Job Enrichment

Job enrichment: a definition

Job enrichment (الإثراء الوظيفي) is the redesign of a job by adding depth to it: greater responsibility, authority to take decisions, and clearer ownership of the result, without the job title necessarily changing.

The definition names three additions. Greater responsibility concerns what the job holder answers for. Authority to take decisions concerns what the job holder may settle without referring the matter to someone else. Clearer ownership of the result concerns whose result the work is once it has been done. All three are additions in depth: they change what the job holder decides and answers for, and they are what the word “depth” in the definition refers to.

The definition also leaves the title open. Job enrichment is a change to the content of the job, and the title can stay as it was while that content changes. The word “necessarily” allows both outcomes: the title may change with the redesign, or it may remain the same, and the definition of job enrichment does not depend on either.

Job enrichment adds depth, not breadth

Job enrichment can be confused with job enlargement (التوسيع الوظيفي), and the difference between the two is decisive:

• Job enlargement. It adds tasks at the same level. An employee who used to handle one type of request now handles three types. The result is more work, while the authority stays as it was: the decisions the employee may take after the change are the decisions the employee could already take before it.
• Job enrichment. It adds what used to sit above the job. The same employee now approves the exceptions that they used to refer to their manager, and follows the result through to its end. Before the change, those exceptions were passed upward for a decision; after it, the employee takes that decision, and the result stays with the employee until the work is finished.

Set side by side, the two examples describe the same employee in two different redesigns. In the first, the number of request types the employee handles goes from one to three, but the authority is unchanged. In the second, a decision that used to belong to the manager passes to the employee, together with following the result to its end.

Anyone who adds tasks and calls the change job enrichment has added a burden and called it a promotion. The name given to the change does not alter what was added: tasks at the same level are job enlargement, whatever the change is called.

What job enrichment actually adds

Four elements are added when a job is enriched:

• Authority to decide. It is given within a defined scope, with a clear limit that is either financial or set by the type of matter. The scope states which decisions pass to the employee. The limit marks where that authority ends, whether at an amount of money or at a kind of matter, and a decision beyond the limit is not covered by it.
• Ownership of the result. It runs from the beginning of the work to its end, in place of a part of a chain. An employee who holds one part of a chain passes the work on once that part is done; an employee who owns the result holds it from the first step to the last.
• Direct feedback. It comes from the customer or from the data, not through the manager. The employee learns how the work turned out from the customer who received it or from the data that records it, without the manager passing the information on.
• Room to choose. It concerns the method of carrying out the work, as long as the result is defined. The result is set in advance, and the way of reaching it is left to the employee. The choice of method is given on that condition: where the result has been defined, the employee chooses how to reach a result that is already fixed.

Two conditions before job enrichment is applied

The first condition is that the employee is capable of the new responsibility. Job enrichment before the employee is ready produces a failure that is attributed to the person, when its cause is the decision. The failure appears in the employee’s work, so it is the employee who is held responsible for it, yet what produced it was the decision to enrich the job before the employee was ready for it.

The second condition is that the manager actually gives up the authority. Authority that is granted, and then reviewed every time it is used, has not been granted. If each decision the employee takes under that authority goes back to the manager to be reviewed, the decision remains with the manager in practice, whatever the employee has been told.

The word “actually” in the second condition looks past the grant to what follows it. Each time the employee uses the authority, the decision either stands or is taken back by the manager for review. Only where the decision stands has the manager given up the authority, and only then does the job hold the authority to decide that job enrichment adds.

How job enrichment differs from a promotion

A promotion changes the position: the place in the organisational structure and the title, and the pay may change with them. Job enrichment changes the content of the role in the position it already occupies.

The difference lies in what moves. With a promotion, the employee moves to another position in the structure. With job enrichment, the employee stays in the same position, and what is added within that position is responsibility, authority to decide and ownership of the result. That is consistent with the definition, under which the title need not change.

Job enrichment can be a step towards a promotion. It is not offered as a substitute for one when the new work merits a promotion. Where a role has gained what used to sit above it, the work the employee now does can be work that merits the promotion, and in that case job enrichment is not put in its place.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.