The first intervention is the JDS we discussed previously. I mention this here as this is often the starting point of any enrichment intervention. These interventions should be aimed at jobs with low motivating potential scores. Creating natural work units. The formation of natural work units is about grouping interrelated tasks together. This creates ownership of the tasks and allows the employee to see the result of their work, leading to an increase in ownership, task identity, and perceived task significance.
Combining tasks. Divided jobs can be put together to create broader, more rewarding jobs. Separate tasks were combined so that each operator would completely assemble, inspect, and ship a hotplate.
This meant that each assembler could identify with a finished product and self-inspect it, leading to greater task significance, autonomy, and feedback.
Quality circles. Quality circles, or Kaizen groups, are groups of employees who regularly meet to consider ways of resolving problems and improving productivity in their organization. These small groups increase participatory management and lead to more task identity and autonomy.
Suggestion programs. In line with quality circles, Employee Suggestion Programs ESP encourage employees to offer suggestions that improve the performance and quality of their work. Sometimes cash awards are awarded for employees whose ideas are implemented or result in savings or revenue. Task teams. A task team, task force, or task group is a unit established to work on a single defined task or activity. Originally introduced by the United States Navy, it is now used in business settings as well.
Similar to the quality circle, a group of employees works together to come up with improvements related to a specific business activity, often overseen by a manager. The simple act of giving regular feedback may be the easiest job enrichment intervention of them all.
Autonomy is another key part of the motivating potential of a job. Any intervention that can increase autonomy will lead to an increase in motivating potential. Examples include being able to determine when one takes a break or being made responsible for a project or process. Deci and Ryan propose that motivation is created through three drivers, a need for autonomy, a need for competence, and a need for relatedness.
A purpose for doing the work can help in creating relatedness to the work. A clearly stated and identifiable purpose will increase task significance. Establish client relationships. Another job enrichment intervention is to establish client relationships. When jobs are split up, workers have little to no contact with, or knowledge of, the ultimate user.
By establishing client relationships, the task identity and task significance are increased. First, the client must be identified. Second, the contact between the worker and the client needs to be as direct as possible. Vertical loading. Vertical loading may be the most crucial job enrichment and design principle.
A job that is vertically loaded has responsibilities and a large degree of control that was formally reserved for management. This greatly increases autonomy. Vertical loading is often lost when a mistake is made. At this point, a supervisor steps in and removes the responsibility, leading to lower vertical loading and a decrease in autonomy. Horizontal loading. Horizontal loading is also referred to as job enlargement.
As you can tell job enrichment gives a great deal of freedom to the employee. But with this increase of freedom, comes an increase in individual responsibility. For some workers this will be great, and for others, not so much. Here are some of the reasons why you might want to try out job enrichment:. Learn new skills — With a successful job enrichment strategy in place, the employee is likely to have greater opportunities to learn and develop new skills.
The employee will also have a chance to increase knowledge in pre-existing areas of skill. Reduce boredom — As has been discussed, job enrichment enhances the challenges and interest associated with a job role.
It then follows that boredom will be negated as the job becomes more enriched. Creates a better, more positive workplace — Job enrichment strategy has a good association with creating a positive work environment.
A positive workplace has a bi-directional relationship with engagement and motivation. The more positive a workplace, the more engaged the workforce. The more engaged the workforce, the more positive the workplace. Reduces absenteeism — Why would you not want to come to work if you actually enjoyed it?
By making word more interesting and engaging, employees are more likely to come in. Boosts motivation and engagement — By making tasks interesting and challenging, employees will become more engaged with their work. Further as a by-product of creating a more positive workplace, employees will not only enjoy their work, but enjoy being at work with their colleagues!
When it comes to employee engagement , how can you utilise job enrichment to profit from more employee engagement. Not only is overall performance improved, but a clearer picture emerges of individual differences and potential. So long as a foundation of new job opportunities available to all is firmly established, there is no harm in restricting certain changes to the more senior of the jobholders.
This is a very different matter from introducing changes selectively in the first place. It is a way of providing scope for personal advancement within the job and recognizing the achievements of those who build well on the foundation of opportunity already provided. Individual reaction to job enrichment is as difficult to forecast in terms of attitudes as it is in terms of performance.
