HRM Essay: Analyzing Job Enrichment as a Motivation Technique

This essay delves into the concept of job enrichment as a management technique, examining whether it effectively motivates employees to work harder. It defines job enrichment and discusses its various components, such as self-directed teams and job rotation, highlighting their potential to enhance employee commitment and participation in improving productivity and quality. The essay explores how job enrichment can lead to higher employee commitment by increasing job satisfaction, variety of tasks, skills, and autonomy. It presents different perspectives and findings from various researchers on the impact of job enrichment on employee motivation, performance, and job satisfaction. The essay also acknowledges criticisms, such as potential resistance from employees who prefer more structured work environments and the possibility of job enrichment leading to work intensification rather than genuine empowerment. Ultimately, the essay concludes that job enrichment, when implemented effectively, can be a valuable tool for enhancing employee commitment and achieving organizational objectives.

Running head: HRM
Topic: Job Enrichment is Simply a Management Technique to Get People to Work Harder
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

MANAGEMENT 1
Introduction:
The essay tries to put forward an explanation on whether job enrichment is simply a
management technique to get people to work harder. Job enrichment can be defined as a
procedure of motivating the individuals such that they are able to derive increased level of
satisfaction from work (Zareen, Razzaq and Mujtaba 2013). It is believed that employees require
this at a regular basis so that they remain motivated at work. The essay will put across a
discussion on how job enrichment can lead to higher employee commitment by putting across
arguments. Job enrichment however comprises of various workplace practice that includes self-
directed team, quality circles, rotation of jobs as well as information sharing. One of the probable
motivation for the adoption of these practice lies in challenging and motivating the workers and
encouraging them towards participating in improvement of the productivity, quality and the
safety of the products. Job enrichment can however be considered as an effective management
technique that motivates the employees to work harder and enhance productivity only if it does
not interfere with the autonomy of the workers.
Discussion:
In the competitive business world of today, each and every organization has been facing
newer challenges with regard to the sustained productivity and in the creation of a committed
workforce. No single organization can perform at the peak levels until the employees remains
committed to organizational objectives. Job enrichment has thus been regarded as one of the key
tools for improving the commitment and the motivation level of the employees. It takes place
when the employer through intensification and development puts additional work on the workers
with the goal of not only making it increasingly meaningful and interesting along with enhancing
the job responsibility and challenge. Jobs are mostly enriched through motivating the employees

2MANAGEMENT
on the enhanced need for developing variety of skills on jobs. With the fast changes in the
environment along with the enhanced level of competitive rivalry, organizations are gradually
shifting from its traditional ideological orientation of overviewing money as one of the greatest
factors of motivation towards a situation where the workers still values the work, possess
increased level of control in scheduling the work and decide how best a work needs to be
accomplished that results in enhancing their self-esteem. Job enrichment allows the workers in
deriving pleasure and fulfillment of their position with larger variety of tasks as well as skills
which requires self-sufficiency. The job enrichment technique in the light of the human resource
management has been observed as dynamic process that contributes towards increasing the work
process and structures within an ambience that provides flexibility, autonomy, satisfaction and
personal growth towards workplace (Sushil 2014).
The notion of job enrichment has however been explained differently defined by different
people. But overall it indicated that job enrichment lies in making the work more enjoyable
along with building motivational elements into job. Lunenburg (2011), defined it as the strategy
of job design for enhancing the job content by incorporating into it increased level of motivating
potential. Raza and Nawaz (2011) on the other hand referred to it as the attempt of motivating
the employees by providing them with an opportunity of utilizing the abilities. Joo, Lim and Kim
(2016) however defined it as systematic technique in harnessing the work procedure and process
for stimulating the performance and the satisfaction of the employees. Nevertheless, the essence
has been in enabling the employees in building a sense of self sufficiency as well as self-
management.
It has been found that enriched jobs have various advantages to an organization and
particularly the employees. Desrumaux et al. (2015) puts forward a viewpoint that enriched job

3MANAGEMENT
remains attributed with various crucial characteristics His research helped in identifying three
basic psychological conditions for job in order to consider it as enriched. This includes
experience of the meaningfulness, experience for responsibility of the outcomes and knowledge
or feedback of the results. Barik and Kochar (2017) also indicates that the job enrichment leads
to the empowerment of employee and provides the leads with autonomy where the employees
manifest greater level of responsibility, work engagement, commitment, performance and
satisfaction thereby ensuring a feeling of belongingness. It also results in higher satisfaction level
of job in comparison to the specific jobs. On the other hand, Griffin and McMahan (2013)
mentioned that a job can be termed as enrich if it is able to fulfill five dimensions that includes
task identity, skill variety, autonomy, feedback and task significance.
Magaji (2015) undertook an assessment on the impact of the job enrichment on the
motivational aspect of the nonacademic staff in some of the private universities. The findings
revealed that there existed a positive and strong relationship between the job enrichment and the
employee motivation. On conducting an analysis, the results portrayed that the percentage level
of job enrichment leading to employee motivation accounted for 66 percent. This portrayed that
the selected staffs at the chosen universities has been highly motivated through practice of the
job enrichment. Therefore, the study concluded on the note that the human resource managers
must consider attributes, individual differences and the orientation of people towards work.
Vijay and Indradevi (2015), too conducted study on impact of the job enrichment on the
employee performance amongst faculties of a private university. This particular study too
focused on relationship between the job enrichment and the individual performance. The
findings of the study too portrayed that there existed a relationship between the job enrichment
and the performance of the individual. In addition to this, it was also found that amongst the

