People Management Human Resources Development

Job enrichment: The key to unlocking employee motivation

November 19, 2024

Can your employees not wait to get out of bed in the morning to come to work?

If the answer is yes, then one thing must be true: your employees must genuinely value their work and find it meaningful, which is the core idea behind job enrichment.

‘Enriching’ a job role involves increasing task variety, adding new responsibilities, and boosting autonomy to achieve higher levels of employee satisfaction.

This is because job satisfaction is intrinsically tied to employee motivation.

Even if your team members make incredibly high salaries, they aren’t immune to burnout. Well-paid employees can still become dissatisfied and disengaged if their work isn’t:

Challenging
Meaningful
Empowering

As I’ve explored in a previous article, golden handcuffs can cause employees to feel trapped in high-paying jobs, even though they no longer find their work engaging or motivating.

While these employees won’t leave their jobs due to the perks (hence the name Golden Handcuffs), the quality of their work (and well-being) will suffer.

In addition to factors like money and benefits, employees need to feel that their work contributes to their personal growth.

Otherwise, they’re just going through the motions to survive.

In this article, I’ll explore the concept of job enrichment, including its potential benefits when implemented, so stay tuned!

The concept of job enrichment

Job enrichment involves adding unique motivators to existing positions to improve employee engagement and quality of work (i.e., better productivity and efficiency).

These motivators can take on several forms, including:

Adding additional responsibilities and challenging tasks
Improving task variety to combat monotony (which is job enlargement, but more on this in a bit)
Teaching employees new skills
Giving employees more autonomy (i.e., letting them perform managerial tasks without getting permission first)
Redesigning jobs based on employee feedback

These are all effective ways to make an employee’s job more meaningful, vastly improving your overall employee experience.

In the not-so-distant past, employers believed that money was the strongest motivator for workers to give their all, so raises and benefits were their primary incentives.

Yet, as explained in the intro, this led to the golden handcuffs phenomenon, where workers feel obligated to stay at their jobs due to the benefits but are still very unhappy and disengaged.

Employers discovered that other factors motivate employees to work hard, and they stretch beyond simply making more money.

Job enrichment addresses this flaw and provides a solution by making jobs more fulfilling, engaging, and impactful.

The origin of job enrichment

Job enrichment as a concept first emerged in the 1950s when American psychologist Frederick Herzberg developed it.

He created the two-factor theory, which states that two dimensions contribute to an employee’s behavior in the workplace.

He called the first dimension hygiene factors. These are the essential components of any job, such as wages, work environment, and company policies. If any of these are poor, employee motivation levels will plummet, turnover will rise, and engagement will decrease.

Herzberg called the second dimension motivating factors.

These are the job characteristics that make a position truly fulfilling, such as taking on new challenges, learning new skills, and adding autonomy. Motivators provide a strong sense of accomplishment, aid personal growth, and contribute to skill development.

Until this point, employers had only recognized the hygiene factors of employee motivation. That’s why they only provided raises, company cars, and stock options to incentivize employees to work harder and stay with the organization longer.

Herzberg was on the pulse of motivating factors like meaningful work, overcoming challenges, and consistently taking on new tasks.

Therefore, whenever a job lacks motivating factors, you can use various forms of job enrichment to remedy that issue.

The ‘job characteristics’ model

Herzberg’s job enrichment theory was expanded upon in the 1970s by organizational psychologists J. Richard Hackman and Greg R. Oldham with their Job Characteristics Model.

In particular, they built upon Herzberg’s idea of motivating factors by specifying five job characteristics that foster meaningfulness, motivation, and better work performance.

These job characteristics are as follows:

Skill variety. A job should encompass many skills to avoid becoming too monotonous.
Task identity. By task identity, Hackman and Oldham mean the task has a clearly defined objective that includes a beginning and an end. This provides a true sense of accomplishment for the employee whenever tasks are completed, instead of feeling like they’re completing small sub-tasks that have no end in sight. The classic Newman line from the sitcom Seinfeld comes to mind, “The mail never stops.” While being a humorous jab at why postal workers’ went postal’ in the early 90s, it also reflects an apparent lack of task identity.
Task significance. Nobody wants to feel their work does not impact society or the organization’s greater good. Thus, a job must have at least some task significance so employees can clearly understand their role in the big picture.
Autonomy. As long as it’s reasonable, employees must have some control over their work. This could be as simple as deciding when to complete specific tasks or as complex as letting them handle managerial tasks independently.
Feedback. Lastly, employees crave feedback. It lets them know they have an avenue for improvement and job advancement, so managers must provide them with actionable feedback whenever possible. This is a two-way street, so it’s essential for employers also to accept feedback from employees on how to improve their job design.

