Motivation is a key principle when wanting to make your employees the most productive as possible.  As a normal employee I was often extremely motivated to perform my tasks but there were also several times when I lacked motivation and it was clear in my job performance.   Many things can cause an increase in motivation but also a decrease and one of my major factors was my job assignment and responsibilities.

The one time when I felt motivated the most was when I got a new job assignment that was different than what I would do on a daily basis.  It was a real project that I had full responsibility for.  Every day I normally deal with boxes, boxes, and more boxes except when one day came around and I got something new on my plate, I had to become an architect!  Well not exactly; let me explain. In an area in our facility there is a place called the packing station where we assemble airplane engine kits full of parts to be shipped out.  This area was in need of a new layout and a redesign.  It was my job to create a new layout that was safer and more productive.  I was extremely motivated to do this assignment because it gave me some freedom and I got to do a lot of problem solving.  I got the finished layout completed and they are currently in the process of buying the needed materials and getting it official. I really believe diverse and different job assignments can help motivate employees and it worked with me!

There are times when I get barely any motivation to do any of my assignments and this next story was probably the time I felt the most unmotivated while working for GE.  During my time at GE there was a change in the law and all items in our warehouse and alike facilities had to separate every box by the country of origin.  This caused a lot of problem within our computer system and we had a huge backup of parts that needed to be fixed.  I was given the assignment from my supervisor to write down all of the part numbers and trip numbers of about 20 skids full of parts.  Each skid had around 15 boxes on them so you can imagine how much I had to write.  I lacked motivation because the job seemed to be repetitious and didn’t acquire any knowledge from myself and that was really frustrating.  I felt I could do more than write down information.  I eventually got my job done but I was not in the best of moods.