By Lord Caliban

The "workplace" is a very common word among the majority of people in the world. Their work is not only their source of income, but it is also something that distinguishes who that person is. From a clerk at a gas station to a lawyer in a courtroom, their job, no matter how much they enjoy it, reflects on their personality. The world consists of thousands of different types of jobs, however, the way each job is designed fits almost precisely into three types of categories; Job Simplification, Job Enlargement and Job Enrichment. The type of job design that is present at a given workplace can have a very significant effect on the employee's skills, work habits, quality of work and overall enjoyment of their job. A common question a employer would be faced with is, "How should I run this job. Should I let it involve a high amount of autonomy and responsibility, or should I have strict authority over what is to be done?" Job enrichment proves to be the most beneficial job design for the employer as well as the employee after a complete understanding of it is achieved followed by a comparison with all other existing job designs, carefully analyzing experiments and its history and by how its application will produce outstanding results. Job enrichment, also known as vertical loading, proves to be the most evolved of the three existing job designs. Job enrichment takes and expands on aspects that yielded positive results from simplification and enlargement, while toning down the areas that created negative results. As a whole it creates an entirely new job design that possesses the best characteristics from the others, while creating and adding some new ones. But what does job enrichment involve that proves to be so positive? Any job that is classified in this design should allow the employee to perceive a definite change in his/her work following the completion of a certain task (Yorks 1979). The employee should also possess a high degree of decision- making control over the process he/she chooses to complete a task (York 1979). In other words, if an employee feels that their job could be more productive if they used a typewriter rather than a computer, no one would argue with that decision. Feedback plays a major role in the characterization of job design as well. Enriched jobs should be arranged in a fashion that the employee is provided with a continuous amount of information on how well their job is being performed (Yorks 1979). The most beneficial utilization of feedback would be acquired through the reactions of customers, the outcome of decisions and performance criteria (Yorks 1979). The three characteristics of job enrichment work together as a whole and can not survive on their own. This interdependence can be illustrated in a simple example. If an employee had created a new software program under the strict guidance of his/her supervisor, any future feedback would prove to be pointless. If the employee had been responsible for decisions in the design of the software, the feedback would have been beneficial in future decision-making endeavors. If not all three of these characteristics are met in a job design, negative impacts such as low job satisfaction, bad decision- making and poor performance will result (Hopkins 1983). Taking all the aspects of job enrichment into account, how does it compare with other existing job designs? Job simplification or Micro- Division of Labour is a common job design that may appear beneficial to the employee, however it is plagued by a number of disadvantages. Job simplification is an economic design that sets an individual in a job and allows them only to do that job. There is no room for improvement or skill enhancement. The employees specialize in only one skill and continue to use this skill in their job resulting in low skill variety and task identity. The employees are given strict orders on how their job should be done and they must be followed at all times. This type of job design may appear to be advantageous for the employer due to the low level of training that is required for each employee, however, since the employees are constantly doing one task they become very bored. This boredom results in a high number of mistakes which can only be corrected through increasing the number of supervisors. Quality of the product begins to suffer and large wages must be disbursed to the employees and supervisors (Rozen 1983). Job enlargement or horizontal loading is a design that attempts to increase employee satisfaction by increasing their skill variety and knowledge. Each employee is trained in more than one job area and continue to be circulated through this rotation. Such an approach would improve on the problem of boredom that was quite evident in job simplification, however the employee's autonomy and task identity is not improved at all. They are still confined to strict order form their supervisors and can not gain any pride in the completion of a task form beginning to end. Weighing all the facts that are presented through the characteristics of each job design, job enrichment appears to be the most beneficial. In theory it may work great, but how effective does job enrichment actually prove to be in the real world? When this type of job design was becoming popular within the last twenty years (Myers 1991) many companies started to experiment with job enrichment, hoping that it would help cure undesirable side effects of their current job design and, "put some zip in boring or routine jobs" (Yorks 1979). A large financial institution felt that the current job structure in their credit and collections department was in dire need of a job redesign. The