What Is the Meaning of Job Enrichment?
The purpose of job enrichment is to improve the overall quality of the employee's job and therefore motivate the employee to accomplish more. Job enrichment allows workers to feel a sense of accomplishment for the tasks they perform and encourages a more congenial working environment. Thereby increasing job satisfaction and work output among employees.
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Definition
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Job enrichment is defined as a way to motivate employees by giving them more responsibilities and variety in their jobs. The idea was first developed by American psychologist Frederick Herzberg in the 1950s and states that a well enriched job should contain a range of tasks and challenges of varying difficulties, meaningful tasks, and feedback, encouragement, and communication. While money is one way to motivate employees more and more workers want to be appreciated for the work they do. Allowing employees to have more control over their work taps into their natural desire to succeed.
How To
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Increasing job satisfaction and performance is done by decreasing job dissatisfaction, caused by wages and working environment, and increasing opportunities for growth, responsibility and recognition for achievement. By rewarding employees you are showing them that their work matters and that you are taking note. Asking for employee input is the best way to begin implementing job enrichment techniques. Since these techniques do not work for everyone it is important that you provide workers with enrichment techniques that will be beneficial to both you and them.
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Motivation
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There are believed to be five areas that affect an employees motivation and performance in their job. Skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback are what affect job satisfaction. Skill variety refers to the different number of skills involved in performing a task, while task significance deals with an employee being able to see the end result of a task and the importance of it to the company. In addition, autonomy involves the degree of freedom, independence, and decision-making ability the employee has in performing tasks, with feedback allowing the employee to know where they are doing well and where they may need improvement.
Examples
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Techniques for job enrichment can be as varying as the company's employees, but finding the correct techniques can provide you with happier, more productive employees.
Providing feedback is one of the easiest ways to increase job enrichment. Positive feedback helps to motivate employees and allows them to know that they are performing the tasks correctly. Corrective feedback is also important because it can let the employees know what areas need improvement.
Job Rotation permits employees to move from job to job within the company allowing them to complete a variety of tasks and prevent boredom.
Job redesign matches employees with the job they like and are most qualified to perform.
Self-managed teams is a technique where workers are given a job and a set of goals and are left alone to accomplish these goals. These teams help to demonstrate the company's faith in its employees and give the employees pride in the work they achieve.
Creating a supportive corporate culture is very important to job enrichment and fosters better relations among the employees.
Conclusion
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Job enrichment is an important part of increasing job satisfaction. However, the idea behind it only works if the employee is has a desire to perform well and shake up their current routine. Some employees enjoy the menial and repetitive tasks, finding them to be relatively stress free. They would therefore not benefit from a new way of doing things. It is important to discuss the options with your employees and allow for employee feedback before implementing new enrichment techniques.
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References
- Photo Credit Three office workers image by Vladimir Melnik from Fotolia.com
