How to Enrich Your Job Skills
Enriching your job skills typically enables you to advance in your career. In the 1970s, psychologists J. Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham defined a framework for job enrichment. They theorized that increasing the number of skills used on the job, performing a task from start to finish, providing a direct impact on the company’s success, making key decisions and receiving recognition contribute to job satisfaction. By enriching your job skills, you gain the experience and knowledge to expand your responsibilities in your current job, get a promotion or seek a new position in another industry or company to avoid a layoff and unemployment.
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
-
-
1
Rotate jobs in your company. Ask for the opportunity to use your skills and knowledge in a different department. By working in different parts of your company, you have the chance to meet new people, learn new techniques and gain useful perspective. For example, use your sales experience to work in the customer service department. Relate your customers’ requirements to the support staff and learn more about the complexities involved in handling customer inquiries.
-
2
Combine work tasks to make your job more challenging. For example, get permission to complete all the tasks required to produce a total product or service. By learning about each step in the process, you gain awareness about the responsibilities associated with other people in the company. If you intend to progress into a leadership role, you usually need to have a working knowledge of the entire process.
-
-
3
Volunteer for process improvement projects. These projects typically include team members from multiple organizations, including sales, marketing, development, production and support. Participating in brainstorming exercises helps you enrich your job skills and prepares you to develop innovative solutions to complex problems.
-
4
Participate in career development workshops and seminars. Take responsibility for your own learning. Set goals and objectives for your professional development. For example, use the free resources available from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s OpenCourseWare website to develop your skills and knowledge in project management, influencing skills, communication ability and effective decision making. This website provides access to course materials and references.
-
5
Contribute to strategic planning. Ask a mentor to guide you in enriching your leadership skills. Pairing senior executives with less experienced personnel enables companies to perform succession planning and ensure that as senior employees retire or leave the company, other employees have the expertise to replace them.
-
6
Accept opportunities to take on more tasks. Successful managers redistribute power and authority by delegating work to capable employees. When you accept these challenges, you assume accountability and gain the confidence to perform under pressure.
-
1
