PSYCH 658 Week 6 Designing a Motivation Intervention Example

A Job Crafting Program for Warehouse Staff and a First-Ninety-Days Plan for Volunteers: Designing and Testing a Motivation Intervention

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

PSYCH/658: Work Motivation and Job Attitudes

Week 6 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The food bank, its staff, volunteers and the intervention are composites written for a model paper; theories and research findings come from the sources listed.

Everything learned about our staff and volunteers over five weeks now feeds one intervention.

The Problems to Address

Five weeks of analysis surfaced several patterns. Need theories showed that growth and belonging matter to staff and volunteers alike. Process theories showed that clear goals, believable rewards and fairness raise effort. Job design and self-determination research guided the sorting pod redesign, which raised satisfaction and retention. The staff survey showed drivers staying mainly because leaving is costly, and coordinators burning out under record demand. Two problems remain: many staff outside the sorting pods have little say in how their jobs are designed, and about half of new volunteers do not return after their first shift.

Goals

The targets are modest on purpose, in line with what engagement research says such programs can achieve.

The intervention aims to raise staff engagement by at least 0.3 points on a five-point scale within six months and to raise the share of new volunteers who complete three or more shifts within ninety days from about forty-eight percent to sixty percent.

Part One: Job Crafting for Staff

Rather than redesigning every job from the top, the intervention invites staff to shape their own work. Tims et al. (2013) studied employees who engaged in job crafting by increasing their structural resources, such as autonomy and opportunities to develop, and social resources, such as support and feedback, and by seeking challenges. Over two months, employees who crafted their jobs by increasing resources showed increases in those resources, which in turn related to higher engagement and job satisfaction and lower burnout. Crafting aimed at reducing hindering demands showed weaker effects.

The program includes three ninety-minute workshops over six weeks for each work group, warehouse, drivers and office. In the first, staff map their jobs, identifying tasks that energize and drain them. In the second, each person writes two or three crafting plans, such as a driver arranging to spend time at a partner pantry or a warehouse associate learning inventory software. In the third, groups share progress and adjust. Supervisors attend a separate briefing on supporting crafting plans.

Part Two: The First Ninety Days for Volunteers

For volunteers, the intervention borrows from socialization and self-determination research. Every new volunteer is assigned to a named crew lead who greets them by name, introduces them to a regular crew and follows up after the first shift. A visible skills ladder lets volunteers progress from packing to quality checks to shift captain, supporting competence. Monthly impact notes report how many families their crew's shifts served, making task significance visible, and volunteers choose their shift days and roles, supporting autonomy.

Half of new volunteers never came back after one shift; the plan is built around making the second shift feel like returning to a crew.

What Evidence Says About Effect Sizes

Knight et al. (2017) meta-analyzed interventions designed to increase work engagement, including personal resource building, job resource building, leadership training and health promotion. Overall effects on engagement were small to moderate, and group-based interventions produced larger effects than individual ones. Effects on some engagement components were stronger than others, and many studies had methodological limits. The finding sets realistic expectations: a modest rise in engagement would be a success.

Why a Proactive Approach

Oldham and Fried (2016) reviewed the history and future of job design research, from the job characteristics model to social and contextual features of work, and highlighted the growing importance of proactive approaches in which employees shape their own jobs, as well as attention to changes in work such as technology and flexible arrangements. They argued that combining top-down redesign with bottom-up crafting may suit modern organizations best.

Our sorting pods were top-down; the job crafting program adds the bottom-up half.

Anticipating Barriers

Three barriers seem most likely. First, workload: staff stretched by record demand may see workshops as one more demand, so sessions are scheduled during slower afternoons and kept to ninety minutes. Second, supervisors may treat crafting plans as complaints or as threats to their control; their separate briefing explains that crafting usually raises engagement without reducing output and that plans stay within the job's core requirements. Third, volunteers' crew leads may burn out like the coordinators did; each lead mentors no more than five new volunteers at a time, and the coordinators check in with leads monthly.

How the Parts Fit the Course

Each component draws on a course theory. The crafting workshops apply job design and self-determination ideas from the bottom up, giving staff autonomy over how their work is arranged. The volunteer path applies need theories, belonging and growth, and makes task significance visible as the job design research recommends. Clear progress steps on the volunteer skills ladder borrow from goal setting, and the attention to fair distribution of crafted tasks reflects equity concerns. The evaluation applies the course's emphasis on measuring attitudes and engagement over time rather than assuming that a well-meant program works.

Ethics and Voluntary Participation

Participation in crafting workshops is voluntary and occurs on paid time. Crafting plans must not shift unwanted work onto coworkers; supervisors and groups review plans for fairness. Volunteer measures use existing scheduling data and anonymous surveys.

Implementation and Cost

The program is deliberately small enough to run with existing staff.

Workshops will be run by me and a trained HR partner from a corporate volunteer group, at a cost of about $4,000 for materials and staff time. Crew leads for volunteers come from experienced volunteers, with recognition and a small training stipend. Scheduling software from the burnout response supports volunteer tracking.

Evaluation

The intervention will roll out in a staggered way: warehouse staff and new volunteers in the first quarter, drivers and office staff in the second, allowing comparison between groups that have and have not yet started. Outcomes include engagement and satisfaction surveys at baseline, three months and six months, voluntary turnover, volunteer return rates and volunteer satisfaction. Process measures include workshop attendance, the share of staff with crafting plans, supervisor follow-up and the share of new volunteers contacted after their first shift. If engagement rises less than 0.1 points and volunteer return rates do not improve, the intervention will be considered unsuccessful and redesigned.

Reflection on the Course

This course gave me a way to see the food bank's motivation problems as connected: needs, goals, fairness, job design, attitudes and energy all shape whether people show up and give their best. The most useful lesson was that structure, how work is designed and how rewards and roles are arranged, often matters more than exhortation.

Conclusion

A job crafting program for staff and a structured first ninety days for volunteers, grounded in research on crafting, engagement interventions and job design, offers a practical next step. A staggered evaluation with realistic expectations will show whether it works.

References

Knight, C., Patterson, M., & Dawson, J. (2017). Building work engagement: A systematic review and meta-analysis investigating the effectiveness of work engagement interventions. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 38(6), 792-812. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2167

Oldham, G. R., & Fried, Y. (2016). Job design research and theory: Past, present and future. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 136, 20-35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2016.05.002

Tims, M., Bakker, A. B., & Derks, D. (2013). The impact of job crafting on job demands, job resources, and well-being. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 18(2), 230-240. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032141