The Role of Job Enrichment: MGMT 8050/7050 Essay Analysis

This essay delves into the concept of job enrichment as a management technique, critically analyzing whether its primary function is simply to make employees work harder. It examines arguments both supporting and contradicting this statement, considering factors like individual employee needs, operational risks, resistance to responsibilities, and skill gaps. The essay draws on various scholarly sources to explore job enrichment's impact on job redesign, employee motivation, and overall organizational performance. It discusses the significance of task enrichment, the role of job rotation, and the influence of motivational theories, such as Herzberg's, to provide a comprehensive understanding of job enrichment's multifaceted nature. The analysis concludes that job enrichment encompasses more than just increasing workload, also aiming to make jobs more engaging and fulfilling, and to foster employee career development and skill enhancement. The essay provides a critical perspective on the statement that job enrichment is solely about increasing work output, suggesting that it is a more complex process with a broader impact on the workplace.

Running head: MANAGEMENT OF PEOPLE AT WORK
Management of people at work
Name of student
Name of University
Author note

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Table of Contents
Introduction..............................................................................................................................3
Body...........................................................................................................................................3
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................6
References.................................................................................................................................6

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Synopsis
Management of people is one of the main challenges in the business settings. The
people hail from different socio-cultural backgrounds, which results in conflicts and
differentiation of opinions. Along with this, the working conditions are improper, which
affirm the hygienic factors, highlighting the dissatisfaction of the employees. At this stage,
job enrichment finds its relevance, on which the essay is based. In the discussion,
contradictions have been proposed for the statement question regarding the basic essence of
job enrichment. The basis of the contradiction is specific individual needs of the employees,
high operational risks, resistances towards the allocated responsibilities and the lack of
essential skills.

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Introduction
The essay emphasized on the concepts of job enrichment managed by the business
organisations to make the employees work harder and commit to the organisational roles and
responsibilities. However, this is always not a case, because the job enrichment, as a
management technique offers other functions and approaches too such as redesigning the job
roles and responsibilities and even making the employees acquire the desired sets of skills
and knowledge to handle challenging situations experienced. Thus, the employees have been
more consistent with the extra efforts put by them to accomplish the more responsibilities
than just what the job enrichment actually meant to be. The essay would include some major
arguments made by the authors to support the statement, both on a positive note as well as on
a negative note. Furthermore, analyse the case scenario more critically to prove the validation
of the statement.
Body
According to Duffield et al. (2014), the management technique for the enrichment of
jobs at the organisations has been relevant to the power of personal satisfaction and also by
using the major motivators of job to drive redesigning of the job and delivering a better
performance. While this has been closely related to the management of people to work harder
and accomplish the additional roles and responsibilities allocated to the, the management
technique has brought benefits for both the organization as well as he individuals working at
the companies (Vijay, & Indradevi, 2015). The enrichment of job represents adding some
extra features and additional tasks for a prescribed job and then driving the behaviours of the
employees of the organisation to work harder and commit themselves fully towards the
accomplishment of the goals and objectives in a prominent manner. On the other hand, Uduji
(2013), argued the fact that the job enrichment is much more beyond the simple management

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technique adopted by a company to make people work harder, rather it represented the
redesigning of job and even keep the staffs motivated at work so as to make the work a bit
more interesting and challenging for them within the workplace. It has also been related to
the assessment of various factors that could contribute to the motivation of people while even
redesign the job for meeting the needs and preferences of the employees (Uduji, 2013). There
has also been active connection between the background from which, the employees belong
along with the skills with the occupational characteristics, which made them adopt to certain
level of the job enrichment technique. Additional to the encouragement of people to work
harder, the job enrichment has also facilitated the significance of tasks for the employees as
well as created some significant impact on the organization as well as the various
stakeholders involved with the company (Parker, 2015).
As stated by Trivellas, Reklitis & Platis (2013), the enrichment of job has been
implemented by the organization’s management department so as to facilitate the behaviours
of employees and make them identify the tasks as well as their roles and responsibilities
properly. The management technique has also been effective for allowing the employees to
gain a greater sense of skills and capabilities that are essential for performing various tasks in
different ways (Trivellas, Reklitis & Platis, 2013). It has been possible with the help of
managing training sessions and by understanding their needs of development, which
furthermore, lifted their morale and allowed them to feel more interested to work for the
organisation.
The enrichment of jobs, as part of the management technique revolving around he
management of human resources within a workforce, as stated by Aina & Omoniyi (2014),
helped in improving the performances of employees through job autonomy, better
organisational support and with the help of training programs. Contrary to the statement, it
has been argued by Helali & Dastranj (2014), that the job enrichment also resulted in

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enlargement of jobs, i.e., improved the task complexity through application and delivery of
more tasks provided to the employees, which created a complex and challenging situation
too. Often the employees might feel bored to do the same work repeated number of times and
thus with the addition of new tasks, they would feel that those additional tasks are not much
challenging than the existing ones, rather the sense of novelty would make their needs and
preferences fulfilled as a whole. Though it might always not be true as the extra work
allocated to the employees might result in draining their energy resources, still the
management of workload and enrichment of job would keep them focused on attaining more
benefits to work harder too (Griffin & McMahan, 2013). The job rotation has also been a
major aspect of job enrichment, which has allowed the employees to try out different types of
jobs for shorter period of time and try to focus on handling challenging tasks more often. This
has made them more ambitious and focused on their goals and objectives through acqusitions
of more skills, knowledge and expertise and kept them satisfied too (Zareen, Razzaq &
Mujtaba, 2013).
As per the arguments of Hbr.org, (2020), motivation makes the aspect of job
enrichment something more than moulding the people to undertake hard work. In this
context, the masterpiece of Frederick Herzberg, One More Time: How Do You Motivate
Employee, finds its relevance. In this book, he proposes certain principles of job enrichment,
where efficiency and satisfaction attains an important position. According to Herzberg, these
elements are something, which ensures scope for personal development. In this context,
Boxall and Huo, (2019) is of the view that motivation increases the quest and thirst of the
people to work harder than their usual pace. Countering this, () adds an interrogative
parameter to the propositions of Herzberg. The basis of this counter arguments are generality,
feasibility and the resultant consequences, which highlight the hypothetical situations, arising
in the context of people working in different workplace settings. Here, () states that

