Towards the derivation of measures to improve the intrinsic motivation and the affective commitment of employees in manual line assembly

Abstract

The demographic change in Germany, combined with a shortage of skilled workers, leads to difficulties for companies to attract potential employees. Especially future talents from Generation Z are known to set different requirements for their jobs than earlier generations, e.g., regarding personal responsibility in the execution of tasks and flexibility regarding work hours. This poses challenges for companies in the manufacturing industry with monotonous tasks such as work in manual assembly lines. Hence, improving workplaces and tasks is a strategic challenge for companies in the manufacturing industry to increase the attractiveness of their jobs for future talents. Factors like the workers’ motivation will play a significant role in achieving the goal of an improved attractiveness of companies’ jobs. So far, research has focused on work motivation and single organizational measures to improve intrinsic work motivation and affective commitment. However, no concept has been developed to strategically choose improvement measures specifically for workplaces in companies that use manual assembly lines. Therefore, this article presents the concept of a methodology to be developed for managers who strive to improve the intrinsic motivation and the affective commitment of their employees. The concept presented in this contribution contains three steps: analyzing the actual work organization to point out deficits, identifying and choosing potential measures from a catalog, and evaluating those measures regarding strategic and economic aspects. The concept aims at the improvement of work motivation and affective commitment of the workers.