- Job enrichment
Job enrichment is an attempt to motivate employees by giving them the opportunity to use the range of their abilities. It is an idea that was developed by the American
psychologist Frederick Herzberg in the 1950s. It can be contrasted tojob enlargement which simply increases the number of tasks without changing the challenge. As such job enrichment has been described as 'vertical loading' of a job, while job enlargement is 'horizontal loading'.An enriched job should ideally contain:
* A range of tasks and challenges of varying difficulties
* A complete unit of work - a meaningful task
* Feedback, encouragement and communicationTechniques
Job enrichment, as a managerial activity includes a three steps technique:Fact|date=January 2008
1. Turn employees' effort into performance:
* Ensuring that objectives are well-defined and understood by everyone. The overall corporatemission statement should be communicated to all. Individual's 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 contributions are to the organization and its customers.
* Providing adequate resources for each employee to perform well. This includes support functions like information technology, communication technology, and personnel training and development.
* Creating a supportive corporate culture. This includes peer support networks, supportive management, and removing elements that foster mistrust and politicking.
* Free flow of information. Eliminate secrecy.
* Provide enough freedom to facilitate job excellence. Encourage and reward employee initiative. Flextime or compressed hours could be offered.
* Provide adequate recognition, appreciation, and other motivators.
* Provide skill improvement opportunities. This could include paid education at universities or on the job training.
* Provide job variety. This can be done by job sharing or job rotation programmes.
* 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.2. Link employees performance directly to reward:Fact|date=January 2008
* Clear definition of the reward is a must
* Explanation of the link between performance and reward is important
* Make sure the employee gets the right reward if performs well
* If reward is not given, explanation is needed3. Make sure the employee wants the reward. How to find out?Fact|date=January 2008
* Ask them
* Use surveys( checklist, listing, questions)Literature
*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, [http://edweb.sdsu.edu/people/ARossett/pie/Interventions/jobdesign_1.htm" Job Enrichment"] , Online paper.References
See also
*
Job enlargement
*Socio-technical systems
*Sociotechnical systems theory
*Two factor theory
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