FA14 Alber, A. (1979). The Real Cost of Job Enrichment,
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The article, “The Real Cost of Job Enrichment,” by Antone F. Alber is a study of job enrichment and its costs within a corporation. He goes through all of the areas where costs will be associated with job enrichment and tries to figure out whether they are beneficial or not. After surveying about 189 companies about job enrichment, he went in to detail just how beneficial job enrichment can be and the costs associated with those changes. The costs include raising salaries, new equipment, inventory costs, training costs (lost productivity while employee learns their new job), implementation costs, etc. After seeing the results of his studies, it is found that when a corporation implements job enrichment correctly, almost all companies will benefit from job enrichment. Obviously this depends on the corporation and whether or not the company needs to make changes to their employees’ work.
The article makes it very clear that job enrichment is a good thing for companies to partake in. Three things the article brings to light are viewing job enrichment as an investment, the benefits of a satisfied employee, and not underestimating the training involved with job enrichment. We should view job enrichment as an investment into the company and its’ employees. By investing in the employees and giving them more responsibilities so they feel motivated to do a better job we will definitely see the benefits. The most important benefit is job satisfaction. By satisfying employees, all other areas of the company will benefit. Benefits of enrichment programs include increased production output (in the long-run), increased job satisfaction, improved quality as measured by less rejected products, reduced turnover raters, reduced absenteeism, and reduced size of work force. It is well known that pay is a