The importance of team functioning has been highlighted by a number of writers and some of the characteristics of effective teams have been highlighted by them are: The atmosphere in teams is generally relaxed, informal and comfortable. All the members of the team understand and accept the task assigned to the team. All the members of the team listen to each other and a lot of discussion related with the task is done in the team. The team members can freely express their feeling their ideas and though there are conflicts disagreements among the members of the teams but these are only about the ideas and methods related with the completion of the task and not focused around the personalities and members of the team. Generally the decisions the team are based on consensus and once the action have been decided upon, clear assignment are given to the members of the team. When all these characteristics are present in a team, it means the teams is capable of successfully achieving its objectives and at the same time, satisfy the personal and inter-personal needs of its members. Thus the following characteristics are found in effective teams. These are a clear purpose, informality, participation, listening, civilized disagreement, consensus in decision making, clear roles and assignment, share leadership, open communication and self assessment.

Teams have emerged as the most important group phenomenon in the organization. Earlier the importance of the team work was confined to sports activities but now in business also team work as become very important. In the past business organizations were focused around individuals but now teams have become the primary means for achieving the organizational goals. Some times the terms team and group are used interchangeably but they are not the same. While a work group consist of a number of a person that report to common superior and have face to face interaction and there is a certain level of inter-dependence in carrying out the tasks but they performance of a team can provide individuals results and collective products also. We can say that though a team is also a group but it has some characteristics in greater degree as compare to ordinary groups. These characteristics include a higher commitment towards the goals of the group and a higher degree of inter-dependence and interaction. These characteristics make a team different from an ordinary group. There are some difference between work groups and teams. While the basic purpose of a work group is to interact for the purpose of sharing information, the basic purpose of work team is to perform collectively. While the work group must have a strong and clear focused leader, teams generally do not have clear leaders and the leadership roles are also shared. The work group meets through the formal and efficient meetings the teams are encouraged to have open ended active problems solving meetings. The functioning of the work group that it discusses decides and delegates the work, the functioning of the team is to discuss beside and then do the real work also.

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.

Job enrichment is a useful technique for motivating the employees. It is also beneficial for the organization because it provides increased output and also a high level of satisfaction among the workers. The benefits of job enrichment are

(i) In the routine jobs, the employees find their jobs very boring and monotonous. The number of such employees is generally considerable. The frustration of these employees can be removed by making the job interesting with the job enrichment.

(ii) Job enrichment helps in reducing the races of employee’s turnover and absenteeism.

(iii) Job enrichment motivates the employees intrinsically by giving them opportunities for growth advancement and self realization.

(iv.) Task enforcement is made easy with the help of job enrichment and the skills of workers are increased.

(v) The enriched jobs give more job satisfaction to the employees.

(vi.) Job enrichment is advantageous to the organization as there is qualitative as well as quantitative improvement in output and there is higher satisfaction of the workers.

(vii) Employees tend to be more creative when they work in an enriching context of complex and challenging jobs.

Job enrichment means, adding a few more motivators to a job to make it more rewarding. A job is enriched when the nature of the job is made more exciting, challenging and creative or gives the job holder more decision making, planning and controlling powers.

According to Beatty and Schneider, “Job enrichment is a motivational technique which emphasis the need for challenging and interesting work.” It suggests that jobs should be redesigned so that intrinsic satisfaction can be derived from doing the job. In its best applications, it leads to a vertically enhanced job by adding functions from other organizational levels, making it contain more variety and challenging and offer autonomy and pride of the employees.

Job enrichment is thus, an important practice in meeting “whole man” needs. It represents a new and popular non-monetary motivational technique. It applies to improvement of job in such a way that it has more motivators than before and at the same time maintaining the degree of maintenance factors.

According to Herzberg, enriched job has eight characteristics. These characteristics are as explained below
1. Direct Feed Back: There should be a direct feed back of the employee’s performance. Employees should be able to get immediate knowledge of the results they are achieving. The job evaluation can be inbuilt in the job or provided by a supervisor.

2. Client Relationship: When an employee serves a client or customer directly, he has an enriched job. The client can be outside the organization or inside.

3. New Learning: An enriched job allows the employees to learn more. He should feel that he is growing mentally, an employee, who is doing some intellectual work, is having an enriched job.

4. Scheduling Own Work: Freedom to schedule one’s own work contributes to enrichment. Deciding when to tackle assignment is an example of self scheduling. Employees who perform creative work have more opportunity to schedule their assignment as compared to employees performing routine jobs.

5. Unique Experience: An enriched job has some unique qualities or features as compared to the other jobs.

6. Control over Resources: One approach to job enrichment is that each employee should have control over his own resources and expenses.

7. Direct Communication Authority: An employee holding the enriched job will be allowed to communicate directly with people who use his output.

8. Personal Accountability: An enriched job holds the incumbent responsible for the results. He receives praise for good work and blame for poor work. From the above features of job enrichment we conclude than the management should allow sufficient freedom to employees regarding the methods, sequence, pace etc of the work.