Job Enlargement

 

 

Owing to cumbersome & complex nature of modern business management, organisations use different approaches to streamline the management function of organisations, and inspire  employees and thereby deriving high performance.

Job enlargement is a one of a managerial method by augmenting additional duties and job roles for a particular job and thereby  increasing the contribution from employees to company and enhance he or her job satisfaction regarding to his position with in organisation. How ever It's feasibility is depending on the context and relevant employee’s  level of capacity to bear work load, and his or Her multi tasking abilities. Then, Job enlargement have positive impact and also draw backs as well. Mostly small scale organisation adopt this practice, because they don’t have a tall hierarchy to promote employees at higher level, instead they enlarge employees job role to make employees satisfied of his job and increase the input from employee to organisation.

Definition of Job enlargement

Job enlargement is widening the scope of the job role of a particular job through extending the range of its job duties and responsibilities. how ever, in light of that method, related job ‘s hierarchical level is not changed, instead adding further job activities and tasks that can perform while exercising same authority with in same level and periphery . This practice is also considered  as horizontal expansion of a job.

Job enlargement can be understood through a example

Let’s assume a company, Namely “ABC”. The ABC company is construction company, and this construction company has a technical supervisor, let’s name he as “ Mr X”

Now the Mr X is serving in a construction project of ABC company, and hierarchically He works under the site manager of project, and currently his job role is supervising Barbending and Shuttering works of site.

Then, because of his higher performance, company top management and site manager decided to assign additional job tasks to him. Under that, The company assign Concreting work of site addition to Barbending  and Shuttering tasks .

Related to above example, earlier Mr X has two job tasks Barbending and Shuttering. Following the His job Enlargement, He has Three Job tasks Barbending, Shuttering and Concreting. Then, now he has additional job duties and responsibilities. However, he is still serving under the site manager, so his hierarchical position have not been changed. Hence,  this is the job enlargement

Advantage of Job Enlargement

Job enlargement have advantages for both organisation and as well as for employees

In employees perspective

Earn higher salary

The company have to increase his or her salary parallel to increase of number of tasks of his job. Hence, it has a clear monitory rewards for employees. It allows employees to earn higher salary while staying in the same level of job hierarchy.

Opportunity for carrier growth

It is a one objective of employees that earnings different job experience which is a wherewithal for his or her career development in long run. By loading additional work tasks, it enables employees to being exposed to different work activities and thereby develop their Skills, knowledge and competency.

Autonomy and  freedom

If employees have more responsibility and Job activities and wider scope to oversee and control, it intrinsically increases the autonomy of him over job, on the other hand, autonomy means a level of freedom for him, now he can exercise his creative and innovative ideas to conveniently do his job. It then contributes to increase his job satisfaction, and finally it have a positive effect on organisation as well.

in organisation perspective there are advantages from job enlargement.

Cost savings

It is financially lucrative for organisation to getting job done by it's already existing employees rather than inducting or hiring a new employees, and allocating a separate salary for new employee. and company need time and finance to train and make new employees acclimate to organisation culture. Hence, job enlargement is financially favourable for organisation in every sense.

Keeping the cohesiveness among job activity

When job activity is being done or directed by individuals separately. There is a higher possibility happen communication errors, and it is difficult to maintain the coordination between each activity as each individual focus only on his or her job task. Then it all those collectively cause to interfaces between each job and ultimately lead to resource idling and conflicts.

Then, if one individual supervise and direct wider scope, he or she can keep the coordination between activity and thereby manipulate the whole process or system so that there are no any activity disruptions and resource idling. If each activity of production have been critically interrelated with each other, job enlargement is more appropriate to apply streamline activity flow of production.

Drawbacks

Lower Quality and lower efficiency

Some times, because of work load, production process can be slowdown. And Quality level can be decline. Because, when employee have to oversee wider scope, it reduces his attention on each specific task of job as he may not have enough time to focus on one activity, then it can result in reducing quality level and efficiency of production.

Conclusion

In essence, Job enlargement is HR management practices, that is expanding scope of employees by adding additional tasks and  responsibilities to particular job role. It’ a have benefits and drawbacks to both organisation and employees as well. This methods viability is largely depend on the context and the employees ability to focus on multiple tasks at same time and management skills.

Reference

Hitesh Bhasin, 2020, MMARKETING91(Online), Job Enlargement: Overview, Meaning, Advantage & Examples, Available at- https://www.marketing91.com/job-enlargement/ , [ Accessed on 16^th December 2021]

Erick Van Vulpen, 2020, AIHR Academy (Online), What is Job Enlargement?  (Including 2 Examples ), Available at- https://www.aihr.com/blog/job-enlargement/ , [ Accessed on 16^th December 2021]

Ajay Sarangam, 2021, Jigsaw A Unext Company( Online), Job Enlargement: An Overview 4 Easy Point, Available at- https://www.jigsawacademy.com/blogs/hr-analytics/job-enlargement , [ Accessed on 16^th December 2021]

Prachi M, 2019, The Investors book(Online), Job Enlargement Vs Job Enrichment, Available at- https://theinvestorsbook.com/job-enlargement-vs-job-enrichment.html , [ Accessed on 16^th December 2021]