Behaviour and Motivation — Page 180, Lesson 290

I want to walk you through the topic of motivation and job satisfaction, specifically how we measure it and what we can do to improve it in an aviation workplace. Let’s start with job satisfaction itself. Job satisfaction is measurable — we don’t just guess at it. It’s assessed through specially designed questionnaires and interviews. And it’s recognised that there are many factors which may influence an individual’s overall attitude to the job. These include, among others, financial rewards, management policies, colleagues, the working environment, the nature of the task, and so on. So it’s a broad picture, not just one thing. Now, when we want to increase job satisfaction, there are two main tools we use: job enrichment and job enlargement. Let me define each precisely. Job enrichment mainly involves active participation of staff in policy and the decision-making process concerning their work. So it’s about giving people a real say in how things are done. For example, airline cabin crew are involved in decisions as to the timing of meals and menus served on board company aircraft. Or flight crews take an active part in the layout of flight instruments used on aircraft in the fleet. That’s job enrichment — you’re not just doing the task, you’re helping shape the rules and design around it. Job enlargement is different. Job enlargement increases the number and variety of tasks — that’s called horizontal enlargement — or it increases an employee’s control of the routine planning of his or her task — that’s vertical enlargement. So horizontal means more tasks at the same level; vertical means more authority over how you plan and organise your own work. A good example of horizontal enlargement is the delegation by a Commander of an aircraft of some of his or her tasks to the First Officer. So the First Officer gets more tasks to do, but at a similar level of responsibility. An example of vertical enlargement would be aircrew actively involved in their own rostering — they’re not just told their schedule, they help plan it. That figure shows the basic model of motivation, which underpins all of this. So we have a clear distinction: enrichment is about involvement in policy and decision-making; enlargement is about increasing the range of tasks or the control over planning. Both are tools to increase job satisfaction, but they work in different ways. That covers the key ideas here.