Submitted by: Submitted by szwl3507
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Category: Business and Industry
Date Submitted: 02/01/2011 05:26 AM
Hey guys, found this while I was researching and thought it would be useful to your section.
Quality of Work Life (QWL) is the favourableness or unfavorableness of the job environment (Newstrom, Davis, 1993). Its purpose is to develop jobs and working conditions that are excellent for both the employees and the organization. One of the ways of accomplishing QWL is through job design. Some of the options available for improving job design are:
• Leave the job as is but employ only people who like the rigid environment or routine work. Some people do enjoy the security and task support of these kinds of jobs.
• Leave the job as is, but pay the employees more.
• Mechanize and automate the routine jobs.
• And the area that OD loves — redesign the job.
When redesigning jobs there are two spectrums to follow — job enlargement and job enrichment. Job enlargement adds a more variety of tasks and duties to the job so that it is not as monotonous. This takes in the breadth of the job. That is, the number of different tasks that an employee performs. This can also be accomplished by job rotation.
Job enrichment, on the other hand, adds additional motivators. It adds depth to the job — more control, responsibility, and discretion to how the job is performed. This gives higher order needs to the employee, as opposed to job enlargement which simply gives more variety. The chart below illustrates the differences (Cunningham & Eberle, 1990):
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The benefits of enriching jobs include:
• Growth of the individual
• Individuals have better job satisfaction
• Self-actualization of the individual
• Better employee performance for the organization
• Organization gets intrinsically motivated employees
• Less absenteeism, turnover, and grievances for the organization
• Full use of human resources for society
• Society gains more effective organizations
There are a variety of methods for improving job enrichment...