Employee motivation through job enrichment

Abstract

People have been complaining about work ever since it was invented. Today, however, many believe that there is something different about the discontent. Additionally in many cases, because of the shift in the balance of power, shop floor personnel can now exercise considerable control over output. As a result organisations are coming up with plans — some pure public relations, some innovative — designed to pacify demotivated workers. The car industry in particular, where about 25 per cent of its labour force assembles cars with robot‐like monotony, has been a pace‐setter. There the term job enrichment seems still to be the most popular phrase in use to describe industrial management techniques introduced to counter job alienation, to make work more meaningful, to deal with “blue collar blues”, to humanize work, to utilise human resources more fully, to improve performance, and to solve problems.