you do not know.”- Al-Quran, Al-Baqarah, Verse 216 However, every crisis is dualistic in nature. In Chinese, they express the word crisis as “危机” (wēi jī), which denotes state of both danger and opportunity. The pandemic had unfolded a new horizon for individuals, organizations and government to better manage the potential downstream risks, while capitalizing on opportunities. During the pandemic, we observed the growing numbers of new working cultures and creative economic activities, which later had shaped the post-pandemic world workforce landscape and economic activity (World Economic Forum, 2020). Hence, the pandemic had served as catalyst for the emerging strategic economy.  As the new working landscape emerged, the exposure to ergonomics stressors increased. During the pandemic, most government agencies and businesses adopted work from-home (WFH) policies. Nowadays, WFH has emerged as the new mobile and non-premises working style which popular among freelancers and offers flexibility for public servants and those working in private sectors. Unfortunately, the workforce is exposed to new environment with new or different responsibilities while trying to mitigate the physical, cognitive and organizational stressors on their own. For workers that are required to return to the workplace, it will be a very challenging situation for them since they had experienced deconditioning during time away from their workplace. While for the employers, once the workplaces reopen, they are facing with employees that may have suffered reduced physical strength, diminished physiological function, and distraught cognitive state.

Post-pandemic Working Landscape

Even though the COVID-19 threat has remained, government agencies and businesses brought back their workers after critical changes on engineering aspects and work design have been made in their facilities. To empower the workforces, these are some ergonomics considerations to be and have been implemented in the post pandemic working landscape:

Figure 1: The implementation of ergonomics in empowering the workforce after COVID-19 pandemic (Sigahi et al., 2021; The Ergonomics Center, 2020).

Cognitive Issues in Industrial Revolution 4.0

The outbreak of COVID-19 emerged as we are navigating through new era of industrial revolution, the Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR4.0). This new era is marked by modern digitalized work environments where the work performance relies heavily on cognitive functioning. Cognitive function is a high mental process involving information processing for example learning, working memory, attention, and decision making. In knowledge work jobs, these demands are significant where workers are required to working with abstract knowledge, creating and applying knowledge, as well as continuous on the-job learning (Kalakoski et al., 2020). As a result, workers are exposed to cognitive-strained working conditions. This situation happens when work demands or working conditions are affecting the work performance, since they influence the workers’ ability to master cognitively demanding work tasks. If left unattended, cognitively straining working conditions will gradually impairing the workers’ cognitive functioning and task performance; the worst-case scenario they will lead to cognitive failures affecting overall performance.

Cognitive Ergonomics

Cognitively straining conditions are manageable by implementing cognitive ergonomics principles (Kalakoski et al., 2020). The aims are to reduce harmful consequences on individual employees, team members, organizations, and society. Cognitive ergonomics has its roots in the human cognitive functioning and the conditions affecting them, and on designing human-system interaction (HMI) at workspace compatible with human cognitive abilities and limitations. Engineering the human cognitive function revolve around the human factors practices improving work performance and promote beneficial well-being. In practice, the ‘cognitive engineering’ processes are by means of interventions on the interaction between work, product and environment, and human needs, capabilities and limitations based on ergonomics principles. Cognitive ergonomics theoretical foundation lies on the ‘human information-processing’ model of cognition which describes how human perceive (Perceptual Encoding), think about (Central Processing), and respond to stimuli (Responding) in the world.

Figure 2: The algorithm explaining the Human Information Processing model (Branaghan & Lafko, 2020). (This Photo (brain image) by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC)

The sensory organs such as vision, audition, and touch gather and analyse the physical characteristics of incoming stimuli. Simultaneously, perception which is the combination of knowledge and expectations from long term memory (LTM) with the sensory information are constructed. It is the perception that enable us to aware, interpret, and recognize the stimuli around us. In critical events, perception is responsible for impulsive behaviour, while during normal situations, the perceived information is thought about and manipulated, and is combined with other knowledge in working memory (WM). The ability to store instant information including perceived and activated information from LTM making the WM as a domain for various conscious processes, such as planning, understanding, decision making, visualising, rehearsing and problem solving. However, WM only able to hold information in a limited amount for a short period of time, hence if we want to keep the information remain active, we will require effortful attention. The Human Information Processing model, as sophisticated as it was designed, however, people are born with a limited pool of cognitive resources, especially working memory and attention. Hence, our cognitive system is exposed to becoming overwhelmed, ineffective, and error. These problems might not be addressed in normal daily routines, but they are virtually certain in a complex, high stress, and high consequence environment such as factory, office and healthcare service.

Cognitive Engineered Solution

Our mind is the home for task executions, in the way that our understanding of the situation goals, means, and constraints will determine the quality of tasks. Figure 3 below demonstrates the five key cognitive domains to briefly expand our understanding on our brain function.

Figure 3: The five cognitive domains which govern our thinking processes.

The previous industrial revolution amplified the human capabilities to perform physical tasks, however, as mentioned above, the era of IR4.0 is where work performance relies heavily on cognitive functioning. Hence, we are in need of cognitive engineered solution for issues of human factors & human cognition in work domain, with intent to enhance human performance. In general, cognitive engineered solution merely a term to describe application of cognitive tool and cognitive strategy in task execution. Cognitive tool in specific refers to various communication methods such as visualisations, metaphors, symbols, and hypermedia; or interactive interfaces and environments such as templates, databases, simulations, games, and collaborative media.[8] While cognitive strategy is a “procedural, purposeful, effortful, willful, essential, and facilitative” mental processes in problem solving or task execution.[9] In practice, cognitive tool and strategy as described in Figure 4 to Figure 9 are utilized in various area of business, education, politics, and industries for one sole purpose which is to improve performance.

