Job enrichment is a human resource management aimed at boosting employee motivation by redesigning jobs to include more complex, challenging tasks. These expanded responsibilities often require higher skill levels and may lead to increased compensation.

Origin

Frederick Herzberg, an American psychologist, originally developed the concept of 'job enrichment' in 1968, in an article that he published on pioneering studies at AT&T. The concept stemmed from Herzberg's motivator-hygiene theory, which is based on the premise that job attitude is a construct of two independent factors, namely job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction.

  1. Turn employees' effort into performance:
  2. Ensuring that objectives are well-defined and understood by everyone. The overall corporate mission statement should be communicated to all. Individuals' goals should also be clear: each employee should know exactly how he/she fits into the overall process and be aware of how important their contribution is to the organization and its customers.
  3. Providing adequate resources for each employee to perform well. This includes support functions like information technology, communication technology, and personnel training and development.
  4. Creating a supportive corporate culture. This includes peer support networks, supportive management, and removing elements that foster mistrust and politicking.
  5. Free flow of information. Eliminate secrecy.
  6. Provide enough freedom to facilitate job excellence. Encourage and reward employee initiative. Flextime or compressed hours could be offered.
  7. Provide adequate recognition, appreciation, and other motivators.
  8. Provide skill improvement opportunities. This could include paid education at universities or on the job training.
  9. Provide job variety. This can be done by job sharing or job rotation programmes.
  10. It may be necessary to re-engineer the job process. This could involve redesigning the physical facility, redesign processes, change technologies, simplification of procedures, elimination of repetitiveness, redesigning authority structures.
  11. Link employees performance directly to reward:
  12. Clear definition of the reward is a must
  13. Explanation of the link between performance and reward is important
  14. Make sure the employee gets the right reward if performs well
  15. If reward is not given, explanation is needed
  16. Make sure the employee wants the reward. How to find out?
  17. Ask them
  18. Use surveys (checklist, listing, questions). Once you know what the employees want, give them the tools they need to earn it and follow through on your word.

Versus job enlargement

Job enrichment can be contrasted to job enlargement which simply increases the number of tasks without changing the challenge. Job enrichment is seen as a vertical job restructuring technique where the focus is on giving the employee more authority, independence, and control over the manner the activity is completed. On the other hand, job enlargement is seen as a horizontal restructuring technique where the focus is merely increasing the number of assignments but does not change the overall authority, autonomy, and control of the projects. Job enlargements impact on the work environment is not always the most positive due to the fact that it is largely just an increase in work for the employee and not really a step up in responsibility. Job enrichment on the other hand is a very motivational technique in the management world. The act of enriching an employee's job not only is a sign of respect but it also shows that the employer actually cares about the employee as a person. This creates a desire for the employee to want to pay the employer back in the form of hard work, loyalty, and dedication the company.

See also

  • Sociotechnical systems
  • Two factor theory

References

Literature

  • Brookins, M. (n.d.). The Advantages & Disadvantages of Job Enrichment. Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantages-disadvantages-job-enrichment-11960.html
  • Feder, B.J. 2000, "F.I. Herzberg, 76, Professor And Management Consultant", New York Times, Feb 1, 2000, pg. C26. Available from: ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851–2003). [28 October 2006].
  • Hackman, J.R. & Oldham, G.R. 1976, 'Motivation through the design of work: Test of a Theory”, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, [Online], vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 250–279. Available from: Science Direct. [1 November 2006].
  • Mione, P. 2006, " Job Enrichment", Online paper. Effects : boredom, lack of flexibility, employee dissatisfaction
  • Wall TD, Wood SJ, Leach DJ. (2004). Empowerment and performance. In Cooper CL, Robertson IT (Eds.), International review of industrial and organizational psychol-ogy, Volume 19. London: Wiley.
  • What is job enrichment? (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/job-enrichment.html