Autonomy and Job Enrichment

In my previous article, I described the importance of autonomy in a work environment – that is, having a degree of freedom to make choices about important matters that impact what you do and how you do it.

I suspect that many people would object to the notion of “providing autonomy” by saying that a person is hired to fulfill a certain prescribed role for an organization, one that is set out in his job description. However, there are many ways to conceive of “autonomy” aside from the immediate notion of “letting someone do his own thing.”

Autonomy is about choice – and choice is about options, variety, multiple opportunities to expand one’s horizons.  Giving a person the chance to engage in new projects and tasks will help her exercise her decision-making skills and test-drive her ability to make effective choices in her interactions with others.  And studies have repeatedly shown that on-the-job development activities such as these provide the best source of learning – even better than classroom work.

When recast in terms of giving employees more choices and options, autonomy can be directly connected to the concept of job enrichment. Dr. Beverly Kaye of Career Systems International defines job enrichment as “providing challenge, growth, and renewal in a current position.” Enrichment means changing something about the current job – shifting the balance of tasks, taking some tasks off the plate, adding new responsibilities or special projects – as a way of (in Dr. Kaye’s words) “allowing employees to take on different tasks and responsibilities or to accomplish them in new ways that promote autonomy and creativity.”

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

Seeking ways to provide job enrichment for your team members is an example of an Explore behavior in the ExploreFlexSupport model. What would happen if you were to do the following?

·         Give a planning or problem-solving task to two of your team members who haven’t worked together much (if at all) and ask them to collaborate to come up with a solution.

·         Provide a team member the opportunity to take on the role of liaison to another internal customer or external partner.

·         Ask each of your team members what task they would like to do more of in their current role – and then find a way for them to actually do more of it.

·         Reflect on the one on-the-job development experience that had the biggest positive impact on your career. Then ask others in your 360-degree world (managers, peers, direct reports) to identify their most powerful development experiences. Use the list as a source of ideas for exploring enrichment opportunities for your team members.

For more job enrichment ideas, see Dr. Beverly Kaye’s article Enrich: Energize the Job.