Those already genuinely interested in their work develop real enthusiasm. Not all people welcome having their jobs enriched, certainly, but so long as the changes are opportunities rather than demands, there is no reason to fear an adverse reaction.
If someone prefers things the way they are, he merely keeps them the way they are, by continuing to refer matters to his supervisor, for example.
Again, there is nothing lost. On the other hand, some of the very people whom one might expect to duck their chance seize it with both hands, developing a keenness one would never have anticipated. In attitudes as well as in performance, the existence of individual differences is no bar to investigating the possibilities of job enrichment.
Can you enrich jobs without inevitably facing demands for higher pay or better conditions to match the new responsibilities? In no instance did management face a demand of this kind as a result of changes made in the studies. It would seem that changes in working practice can be made without always having a price tag attached.
Here, as in the matter of operational risk, what is surprising in practice is easily explicable in terms of theory. The studies demonstrate again that, when presented with an opportunity for achievement, people either achieve something or they do not; when allowed to develop, they either respond or stay as they are.
Whatever the result, it is a self-contained experience, a private encounter between a person and his task. It is something quite separate when the same person becomes annoyed by his poor working conditions, worries about his status or security, or sees his neighbors enjoying a higher standard of living.
The cause-effect relationship between hygiene and motivation scarcely exists. Motivation is not the product of good hygiene, even if bad hygiene sometimes leads to sabotage. Higher pay may temporarily buy more work, but it does not buy commitment. Nor does commitment to a task, by itself, bring demand for better hygiene.
Managers often complain of their lack of room for maneuver. In doing so, they are generalizing from the rules of the hygiene game to the total management situation. There is little evidence that the workforce in fact prostitutes its commitment to a task, although incentive bonus schemes, productivity bargaining, and the like assiduously encourage such prostitution.
Before the process goes too far, it seems worth exploring more fully the room for maneuver freely available on the motivator dimension.
This is not to say, however, that the motivators should be used as an alibi for the neglect of hygiene. If people genuinely are achieving more, taking more responsibility, and developing greater competence, that is no reason to take advantage of them for a short-term profit. Yes and no. We have to define our terms.
So far as the process of job enrichment itself is concerned, experimental constraints in the studies dictated that there could be no participation by jobholders themselves in deciding what changes were to be made in their jobs. The changes nevertheless seemed to be effective. On the other hand, when people were invited to participate—not in any of the reported studies—results were disappointing.
In one case, for example, a group of personnel specialists suggested fewer than 30 fairly minor changes in their jobs, whereas their managers had compiled a list of over much more substantial possibilities. It seems that employees themselves are not in a good position to test out the validity of the boundaries of their jobs. So long as the aim is not to measure experimentally the effects of job enrichment alone, there is undoubtedly benefit in the sharing of ideas. Our experience merely suggests that it would be unwise to pin too many hopes to it—or the wrong hopes.
Participation is sometimes held, consciously or unconsciously, to be an alternative to job enrichment. Instead of passing responsibility down the line and possibly losing control, the manager can consult his subordinates before making a decision, involve them, make them feel part of the team.
It all seems to be a matter of degree, after all. Participation, in this sense of consultation, is seen as a safe halfway house to job enrichment, productive and satisfying to all concerned.
Better decisions result, especially in problem-solving meetings that bring together colleagues or opponents in different roles or functions. But in the specific context of the management of subordinates, it is worth asking who is motivated in this kind of participation.
The answer would seem to be the person who needs a second opinion to make sure he comes to the right decision—the manager in fact. The subordinate does not have the same professional or work-inspired need for the encounter, for he is not the one who has to live with responsibility for the decision. However well-intentioned, this halfway-house kind of participative management smacks of conscience money; and receivers of charity are notoriously ungrateful. In the case of professional staff it is downright patronizing, for the subordinate is paid to offer his opinion anyway.
Theory clarifies the position. It is not a matter of degree at all. The difference between consultation and enrichment is a difference in kind. Consultation does not give a subordinate the chance for personal achievement which he can recognize; through involvement, it subtly denies him the exercise of responsibility which would lead to his development, however humbly, as an executive in his own right.