department was constantly being flooded with incoming work. The work soon acquired a high enough volume to support an individual in a full-time job, so specialist positions were created resulting in a new work station (Yorks 1979). This process continued until a point where the department was split into seventy-five different categories ranging from, "simple folder maintenance and request for microfilm to complex tasks such as high lance dunning and out-of-pattern charge activity analysis" (York 1979)." The work environment had become an extremely unnecessary complex system that was distributing work to employees that were doing the same tasks. The credit and collections department started to take on characteristics of a simplified work environment. The employees were given one task to do and that was it. As this process continued, many customers (i.e. cardholders) started to become dissatisfied with the company's performance. Complaints arose involving the cardholders becoming confused and irritated because they were always dealing with a different employee in concerns with their accounts. Not only were the customers becoming frustrated, but the employees began to feel bored due to the repetitive nature of their jobs. Communication with the department was becoming very costly due to the amount of times one account was passed form employee to employee (Yorks 1979). These problems soon became apparent to management and it was felt that redesign was necessary. The redesign started with a week-long workshop for the managers and supervisors which explained what redesign was and how to implement it. Management wanted to design something that would give their employees a high degree of control in their job, while still benefiting the department. It was decided that each specialist job that was currently present in the department were not efficiently organized and the department was then split into two operating units, one controlling technical aspects of an account and the other controlling the transactions of an account. The accounts were now assigned to specific teams who would complete all tasks rather than having each task performed by individual employees. The redesign was very time-consuming, taking four months to implement and an additional five months to notice any changes. The redesign also was difficult to apply due to attempts to match people with certain interests into one job, training people for their new job and changing systems, procedures and policies (Yorks 1979). Despite the large number of difficulties in achieving a enriched job design, the results proved to be very positive. The accounts were now being dealt with on a current basis and were no longer suffering from time lag, post due accounts had been decreased by over one- hundred percent, a thirty-four percent decrease in the number of transferred accounts resulted, absenteeism dropped thirty-three percent and turnover was zero. The results were staggering and the new job design was cordially accepted in the department (Yorks 1979). The job redesign illustrated took place in an administrative department and proved to be successful. Job enrichment is not confined to only certain types of jobs such as administrative ones. Similar experiments were conducted by various firms in different departments such as manufacturing and research (Yorks 1979) and similar results were obtained. In each of these cases it was reported that job redesign promoted increased job satisfaction among the employees (Hopkins 1983) due to the increased work quality which includes autonomy and skill variety. Employees felt they had a higher sense of control over what they were doing and were no longer confined to superficial rules. An increased sense of pride was felt after the completion of a task. People saw their projects begin and evolve to its finished state as a result of their own personal skills. boredom no longer played an issue because each employee was always faced with new and more challenging problems that required enhancement of their current skills. Overall, the employees entire perception of their jobs shifted towards a more positive angle (Rozen 1983). Such results were rarely, if never, achieved through any other existing job designs and job enrichment started to catch on throughout the world. Many employers began realizing that in order to extract the most productive qualities from an employee, they must allow them to excel at their job using their own skills and knowledge. The outstanding results that arose through the redesign were soon being accounted to the increased control employees were granted over their jobs. Many now believed that job enrichment was the way to go. It is essential that all employees are attaining the maximum amount of satisfaction their job has to offer since the workplace plays such a huge role in their lives. The impact an individual's job has on their life will help to structure and distinguish who that person is, and a happy, satisfied worker will result in a happy and satisfied person. Not only will a job that is structured in this manner benefit the employees, but the organization or firm will also profit from this structure. Job enrichment has proven to be an excellent choice in job design in theory and in practice, and will continue to benefit anyone who chooses the advantages it has to offer.

Works Cited

Hopkins, Anne H., Work and Job Satisfaction in the Public Sector. New Jersey: Rowman & Allanheld, 1983. Myers, M.S., Every Employee a Manager. Toronto: Pfeiffer & Co., 1991.

Rozen, Marvin E., The Economics of Work Reorganization. New York: Praeger, 1983.

Yorks, Lyle, Job Enrichment Revisited. New York: AMACOM, 1979.