4MANAGEMENT
enrichment factors, task identity hugely contributed towards enhancing individual performance.
Nevertheless, an academic institution must focus primarily on providing academic freedom to
the faculties in addition to job enrichment. This will help them in utilizing the abilities and skills
for completing the task by remaining self-motivated.
Thus, enriched jobs through encouraging the workers in learning and being innovative at
work results in raising motivational potential of the work. Motivated workers are believed to
perform the task accurately and likely thereby leading to productivity innovations. During the
1980s, the theory was put to practice through re-designing the jobs, adoption of teams that are
self-managed teams and the work groups along with creation of participation program of
employees’s like the quality circles. While there has been a proliferation of the enriched jobs but
researchers have put across opposite viewpoints with regard to employee satisfaction and
motivation. Few researchers hold the viewpoint that job enrichment helps in meeting the
employee needs and contributes towards increasing the motivation potential of the work that
simultaneously helps in increasing both the effort and level of satisfaction of the workers. There
are some critics who holds the belief that degree to which job enrichment might lead to
satisfaction varies as the workers differs in the desire for working which fulfills the greater order
requirements such as intellectual challenge, autonomy or observing projects through their
completion. As age, education as well as experience might be correlated to the needs of the
higher order, the impact of the job design on the satisfaction of jobs varied with the
characteristics of the individual.
Critics however put across argument that workers might express disliking for job
enrichment for varied reasons. This is because certain employees might expresses preference for
‘Taylorist’ workplaces. Goodman (2014) observed the job design as the scientific means of

5MANAGEMENT
optimizing a problems where industrial workers studies the process of production and devised
the most effective means for breaking the process into precisely defined individual task. Hence, a
Taylorist job seems to be increasingly specialized and the workers are never encouraged towards
experimenting, innovating or undertake any kind of variation in completion of the task. The
narrowed definition of jobs within Taylorist workplace allowed employers to effortlessly define
the standard of performance and guarantee that the employees will not be allowed to participate
in the tasks that are beyond the definition of job. Here, the job enrichment is mostly accompanied
through intensification of the work. For instance, most of the examples widely reported on the
flexibility that involves the enlargement of the jobs through the addition of the further
responsibilities. Besides, as the success in enriched job does not depend on completing the
narrowly defined tasks, the security of the employment therefore becomes conditional on the
success of the market instead of the being assured by the status of the worker. Economic theorist
have led to the understanding that increasing levels of efforts is accomplished through increased
level of monitoring. The techniques of enrichment like the overall quality management can
sometimes lead to lower levels of the job satisfaction (Cheng, Mauno and Lee 2014).
Conclusion:
On a concluding note, it can be said that job enrichment represents a method for
redesigning the jobs, a technique for motivation that focuses towards making the work
increasingly interesting as well as challenging for employees. It primarily comprises of ensuring
increased level of responsibility compared to what remained applicable for the jobs originally
thereby leading to creation of opportunities for the professional recognition and growth. The
essay can thus be concluded based on the findings that the employees are vital for achieving
organizational objectives and goals and hence job enrichment that allows autonomy is able to

6MANAGEMENT
enhance the commitment of the employees towards the accomplishment of the organizational
task.
References:
Barik, S. and Kochar, A., 2017. Antecedents and consequences of employee engagement: A
literature review. International Journal of Latest Technology in Engineering, Management &
Applied Science.
Cheng, T., Mauno, S. and Lee, C., 2014. Do job control, support, and optimism help job insecure
employees? A three-wave study of buffering effects on job satisfaction, vigor and work-family
enrichment. Social Indicators Research, 118(3), pp.1269-1291.
Desrumaux, P., Lapointe, D., Sima, M.N., Boudrias, J.S., Savoie, A. and Brunet, L., 2015. The
impact of job demands, climate, and optimism on well-being and distress at work: What are the
mediating effects of basic psychological need satisfaction?. European Review of Applied
Psychology, 65(4), pp.179-188.
Goodman, G.S., 2014. School Sucks! Deconstructing Taylorist Obsessions. In Psychology in
Education (pp. 71-81). Brill Sense.
Griffin, R.W. and McMahan, G.C., 2013. Motivation through job design. In Organizational
Behavior (pp. 33-54). Routledge.
Joo, B.K., Lim, D.H. and Kim, S., 2016. Enhancing work engagement. Leadership &
Organization Development Journal.
Lunenburg, F. C. 2011. Expectancy Theory of Motivation: Motivating by Altering Expectations.
International Journal of management, Business and Administration, 2(2), pp. 45-54.

7MANAGEMENT
Magaji, N. (2015). Effect of Job Enrichment on Employee Motivation in Selected Private
universities in South-West Nigeria. Journal of Arts, Science & Commerce, 6(2), 67-75
Raza, M. A., and Nawaz, M. M. 2011. Impact of Job Enrichment on Employees’ Job
Satisfaction, Motivation and Organisational Commitment: Evidence from public sector of
Pakistan. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 23(2), pp 220-226.
Sushil, S., 2014. Job enrichment as determinant of employee engagement. Review of HRM, 3,
p.140.s
Vijay, M.V. and Indradevi, R., 2015. A study on job enrichment and individual performance
among faculties with special reference to a private university. Mediterranean Journal of Social
Sciences, 6(1), pp.252-252.
Zareen, M., Razzaq, K. and Mujtaba, B.G., 2013. Job design and employee performance: The
moderating role of employee psychological perception. European Journal of Business and
management, 5(5), pp.46-55.