Far from being the best route to motivational change, this kind of participation is a red herring. It is hygiene masquerading as a motivator, diverting attention from the real problem. It may help to prevent dissatisfaction, but it does not motivate. The laboratory technicians, sales representatives, design engineers, and foremen did indeed participate, but not in a consultative exercise designed to keep them happy or to help their managers reach better decisions.
Nor was it participation in ambiguity—an all too common occurrence in which, although no one quite knows where he stands or what may happen, the mere fact of participation is supposed to bring success. The participation of employees involved in the studies consisted of doing things which had always previously been done by more senior people. In all cases consultation continued, but now it was consultation upward. In consultation upward there is no ambiguity; tasks and roles are clear. Both parties are motivated, the subordinate by the need to make the best decision, to satisfy himself, to justify the trust placed in him, to enhance his professional reputation; the manager by the need to develop his staff.
When design engineers consulted their more senior colleagues, it was on questions of technical difficulty, commercial delicacy, or professional integrity—all more to the point than the mere price of a piece of equipment. Foremen consulted their managers on unusual budgetary worries, or the personnel department on tricky disciplinary problems.
Sales representatives consulted headquarters on matters such as the stock position on a certain product before negotiating special terms with a customer. Participation is indeed the best route to motivational change, but only when it is participation in the act of management, no matter at what level it takes place. And the test of the genuineness of that participation is simple—it must be left to the subordinate to be the prime mover in consultation on those topics where he carries personal responsibility.
For the manager, as for the subordinate, the right to be consulted must be earned by competence in giving help. Therein lies the only authority worth having. In view of so many possible difficulties in the way, are the gains to be expected from job enrichment significant or only marginal?
We believe the gains are significant, but the evidence must speak for itself. In all, people were in the experimental groups in the studies described. Contrary to expectation, the gains, initially at least, seem to relate primarily to performance.
Wherever a direct measure of performance was possible, an immediate gain was registered. Elsewhere there seemed to be a more gradual improvement; if anything it gained momentum through the trial period.
We have no evidence to suggest that performance gains, once firmly established, are not capable of being sustained. In the short term, gains in job satisfaction would seem to be less spectacular.
Attitudes do not change overnight. Satisfaction is the result of performance, not vice versa, and there is a long history of frustration to be overcome. When direct measurement of job satisfaction was possible, the most significant gains seemed to come when the trial period was longest. There is every reason to think that in the long term attitudes catch up with performance and that job enrichment initiates a steady and prolonged improvement in both. But though supervision may become redundant, supervisors do not.
Fears of loss of authority or prestige were never realized. Far from their jobs being impoverished, supervisors now found that they had time available to do more important work.
Fears that the supervisor may somehow miss out are based on the premise that there is a finite pool of responsibility in the organization which is shared among its members. In practice new higher-order responsibilities are born. It soon becomes apparent to all concerned that to supervise people with authority of their own is a more demanding, rewarding, and enjoyable task than to rule over a bunch of automatons, checking their every move.
The main consequence is that management becomes a service, its purpose to enable, encourage, assist, and reinforce achievement by employees. In task organization two complementary criteria emerge: 1 tasks have to be authentic—i. In task support, factors such as company policy and administration, technical supervision, interpersonal relations, and working conditions all have to be pressed into the service of the motivators. Control of the job is achieved by providing people with the tools of their trade, with the information they require, with training as appropriate, and with advice when sought.
The job itself becomes the prime vehicle of all individual development, of which management development is only one kind. In aiding the process of development, our starting point, as always, is problem diagnosis—in this case, assessment of individual abilities, potentials, and needs. When people are underemployed, we have no way of distinguishing between those who are near the limit of their abilities and those who have a great deal more to contribute.
All too often, potential has to be inferred from risky and subjective judgments about personality. Such judgments, once made, tend to be static; people become categorized. The studies show that when tasks are organized to be as authentic and motivational as possible, management receives a more accurate and a continuing feedback on individual strengths and weaknesses, ability, and potential.
If you think you should have access to this content, click to contact our support team. Contact us. Please note you do not have access to teaching notes. Other access options You may be able to access teaching notes by logging in via your Emerald profile. Abstract People have been complaining about work ever since it was invented.
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