Job Enrichment

Definition: The Job Enrichment is the job design technique used to increase the satisfaction among the employees by delegating higher authority and responsibility to them and thereby enabling them to use their abilities to the fullest.

In other words, job enrichment is the opportunity given to the employees to explore their abilities when some tough task is assigned to them. The job enrichment is the vertical restructuring of moral excellence in which more authority, autonomy, control is given to the employees to perform a given set of a job. This concept is in contrast to the job enlargement which considers the horizontal restructuring, where more and more tasks get added, and the challenge remains the same.

Thus, job enrichment is characterized by the different range of tasks and challenges having varying levels of difficulties. The organization can realize benefits through this job design technique in any of the following ways:

• With an increase in the employee morale, the more motivated, he gets to produce top results and hence, the profitability of the firm increases.
• When the employees bear more responsibility for their work and results, it becomes quite easy for the organization to operate.
• By giving authority to the employees to perform higher level jobs, the company is preparing its employees to occupy those high-level positions in the near future.
• Also, with the job enrichment, the number of levels in the management may reduce, thereby minimizing the complexity of the organization.

The purpose behind the job enrichment is to motivate the employees to use their abilities which remained unused during their course of action. Also, through job enrichment, the monotony breaks and the employees get the opportunity to do something new, which ultimately results in the increased satisfaction levels.