Figure 4: Method utilizes interview and observation to capture description of knowledge used by experts to perform complex tasks (Richard E. Clark, 2007).   Figure 5: Method to assess mental capacity and task demand in achieving a certain level of performance (Cain, 2007).                                       Figure 6: Analysis tool that evaluates the internal strengths and weaknesses, and the external opportunities and threats in an organization’s environment (Sammut-Bonnici & Galea, 2015).   Figure 7: A situational analysis tool in reference to the acronym formed by the initials of the six categories of macroeconomic variables (Alanzi, 2018).

Figure 8: An acronym of a goal setting tool components to design a clear direction for action planning and implementation (Ogbeiwi, 2017).

Figure 9: A diagrammatic overview of key ideas associated with a particular topic, that indicates how the ideas relate to each other (Cañas, n.d.).

Conclusion

Thanks to the information technology revolution which took place in the last half of the twentieth century, now we have observed significant changes in the nature of task execution and work system. This dynamic situation proves that physical ergonomics alone unable to adequately address the issues related to task execution and work system. In present days working landscape, the work system and task execution rely heavily on thinking rather than doing; to be specific, they depend on the mind states rather than the body conditions. In simple analogy, body in a cocoon might be in perfect balance and without any physiological or biomechanical stresses, even so, the influence of the task execution over the mind continues and might determine the quality of performance. Globally, we are experiencing situation where the physical interaction between human and working environment becoming lessen over time, therefore, the integration of ergonomics principles into models and methods development is a must. In expressing this crucial matter, cognitive ergonomics is the answer, but we should not see it as antithetical to physical and organizational ergonomics. Rather, they should be utilized in collaborative manner in addressing, understanding, and solving the problems of work and task execution in the twentieth century.

Reference:

Alanzi, S. (2018). Pestle Analysis Introduction. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327871826 Branaghan, R. J., & Lafko, S. (2020). Chapter 120 - Cognitive ergonomics. In E. Iadanza (Ed.), Clinical Engineering Handbook (Second Edition) (pp. 847–851). Academic Press. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-813467-2.00121-8 Cain, B. (2007). A Review of the Mental Workload Literature. http://www.google.com Cañas, A. J. (n.d.). The Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How to Construct Them 1. http://cmap.ihmc.us/Publications/ResearchPapers/TheoryUnderlyingConceptMaps.pdf Hiscott, J., Alexandridi, M., Muscolini, M., Tassone, E., Palermo, E., Soultsioti, M., & Zevini, A. (2020). The global impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Cytokine and Growth Factor Reviews, 53, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cytogfr.2020.05.010 Kalakoski, V., Selinheimo, S., Valtonen, T., Turunen, J., Käpykangas, S., Ylisassi, H., Toivio, P., Järnefelt, H., Hannonen, H., & Paajanen, T. (2020). Effects of a cognitive ergonomics workplace intervention (CogErg) on cognitive strain and well-being: A cluster-randomized controlled trial. A study protocol. BMC Psychology, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-019-0349-1 Ogbeiwi, O. (2017). Why written objectives need to be really SMART. British Journal of Healthcare Management, 23(7), 324–336. https://doi.org/10.12968/bjhc.2017.23.7.324 Richard E. Clark, D. F. F. J. J. G. van M. K. A. Y. S. E. (2007). Cognitive Task Analysis. In Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology (3rd ed.). Sammut-Bonnici, T., & Galea, D. (2015). SWOT Analysis. In Wiley Encyclopedia of Management (pp. 1–8). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118785317.weom120103 Sigahi, T. F. A. C., Kawasaki, B. C., Bolis, I., & Morioka, S. N. (2021). A systematic review on the impacts of Covid-19 on work: Contributions and a path forward from the perspectives of ergonomics and psychodynamics of work. In Human Factors and Ergonomics In Manufacturing (Vol. 31, Issue 4, pp. 375–388). John Wiley and Sons Inc. https://doi.org/10.1002/hfm.20889 The Ergonomics Center, N. C. S. U. (2020). Returning to Work During COVID-19: An Ergonomics Perspective. World Economic Forum. (2020). Insight Report Challenges and Opportunities in the Post-COVID-19 World. www.weforum.org.

Prepared by:

		Nurul Izzah Abd Rahman is a senior lecturer at Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia. She holds a Ph.D. in Engineering Design from the University of Malaya and specializes in human factors and ergonomics, focusing on cognitive workload, human-computer interaction, and design innovation. Her research explores cognitive ergonomic-driven technologies (CEDT) and their impact on work performance, particularly in industrial contexts. She is also dedicated to developing environmentally conscious engineering solutions, including mechanized recycling systems and sustainable designs. As an educator, she integrates her research into teaching, encouraging creativity and practical problem-solving among students. Her collaborative efforts in EEG-based experiments aim to enhance task management tools and improve computer work-related products. Recognized for her contributions to engineering and human-centered design, she continues to inspire innovation and sustainable practices through her academic and professional endeavors. Email: izzahrahman@upm.edu.my

Tarikh Input: 25/11/2024 | Kemaskini: 20/12/2024 | azryadeny