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motivational techniques, rewards and recognitions also differs according to the need and
intellectual level of the employees.
In terms of the feasibility, Cote, (2019) brings the issue of intensified operational
risks, which reveals the uncertainties in terms of the efficient execution of the
responsibilities. Here, one of the relevant aspects is that of the resistances towards the
allocated roles and responsibilities, which contradict the aspect of “enrichment” from the jobs
or employment as whole. Delving deeper into the issue, these uncertainties also nullifies the
process of motivating the employees. This nullification also nullifies the outcome assessment,
as negative outcomes are inevitable. According to Putri and Setianan, (2019), job enrichment
is based on the right approach of the workers towards practical application of the knowledge
towards undertaking effective decisions. On the contrary, Bargsted, Ramírez-Vielma and
Yeves, (2019) is of the view that most of the employees lack the basic skills of problem
solving, which intensifies the complexities in the decision making process.
Thus, from the analysis of all these information and data, it has been understood that
the job enrichment is not just simply the management technique to make the employees of the
organization work harder, but also more about making them feel more interested with their
job roles and responsibilities, make their job roles less boring and more enjoyable,
furthermore, become self-driven and aim at enhancing the production level of the
organisation (Barati & Oreyzi, 2016). It has also made them focus on the development of
their career while even acquire the good scopes and opportunities to develop in their career,
thus become more skilled and knowledge to progress in their professional lives too in the
future. Therefore, the statement is not entirely true and sometimes, seemed a bit
contradictory, because the enrichment of job has much more to do beyond the regular
management techniques to make people work harder within the organizations (Duffield et al.,
2014).

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Conclusion
The essay initiates on the question regarding the basic functionality of job enrichment
in terms of the workplace settings. Explorative research has been conduct to find out that job
enrichment is one of the techniques used for making the employment standards more
interesting and challenging for the employees. There are various techniques, which work
towards motivating the employees like rewards, promotions, appraisals, recognition.
However, resistances to the offered roles and lack of essential skills add an interrogative
parameter to the aspect of enriching the jobs. This resistance aggravate and intensifies the
complexities in the organizational processes, contradicting the unity and integrity.

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References
Aina, O. O., & Omoniyi, A. T. (2014). The effect of job enrichment schemes on selected
construction workers in Nigeria. Organization, Technology & Management in
Construction, 6(1), 345-368.
Barati, H., & Oreyzi, H. (2016). Relations of leadership empowerment behavior and job
enrichment with career satisfaction: The mediating role of intrinsic
motivation. Contemporary Psychology, Biannual Journal of the Iranian
Psychological Association, 11(1), 63-74.
Boxall, P., & Huo, M. L. (2019). The theory of high-performance work systems. In Elgar
Introduction to Theories of Human Resources and Employment Relations. Edward
Elgar Publishing.
Cote, R. (2019). Motivating Multigenerational Employees: Is There a Difference?. Journal of
Leadership, Accountability and Ethics, 16(2), 50-140.
Duffield, C., Baldwin, R., Roche, M., & Wise, S. (2014). Job enrichment: creating
meaningful career development opportunities for nurses. Journal of nursing
management, 22(6), 697-706.
Griffin, R. W., & McMahan, G. C. (2013). Motivation through job design. In Organizational
Behavior (pp. 33-54). Routledge.
Hbr.org (2020). Job Enrichment Pays Off. Retrieved 11th April 2020 from
https://hbr.org/1969/03/job-enrichment-pays-off
Helali, F., & Dastranj, F. (2014). How could you use the ergonomic checkpoints for job
enrichment in an ‘appreciative way’in industrial of industrially developing countries?.
In International Symposium on Human Factors in Organisational Design and

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Management (ODAM) 46th Annual Nordic Ergonomics Society (NES) Conference:
17–21 August 2014 Copenhagen, Denmark: 17/08/2014-21/08/2014.
Parker, S. K. (2015). Job design. Wiley Encyclopedia of Management, 1-5.
Putri, W. H., & Setianan, A. R. (2019). Job enrichment, organizational commitment, and
intention to quit: The mediating role of employee engagement. Problems and
Perspectives in Management, 17(2), 518.
Trivellas, P., Reklitis, P., & Platis, C. (2013). The effect of job related stress on employees’
satisfaction: A survey in health care. Procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 73, 718-
726.
Uduji, J. I. (2013). Job enrichment: a panacea to the problem of the demotivated marketing
executives in the banking industry in Nigeria. California Management Review, 16,
57-71.
Vijay, M. V., & 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), 252-252.
Zareen, M., Razzaq, K., & Mujtaba, B. G. (2013). Job design and employee performance:
The moderating role of employee psychological perception. European Journal of
Business and management, 5(5), 46-55.