Change Management

&
Organizational Development

Topic-Empowerment of
Employees

Formula for Empowerment

To make positive change in our lives or
in our organizations, we must follow the
formula:

Empowerment

A
primary
goal
of
employee
empowerment is to give workers a
greater voice in decisions about workrelated matters. Their decision-making
authority can range from offering
suggestions to exercising veto power
over management decisions. Possible
areas include: how jobs are to be

performed, working conditions, company

policies, work hours, peer review, and
how supervisors are evaluated.

Benefits of empowerment
Increase Productivity
Employees have great ideas about how to improve productivity and reduce
costs, but companies need to know how to ask for these ideas and listen.
"Sometimes it takes an employee stepping outside of their authority to show
the benefits of employee empowerment an owner," he says. Employees who
feel confident that their input will be valued, listened to and acted upon will be
more likely to share those ideas, benefiting employee and employer.

Increase Enthusiasm
Empowerment refers to the employee's feeling of being effective, in control
and influential. Empowerment is an amalgam of four related feelings.
Autonomy carries a sense of freedom in making choices about how to work
and results in the feeling that the person is responsible for her choices.
Confidence is the personal feeling of having the ability to perform the job
satisfactorily.

Increase Morale and Motivation

Empowerment improves employee commitment, creativity, productivity,
satisfaction and motivation. Effective motivation comes from within the
individual. Traditional rewards such as monetary compensation are not the
best motivators. Appreciation, meaningful work, a happy and flexible work
environment and a feeling of personal achievement are powerful motivators.
Empowerment is a factor that enables better performance through these
mechanisms.

Higher Quality Services

Employee involvement is very important in any TQM initiative, as it is a system
wherein employees are encouraged to use their expertise and knowledge to
suggest methods for improvements in their work areas. These suggestions
could relate to improvements in the job, the product, the work atmosphere or
the company as a whole. Many companies have ventured into a participationstyle of management by involving employees in the problem solving and
decision making processes.

 Improved Team Work

Employee empowerment fosters better relationships between employees and
with their managers, as employees that are given more independence tend to
form better working relationships. Each sees the other as mutually benefiting
from their working relationship. In addition, more self-governance in the
workplace lessens dependence on managers and supervisors and redirects
that reliance laterally to coworkers.

Increase Competitiveness
Competition in the workplace can be a good thing for a number of different
reasons. By the same token though, competition can also have some
disadvantages. Some industries are more conducive to competition in the
workplace than others. For instance, those in the sales field will typically be
more competitive with coworkers than individuals in other fields, such as
information technology. Nonetheless, a little competition in even the least
competitive industries can be positive.

Decrease emotional Impact of

Restructuring
Just as there are many reasons companies might restructure, there are many
benefits of restructuring a company. Some benefits are financial, such as
reviving a declining business, increasing a companys value, and preparing it
for sale or transfer to the next generation. Other benefits involve gaining a
competitive advantage, such as helping a company position itself for growth,
allowing for the addition of new accounts or enabling expansion into other
geographical areas. Two words, however, sum up the overall benefits of
corporate restructuring: survival and success

Need of Empowerment
Powerlessness

Various studies have shown that empowered employees are more satisfied in their
work, and less likely to seek employment elsewhere. This decreases employment
costs and the need for training of new staff. Toyota hands over responsibilities of
identifying and solving production problems to its shop-floor employees. They are
encouraged to solve cause rather than firefight symptoms and management know
that workers are best-positioned to do so. This responsibility runs so deep that any
worker can halt the production line.

Low self-efficacy
As confidence and self-esteem grows, and a more quality focused and collaborative
approach takes hold, productivity will increase. People who are accountable for
their work become owners of process and product, and energy to do the job better
follows. Organizations that have discovered the importance of empowering
employees find that waste is eliminated, bureaucracy is reduced, and time is spent
more efficiently.

Five good approaches to

empowerment
Helping employees achieve job mastery
Allowing more control
Providing successful role models
Using social reinforcement and persuasion
Giving emotional support

Characteristics of empowered
employees

Trust
Mutual respect
Involve in the decision making
Building the corporation