Job enrichment is an attempt to motivate

Motivation

Motivation is the driving force by which humans achieve their goals. Motivation is said to be intrinsic or extrinsic. The term is generally used for humans but it can also be used to describe the causes for animal behavior as well. This article refers to human motivation...

 employees by giving them the opportunity to use the range of their abilities. It is an idea that was developed by the American psychologist

Psychologist

Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...

 Frederick Hertzberg in the 1950s. It can be contrasted to job enlargement

Job enlargement

Job enlargement means increasing the scope of a job through extending the range of its job duties and responsibilities generally with in the same level and periphery. This contradicts the principles of specialisation and the division of labour whereby work is divided into small units, each of which...

 which simply increases the number of tasks without changing the challenge. As such job enrichment has been described as 'vertical loading' of a job, while job enlargement is 'horizontal loading'.
An enriched job should ideally contain:

• A range of tasks and challenges of varying difficulties (Physical or Mental)
• A complete unit of work - a meaningful task
• Feedback, encouragement and communication

Techniques

Job enrichment, as a managerial activity includes a three steps technique:

1. Turn employees' effort into performance:

• Ensuring that objectives are well-defined and understood by everyone. The overall corporate mission statement
  Mission statement
  A mission statement is a statement of the purpose of a company or organization. The mission statement should guide the actions of the organization, spell out its overall goal, provide a path, and guide decision-making...
  
   should be communicated to all. Individual's goals should also be clear. Each employee should know exactly how he/she fits into the overall process and be aware of how important their contributions are to the organization and its customers.
• Providing adequate resources for each employee to perform well. This includes support functions like information technology, communication technology, and personnel training and development.
• Creating a supportive corporate culture. This includes peer support networks, supportive management, and removing elements that foster mistrust and politicking.
• Free flow of information. Eliminate secrecy.
• Provide enough freedom to facilitate job excellence. Encourage and reward employee initiative. Flextime or compressed hours could be offered.
• Provide adequate recognition, appreciation, and other motivators.
• Provide skill improvement opportunities. This could include paid education at universities or on the job training.
• Provide job variety. This can be done by job sharing
  Job sharing
  Job sharing is an employment arrangement where typically two people are retained on a part-time or reduced-time basis to perform a job normally fulfilled by one person working full-time. Compensation is apportioned between the workers, thus leading to a net reduction in per-employee income...
  
   or job rotation programmes.
• It may be necessary to re-engineer the job process. This could involve redesigning the physical facility, redesign processes, change technologies, simplification of procedures, elimination of repetitiveness, redesigning authority structures.

2. Link employees performance directly to reward:

• Clear definition of the reward is a must
• Explanation of the link between performance and reward is important
• Make sure the employee gets the right reward if performs well
• If reward is not given, explanation is needed

3. Make sure the employee wants the reward. How to find out?

• Ask them
• Use surveys( checklist, listing, questions)

Literature

• Feder, B.J. 2000, "F.I. Herzberg, 76, Professor And Management Consultant", New York Times, Feb 1, 2000, pg. C26. Available from: ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2003). [28 October 2006].
• Hackman, J.R. & Oldham, G.R. 1976, 'Motivation through the design of work: Test of a Theory”, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, [Online], vol. 16, no. 2 , pp. 250-279. Available from: Science Direct. [1 November 2006].
• Mione, P. 2006, " Job Enrichment", Online paper.

See also

• Job enlargement
  Job enlargement
  Job enlargement means increasing the scope of a job through extending the range of its job duties and responsibilities generally with in the same level and periphery. This contradicts the principles of specialisation and the division of labour whereby work is divided into small units, each of which...
  
  
• Socio-technical systems
  Socio-technical systems
  Sociotechnical systems in organizational development is an approach to complex organizational work design that recognizes the interaction between people and technology in workplaces. The term also refers to the interaction between society's complex infrastructures and human behaviour...
  
  
• Sociotechnical systems theory
• Two factor theory
  Two factor theory
  The states that there are certain factors in the workplace that cause job satisfaction, while a separate set of factors cause dissatisfaction...