What are the limitations of job enrichment?

They can be some problems in the implementation of job enrichment in the organizations. It is also possible that job enrichment may not lead to the desired results. The limitations of job enrichment are:

1. The first basic problem is that majority of workers do not want the type of changes which are introduced by job enrichment. They do not really want challenging jobs, as the basic human tendency is to shirk responsibility. Workers put wages and job security above all.

2. Job enrichment is basically limited to the unskilled and semiskilled jobs. Jobs of highly skilled professionals already contain many challenging elements. As such there is no scope of applying job enrichment in their cases.

3. Technology may not permit the enrichment of all the jobs. With specialized machinery, tasks and processes, it may not be possible to make the jobs very meaningful.

4. Job enrichment is a highly costly affair. In most of the cases, the cost involved is more than the gains in productivity.

5. Sometimes, the employees may prefer to have job enrichment but may not have the necessary capabilities and qualifications to meet the new challenges.

6. In the short run, job enrichment may have negative effects. After an increase in job responsibility, it is not unusual for organization to experience a drop in productivity, as workers become accustomed to the new system. In the long run, however, there will be increased productivity.

7. People being bored in their jobs, it is likely, therefore, that after a period of time they will become bored in their enriched jobs also. Thus, enrichment may become static after some time and additional enrichment will be required.

8. There is, generally, a tendency on the part of the management to impose job enrichment on workers rather than applying it with their consent; it will have a negative impact on the employees.

9. The top managers and personnel, generally apply, their own scale of values of challenge and accomplishment to other people’s personalities this evokes more resistance from workers.

Despite these limitations job enrichment remains an effective technique for motivation which gives proper recognition to the complex human and situational variables.