Interpersonal service support based on employee's activity model

Abstract

To improve the productivity of services and satisfy both customers and employees, the activity support by means of IT systems is effective. However, it is rather difficult to support employees' activities in interpersonal services such as nursing care with IT systems. One of the main reasons is that they are required to respond to requests from customers or coworkers flexibly and their activity cannot be described in a formal and sequential manner. To develop a effective system to support such activities, analysis on triggers to perform tasks, criteria to prioritize them, and concrete means to perform them are necessary. However, there are few methods to determine which aspects of employee's activities should be supported in a simple manner. In this report, the authors propose an employee's activity model and its usage for the support of interpersonal services. In addition, the authors introduce an example case of activity analysis and support planning of a nursing care service by means of the proposed model. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.