Job enrichment can be defined as a process of designing a job to make it more interesting and challenging by adding more responsibilities and various motivators to it. It can be advantageous to an organization when it is effectively implemented as it improve the quality of work that can raise employees motivation and lead to high performance and productivity.
What is job enrichment?
Job enrichment is a process of adding tasks, responsibilities and varieties to an existing job in order to make it more meaningful and satisfying to the employees.
Job enrichment involves increasing of the range of tasks and responsibilities to a job, this process is also known as job enlargement. But also, it involves additional of various motivators to a job like providing employees with autonomy, feedback, flexibility, skill varieties, challenges, and full control of their work.
The process of enriching the jobs aims at:
- Increasing job satisfaction and motivation
- Improving work quality
- Increasing engagement
- Avoiding monotony and boredom
Hackman and Oldham proposed the five job characteristics that make a job more meaningful and satisfying. According to Hackman and Oldham’s Job Characteristics Model the characteristic of motivating job are skilled variety, task identity, task significant, autonomy and feedback.
- Skill variety: Involvement of tasks that require various skills to accomplish.
- Task identity: An identifiable work with the visible outcomes.
- Task significance: How a job is significant and how it impacts the life of people inside and outside of an organization.
- Autonomy: Full control of work and freedom of making decisions as well as freedom of accomplishing the tasks using various methods.
- Feedback: Commenting on the employees performance and telling them areas where they need to improve.
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Techniques of job enrichment
There are numerous techniques of enriching jobs, below are some techniques or methods of job enrichment.
- Providing employees with autonomy (freedom) and flexibility
- Giving employees challenging tasks and new responsibilities
- Providing employees with increased level of decision making and more control of their work
- Giving feedback
- Increasing skill variety
- Providing opportunities for personal growth
- Creating task identity
- Enhancing task significance
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Advantages of job enrichment
Both employees and organization can benefit from job enrichment, below are some advantages of job enrichment.
Increases satisfaction and motivation
Adding varieties to a job can boost employees working morale, which can also lead to high level of performance.
Brings sense of accomplishment
When employees accomplish challenging tasks that they thought they are difficult for them to do, may build confidence into them and give them sense of accomplishment.
Lowers turnover
Since job enrichment aims at creating meaningful work to motivate the employees, this can help reducing turnover and absenteeism in an organization.
Helps employees to learn new skills
Job enrichment can involve additional of new tasks to an existing job, this means that the employees are going to perform tasks that they are not familiar with, in this case they can acquire new skills.
Improves performance and productivity
Implementing job enrichment like adding motivators to a job can boost employees working morale that can result to high performance and productivity.
Increases creativity
Providing employees with challenging tasks, freedom and more control of their job can help them come up with creative ideas and be productive.
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Disadvantages of job enrichment
Despite of advantages it offers to both employees and organization, job enrichment has some pitfalls too. The following are disadvantages of job enrichment.
May lead to overloading and stress
If job enrichment not implemented effectively, the additional tasks and responsibilities may overwhelm employees and may result to dissatisfaction, stress and potential burnout.
May mismatch the employees preference
Not every employee prefers additional of tasks or to be assigned with challenging works, thus job enrichment may demotivate some employees.
Barriers to implementation
Some barriers like organizational system (such as technical HR, control, and supervisory systems) may limit the process of job enrichment. According to Job Enrichment: A Practical Guide + 13 Examples by AIHR -"Negotiations with labor unions and changes to job descriptions may be required, complicating the process."
Time consuming and costly
Training employees may be necessary in order to make them able to handle new tasks and responsibilities effectively, since they don't have right skills required to perform those tasks. This can consume time and cost some money to prepare training programs.
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How to implement job enrichment
According to Job enrichment by Pelago, there are a six key steps for building an effective job enrichment system which are:
1. Define the job responsibilities and objectives.
2. Assess the worker’s skills and abilities.
3. Match the worker’s skills and abilities to the job responsibilities and objectives.
4. Modify the job to better match the worker’s skills and abilities.
5. Train the worker on the new job responsibilities and objectives.
6. Monitor the worker’s performance on the new job responsibilities and objectives.
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Job enrichment vs job enlargement
Job enrichment and job enlargement have been confusing most of people as they can't differentiate them. It's true that these terminologies are relating to some extent since both are the methods of job design and aim at raising employees motivation as well, but these two terminologies are different.
Job enrichment involves addition of tasks and varieties to a job. While job enlargement focuses only on addition of tasks to a job. Further more, job enlargement is one of techniques of job enrichment.
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