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Introduction How it all began? Job design and job enrichment How to implement job enrichment? Why participate in job enrichment? Employees perceptions on job enrichment Examples of enrichment programs Conclusions References
Introduction
In todays increasingly changing world both employers and employees are trying to find ways to make jobs more meaningful and satisfying. One of the ways to do this is to redesign jobs to better meet new requirements. Redesigning has several different characteristics but in this paper I will concentrate on job enrichment. Enrichment and employee empowerment belong together. Enrichment means making jobs more satisfying by increasing the skill variety, task identity, significance of the task, autonomy and feedback from the work itself and so forth. Empowerment on the other hand is letting the workers do their jobs in the way they themselves see best.
certain factors seemed to make workers unsatisfied with their work. These factors seemed to directly relate to the employee's environment such as the physical surroundings, supervisors and even the company itself. Baced on these findings Herzberg developed a theory and named it the "Hygiene Theory." According to his theory, for a worker to be happy and therefore productive, these environmental factors must not cause discomfort. Although the elimination of the environmental problems may make a worker productive, it will not necessarily motivate him. The question remains, "How can managers motivate employees?" Many managers believe that motivating employees requires giving rewards. Herzberg, however, believed that the workers get motivated through feeling responsible for and connected to their work. In this case, the work itself is rewarding. Managers can help the employees connect to their work by giving them more authority over the job, as well as offering direct and individual feedback. In 1975, Hackman and Oldham proposed another popular model of job enrichment that they call the Job Characteristics Model. In this model, the degree to which jobs are motivating can be assessed through five core job characteristics: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and job feedback, all of which are characteristics that Herzberg might have termed "motivators". Skill variety is defined as the degree to which a job requires a variety of different skills to be completed. Task identity is the degree to which the job requires completion of a number of whole, identifiable pieces of work. Task significance is the extent to which a job has a meaningful impact on other jobs in the same workplace. Autonomy is the limit to which a job provides substantial freedom, independence and discretion, and job feedback is the degree to which carrying out work activities produces direct and clear information about the performance of an individual. Hackman and Oldhams research led to the conclusion that "to the extent that a job contains these five characteristics, three psychological states are produced: experienced meaningfulness of the work, experienced responsibility for outcomes of the work, and knowledge of the actual results of the work activities. To the degree that these psychological states are present, high internal work motivation exists.
Sociotechnical Systems Model o Considers linkages between people with various competencies and the tools, techniques, and knowledge used to produce goods and services. Job enrichment itself consists, according to Herzberg, of the following things: Removing some controls while retaining (and increasing) accountability for the outcome. Each employee should be assigned with a complete unit of work that should have a clear start and end point. If a worker always performs just the same bit of work he cant identify with it and his motivation becomes lower. If possible the workers should be granted additional authority and freedom. For example they might take some responsibilities away from their managers and thus they would control a larger part of their work. Herzberg also suggests that periodic reports should be made available to the workers rather than just to the supervisors. This implies that when you know more about the functioning of your company you are more likely to be interested in your particular job and how it affects the company in whole. Also when the workers are ready new and more difficult tasks can be introduced into the job and they can be encouraged to develop expertise by assigning individuals to specialized tasks.
Employee receipt of direct feedback o Helps employees to know whether their performance is improving, staying at the same level or deteriorating.
generalist and includes such responses as "re-education, in-depth exploration, using special skills, meeting a need that was under-served, and renewing old skills." When the interviewees were asked to identify those areas they considered disadvantages, the following three terms best summarized their collective comments: Balance, Clarity and Orientation Balance was an especially important issue for those who did not have full time job enrichment experiences. They had to deal with their regular assignment as well as their new responsibilities. Indicators of this issue include such comments as "time allocation, tough decisions about work load, taking time away from regular assignments and balancing the work load." Clarity refers to lack of information needed to be successful in the job enrichment experience. "New relationships, new processes and procedures, lack of clear plans and goals, and guidance in using time" were some of the terms used by respondents. Orientation refers to a lack of structured introduction for the special assignment. There was some overlap with the clarity issue mentioned above. But responses such as "being introduced, taught new responsibilities, learning new networks, and lack of instructions" were underscored as "sink or swim" approaches that some experienced in their special assignment.
Conclusions
Employers often use in their speeches the clich that workers are our most important asset without doing much to improve working conditions and the motivation of employees to do their best for the organization. In todays fast changing environment employees are faced with increasing demands from various sources. Also with the rising level of education employees arent anymore satisfied with repetitive, not meaningful, tasks. Job enrichment offers a good way to increase the variety of work and to motivate employees to truly commit themselves for the benefit of the whole organization. In increasingly competitive environment, management finds that the best way to achieve corporate goals is to work together with the persons who are closest to the actual work. Companies that implement programs that enhance employees knowledge, abilities, and experience and allow them to apply these new skills in their work will be profitable in the future.
References
Bohlander, Snell, Sherman Managing Human Resources South-Western College Publishing 12th Edition p. 99 Cummings T, Worley C. Organization Development and Change South-Western College Publishing 7th Edition p. 347 Hahnel R; Peters C. What might work look like? (balanced job complexes) Dollars & Sense, Nov 2000 p20 http://www.accel-team.com/human_relations/hrels_05_herzberg.html http://www.accel-team.com/work_design/wd_02.html http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/1650/hackmanoldham.htm http://www.itbp.com/hrm/iebm/job_design.htm http://www.pathmaker.com/resources/leaders/herzberg.asp http://www.southwestern.edu/~froelick/fob2.html http://www.unm.edu/~hravp/cardev/job.htm http://mars.wnec.edu/~achelte/grad7outline.htm