This model is great because it provides more detail on how to add motivating factors to existing positions.

Job enrichment vs. job enlargement: what’s the difference?

Next, it’s important to distinguish between job enrichment and job enlargement, as they are not interchangeable.

Job enrichment techniques improve an employee’s sense of satisfaction and empowerment.

On the other hand, job enlargement has a singular focus: increasing the number of tasks a job has to combat monotony.

Since enlarging a position with additional responsibilities can make it more fulfilling, job enlargement counts as a form of job enrichment.

However, not all job enrichment strategies involve job enlargement.

In other words, there are plenty of ways to enrich a job without enlarging it, such as providing increased autonomy and feedback.

Jobs that benefit the most from enlargement tend to be positions that feature mundane tasks and a singular focus, like assembly line work. Adding new tasks and additional challenges, then, is a great way to break up the monotony.

What are the benefits of job enrichment?

Job enrichment programs can benefit employees and the organization in many ways when adequately implemented.

Here’s a look at the top advantages of job enrichment.

Benefit #1: Higher levels of job satisfaction

Arguably, the most important benefit is increased job satisfaction, which is the goal behind job enrichment.

Employees who feel their work is valuable are more engaged, efficient, and productive.

Companies with the highest levels of employee engagement are 21% more profitable and 17% more productive than organizations with disengaged staff.

This means you have a real incentive to increase your employees’ job satisfaction, which will also benefit your organization.

Benefit #2: Reduced absenteeism

Absenteeism occurs whenever employees don’t show up to work as much as they should.

They could have taken many sick days or called off a time or two.

Whatever the cause, absenteeism is a productivity killer and won’t do your budget any favors.

The yearly cost of absenteeism is a whopping $225.8 billion, approximately $1,600 per employee.

Why is the cost so high?

There are several reasons, and these stretch beyond reduced productivity and efficiency. With high absenteeism, you’ll also deal with uncovered shifts, paying employees overtime, and increased onboarding and hiring costs (whenever you have to replace employees who are absent too frequently).

Yet, with enriched job positions that genuinely challenge and motivate your employees, you’ll deal with far less absenteeism.

Remember the quote about being unable to wait to come to work each morning?

That should be your goal!

Benefit #3: Close skill gaps

Skill gaps are an increasingly prevalent issue amongst businesses worldwide, with McKinsey & Company reporting that 87% of companies either have a skill gap or will face one shortly.

These gaps are caused by rapid technological advances (automation and AI), a retiring workforce, and changing market demands.

Job enrichment is significant for pushing back against this because it strongly emphasizes teaching existing employees new skills.

This will keep work exciting and fresh for employees and help you equip your staff with the skill sets they need to fulfill their ever-changing job responsibilities.

Potential drawbacks of job enrichment

As with any employment theory, there are always advantages and disadvantages, and job enrichment is no different.

Here’s a look at the potential downsides of enriching your current job positions.

Drawback #1: Higher training costs

Adding new skills, tasks, and responsibilities to existing roles is costly. To make job enrichment happen, you’ll have to invest in training programs (and things like job shadowing and mentoring).

The costs can quickly add up if you plan on enriching multiple positions at your organization, so be sure to do the math first.

Drawback #2: Potential mismatches

Let’s say you have a salesperson struggling with engagement due to boredom and a lack of challenge.

To remedy this, you enrich their position by adding managerial tasks to their workload. This will challenge them and prepare them for future promotions.

However, your optimism backfires, as the employee does seem to need to improve at scheduling and other administrative tasks.

To make matters worse, you invested a lot of money into a manager training program the employee needs to benefit from, meaning it was a total loss.

This is a real risk, as it’s only sometimes guaranteed that the tasks and responsibilities you add to a role will match the employee well.

Common job enrichment strategies and techniques to try

Let’s look at ways to implement job enrichment at your organization.

Here are some of the most common examples of job enrichment that you can start using today.

Job rotation

Sometimes, it’s beneficial for employees to learn how to do tasks from several different roles, not just their own.

You can put this into practice with job rotation, where employees rotate their roles based on different structures.

You could assign different roles on different nights, or your rotation could be random each scheduling period.

Either way, rotating jobs is a great way to break up monotony and teach employees new skills.

Combine tasks

Another way to mix things up is to combine tasks from several roles into the same position.

An example would be an assembling plant teaching employees how to fully assemble a product instead of completing one tiny sub-task.

Employees enjoy a strong sense of task identity and accomplishment by completing a product from start to finish.

360-degree feedback

As stated previously, employees love actionable feedback that helps them improve. As a manager, your feedback should encompass your organization’s goals and consider each employee’s career path.

360-degree feedback means employees also get the chance to tell you how they feel about their roles, which will make redesigning jobs far more accessible.