Enriching Jobs at Standard Decoy

      In this case, it was not merely money that motivated the employees; instead job enrichment motivated them.  Prior to this program, the employees were getting bored with their work and didn't take much pride in it because their tasks weren't very meaningful and they were not even creating a whole product.  
      The "Odd Ducks" program enriched the jobs at Standard Decoy in several ways.  It gave them a chance to express their ideas and creativity about their work and gave them more autonomy by allowing them to create their own pieces of work.  This gave the workers a sense of pride and accomplishment, thus improving motivation.  The success of the "Odd Ducks" program can be explained by the Job Characteristics Theory discussed in our book. 
     This program demonstrated the five characteristics of jobs that enable the three psychological states that lead to greater worker outcomes.  First, it demonstrated skill variety; by creating their own ducks, the workers were able to use a variety of different skills and activities instead of simply working on just a small part.  This also prevented the workers from getting bored from performing the same monotonous tasks over and over.  Second, the program demonstrated task identity by allowing the workers to create a whole, tangible, identifiable piece of work that they could be proud of.  Third, the program demonstrated autonomy because it allowed the workers to work on their own individual projects and at their preferred pace.  Fourth, it demonstrated task significance because it created a market for odd ducks and the workers could sell them and collect half of the money.  Many of the workers also collaborated with others to make the odd ducks.  Lastly, the program demonstrated positive feedback from the managers, buyers, and fellow workers. 
     As the job characteristics theory points out, the existence of all five of these dimensions allows for the three critical psychological states: experienced meaningfulness of the work, experienced responsibility for outcomes of the work, and knowledge of the actual results of work activities.  Since all 5 core job dimensions were present in the "Odd Ducks" program, the workers were able to experience these psychological states, thus resulting in higher motivation, higher quality work performance, higher satisfaction with their work, and probably lower absenteeism and turnover.