Prayers for the World of Work:
Roles and Functions

• Directors, Managers and Shareholders
• Workers: professional, skilled and unskilled
• Porters, Caretakers, Catering staff
• Market Research and Product Design
• Logistics and Asset Management
• Marketing and Sales
• Personnel and Finance
• Operations
• Trainees, Apprentices, people on work-experience
• Risk Management and New Technology
• Quality Assurance and Standards
• Those who take decisions about staff redundancy
• Legal specialists

Right across industry and commerce there are people with recognisably the same functions. They involve professional skills and experience that people may take from one employer to another, or even from one industry to another.

Not all these functions are represented everywhere; for example, product design is not likely to figure in the work of support and care services - at least, not in the same way as it does in aeronautical engineering. Nevertheless, in relation to the enterprise as a whole, the function can be identified; the product may actually take the form of a service, such as a home help care package. Like the aircraft, it has to be designed in accordance with customer needs and with regard to such constraints as the overall business plan and relevant legislation.

This first cycle of prayers attempts to address these functional roles within any business or public sector organisation.