That was the title of my previous position. Basically, this job is about providing information and assistance to the flying public. This post is not to be confused with that of a call center agent though the outcomes are like the element of face-to-face exchanges being the key difference. Agents at the front counter assist passengers with check-in; issue tickets and resolve some ticket issues: give flight information and check baggage. Similarly, agents at boarding gates: check boarding passes; issue upgrades and reissue tickets on overbooked flights. Depending on either weather or safety reasons mostly, this work can either be routine or stressful.
Job enrichment entails redesigning jobs to ensure that the employee has more challenging duties and to minimize repetitive duties. According to Lussier (2008), this simply entails incorporating motivators into the job. For instance, the manager can delegate more duties to the customer service agents to make the job more satisfying for the latter. On the other hand, Pride, Hughes & Kapoor (2010), note that job enlargement is the expansion of the agent’s assignments by incorporating additional but similar tasks. For illustration, the front desk agents can switch to the gate and vice versa, the obvious benefits here being increased flexibility and reduced monotony.
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Cross-functional teams describe organizational teams of members of the same hierarchical level but from different areas (Lussier, 2008). Naturally, these agents have first-hand interactions with the flying public, therefore, their inclusion in such teams should provide rich insights into passenger sentiments. In so doing, their presence benefits both the company and the passengers. According to Pride et.al (2010), employee empowerment is about increasing the degree of autonomy and responsibility for decision-making concerning certain organizational tasks. This should allow lower-level employees to exercise decision-making based on their unique view of the problems and issues facing the organization at their level.
Advancing this notion further, Lussier (2008) illuminates the various approaches to employee empowerment. Here, he notes that there are three, namely: socio-cultural; critical and psychological. Pride et.al (2010), argue that because it increases their level of ownership, employee empowerment can increase both commitment to organizational goals and productivity. This implies that a well-managed employee empowerment approach should, among other things, foster better ownership of organizational goals and productivity.
That said, the design dimensions are not without distinct disadvantages. For instance, employee empowerment can lead to inefficiency when the decisions are neither standard nor optimized towards organizational goals (Lussier, 2008). Similarly, cross-functional teams need longer to create adequate cohesion due to the variance of both experience and backgrounds of the different team members. Again, job enrichment requires the development of such a program while the lack of qualitative change is a significant contributor to its disadvantages along with the cost of training (Pride et.al 2010). Largely, all the design aspects considered here have unique inherent drawbacks that must also be considered. However, with appropriate planning and management, the drawbacks mentioned can be mitigated against or overcome entirely.
The nature of work gradually makes jobs less interesting to employees because once they exhaust the novelty, motivation becomes a challenge. Therefore, it is my suggestion that all jobs should incorporate the design elements discussed herein. For instance, Pride et.al (2010) suggest that cross-functional teams could be essential in the quickly evolving business world. Therefore, despite the drawbacks of the design dimensions considered above, it remains essential for organizations to have these dimensions in mind. Rationally, however, it is possible that some jobs will not require such considerations as they will not achieve significant improvement. For instance, there are people who would lose job satisfaction once a job enrichment program is implemented.
References
Lussier, R. N. (2008). Management fundamentals: Concepts, applications, skill development . Mason, OH: South-Western/Cengage Learning.
Pride, W. M., Hughes, R. J., & Kapoor, J. R. (2010). Business . Australia: South-Western/Cengage Learning.
