When you search the web for the word enrichment you get 17,800,000 references. Webster's Dictionary defines enrichment as 1.act of making fuller or more meaningful or rewarding 2. a gift that significantly increases the recipient's wealth. Based on the number of references to the word it would appears as thought a lot of people are looking for enrichment of many things in their life.
Does The Web Enable Us to Enrich Our Lives?
I guess how you answer the question is relative to your own perspectives, experiences and ideas about being enriched. However when we consider that part, if not a significant part, of enriching our lives is with and through relationships then the web provides opportunity for enrichment. After all is can be difficult making your life more fuller and meaning full without the interaction of others.
From the personal side of the enrichment equation one could say "connecting with like minded people" is an enrichment. I guess is all depends on what you do with the connection. Reading people's media can be enriching since everyone is writing about everything everywhere.
Last and certainly not least personal enrichment can come when you figure out the means and the methods to make a little or a lot from your hours of tireless participation.
What About Our Professional Lives?
Professionally speaking we see lots of ways to enrich your professional endeavors whether as an individual or as an entire organization.
Businesses can use the social web to provide job enrichment. Job enrichment is a method that motivates employees by giving them the opportunity to use the range of their abilities. It is an idea that was developed by the American psychologist Frederick Herzberg in the 1950s. An enriched job should ideally contain:
- Tools that enable employees to be informed, involved and engaged in most all organizational activities
- Processes that enable employees to serve other employees and customers better, faster and with more value than expected
- An environment that promotes collaboration, learning and pride of work through a "people oriented" culture
- Technology aimed at enriching processes and people experiences so they feel more productive,helpful and respected for their contributions
Has This Been Examined Before?
Frederick Herzberg's studies of job attitudes and their connection with industrial mental health are related to Maslow's theory of motivation. According to Herzberg, people are not content with the satisfaction of lower-order needs at work. Rather, he looks for the gratification of higher-level psychological needs having to do with achievement, recognition, responsibility, advancement, and the nature of the work itself. .
Herzberg found that job characteristics related to what a person does â€" that is, to the nature of the work they perform â€" apparently have the capacity to gratify such needs as achievement, competency, status, personal worth, and self-realization. Instead, dissatisfaction results from unfavorable assessments of such job-related factors as company policies, supervision, technical problems, salary, interpersonal relations on the job, and working conditions.
Thus, if management wishes to increase satisfaction on the job, it should be concerned with the nature of the work itself â€" the opportunities it presents for gaining status, assuming responsibility, and for achieving self-realization. If, on the other hand, management wishes to reduce dissatisfaction, then it must focus on the job environmentâ€" policies, procedures, supervision, and working conditions .
Based on these past findings it would seem obvious that a progressive organization would aggressively pursue Socialutions that benefit both the people and the business. Given all the tools available today the opportunities for adoption of Socialutions and the proven benefits one would think that businesses are eager to get going. But the evidence of understanding is weak.
What say you?