Episode 142: How To Make Jobs More Satisfying and Motivating

Do you have a dull job?  Wonder how it can be made more motivating?  That's the challenge - how can we make jobs that are typically not much fun (like an assembly line job) more interesting to do?  This is one of the challenges facing I/O psychologists and in this episode I discuss the Job Characteristics theory by Hackman and Oldham and apply it to assembly line jobs in China where your iPhone is made and where a record number of suicides have occurred over the past few years. Can we use job redesign to make such jobs more tolerable?  1 Million Workers. 90 Million iPhones. 17 Suicides. Who’s to Blame?