Job Enlargement,Job Enrichment and Job Rotation

Job Enlargement,Job Enrichment and Job Rotation

Job Enlargement

A job is enlarged when the tasks being performed in the job are merely increased ; when employee carries out a wider range of tasks of approximately the same level of difficulty and responsibility as before.

Job Enrichment

A job is enriched when tasks being done by many people are created into one job so that one individual starts and ends the job. That is,when the employee is given greater responsibilities and scope to make decisions and he is expected to use skills he has not used before. For example when a radio unit is given to one operator to assemble instead of many operators and the worker is expected to use his discretion in carrying out the job.

Effects of Job enlargement and job enrichment

Both job enlargement and job enrichment are examples oj job extension. Both are attempts to build opportunities into the employee's job for the satisfaction of ego and self actualization needs. Both of them increase the job satisfaction of employees. A greater range of tasks or decisions makes the employee feel more important, give him a sense of achievement and make more use of his abilities . He therefore receives satisfaction from the job itself (I.e intrinsic satisfaction) as well as many and fringe benefits (I.e extrinsic satisfaction)

But the problem is that it is easier to extend the job of a non-manual worker (ie manager), whose responsibilities .

Responsibility and actions are often not precisely described than to extend the job of a manual worker whose tasks may be highly specialized and precisely defined because they are part of a complex production process. Also, there may be a conflict between specialization and development of specific skills required for efficient operation of the process and the construction of a job sufficiently enlarged or enriched to give greater satisfaction to the employee. In order to make the job significant to the worker it may be extended so much that the extension seriously effectively affects productivity. The result therefore may be a compromise between efficiency and job satisfaction in which the worker, instead of doing one meaningless task would now have to do several meaningless tasks.

Another problem is that extension of jobs may meet with trade union opposition because demarcation lines between skills are eroded. It will almost certainly necessitates increases in pay; wider or deeper responsibilities must be recognized by an increase by an increase in the monetary worth of the job, a measured by job evaluation. An employer might therefore hesitate before introducing job extension because the benefits to him would be somewhat uncertain,whereas the cost might be considerable.

Job Rotation

Some of the difficulties the employer finds in job extension can be avoided if job rotation is used instead. In job rotation,employees are trained in several minor skills and exchange jobs with each other at intervals. Greater satisfaction is obtained because the employee has a greater understanding of the work process through experiencing several jobs within it,and the increased versatility of the workers is useful to management when sickness absence is high. It is not necessary to redesign production methods and rise in pay,if any of them happen to be small.