ABSTRACT: A primary goal of employee empowerment is to give workers a greater voice in decisions about work-related matters.

The examples given in the article we selected from HBR-Harvard Business Review showcases many practical examples of employee empowerment that how it helped the productivity and some remarkable innovations came into existence through it. In this article, Employee empowerment emphasized on employees decision-making authority which ranges from offering suggestions to exercising veto power over management decisions. Although the range of decisions that employees may be involved in depends on the organization, possible areas and most importantly factors including how jobs are to be performed, working conditions, company policies, work hours, and how supervisors are evaluated. Going through the information mined for the topic it is extracted that many experts of different service providers believe that organizations can improve productivity through employee empowerment. According to them, it occurs in one of two main ways. First, empowerment can strengthen motivation by providing employees with the opportunity to attain intrinsic rewards from their work, such as a greater sense of accomplishment and a feeling of importance. In some cases of this article it has been observed that, intrinsic rewards such as job satisfaction and a sense of purposeful work can be more powerful than extrinsic rewards such as higher wages or bonuses. Motivated employees clearly tend to put forth more effort than those who are less motivated. The second means by which employee empowerment can increase productivity is through better decisions. Especially when decisions

require task-specific knowledge, those on the front line can often better identify problems. These are some important aspects shown in this article for the sake of a better projection of Employee Empowerment. The aspects includes: Best Buy Empowers Its Staff, The HERO Compact, Video Training at Black & Decker, Social Media Marketing at Vail Resorts, IT Prodding and Support at Aflac, HERO-Driven Innovation for B2B, Building a HERO-Powered Business. Through all the important aspects, article shrinks the crisp or main concept of Empowering employees is to identify problemscombined with higherlevel management involvement in coordinating solutions across departmental boundaries within the firm which can enhance the overall decision-making process and increase organizational learning. And finally the evaluation of your company according to the examples discussed.

EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT: Empowerment: The common dictionary definition of empowerment, "to give official authority to: delegate legal power to: commission, authorize". To empower means to enable, to allow or to permit, and can be conceived as both self-initiated and initiated by others. What is Employee Empowerment? If we elaborate the term giving powers to employee. Empower the employee for various tasks and activities of their jobs. Empowerment is the process of enabling employees to set their own work-related goals, make decisions and solve problems with in their spheres of responsibility and authority. Empowerment allows people, individually and in groups, to use their talents and knowledge to make decisions that affect their work. People are held accountable for the results produced by others, whose formal role gives them the right to command but who lack informal influence, access to resources, outside status, sponsorship, or mobility prospects, are rendered powerless in the organization.

Empowerment has become necessary due to the following reasons: 1. Time to respond is much shorter today. 2. There is great-untapped potential. 3. Employees feel much more control over their lives. 4. Empowered people do not feel like victims.

Empowerment is the process of sharing power with employees. Employee Empowerment is about encouraging employees to solve customer problems on the spot, without taking management approval. Employee Empowerment refers to management strategies for sharing decision- making power. Empowerment is giving subordinates the resources, both psychological and technical, to discover the varieties of power they themselves have and/ or accumulated, therefore which they can use on anothers behalf. Empowerment is a process of risk taking and personal growth; it is the creation of work environment, which allows each individual to work his highest capacity. An empowered workplace is a safe climate for employees to work together with freedom to take initiative, to create, to solve problems, and to assume the responsibility of completing the task. Empowerment refers to processes that giving employees the authority to decide and act on their own initiatives, so that the added responsibility and authority is moved to the lowest possible in the organization. It allows the employees to assume both managerial and staff responsibilities.

For employee empowerment to work successfully, the management team must be truly committed to allowing employees to make decisions. They may wish to define the scope of decisions made. Building decision-making teams is often one of the models used in employee empowerment, because it allows for managers and workers to contribute ideas toward directing the company.

Companies encourage innovation thus they refer to the people who innovate with technology inside a company as HERO (highly empowered and resourceful operative). HEROes exist because technologies like Twitter, online communities, cloud computing, and online video are so easy to master and so cheap to set up. Employees, especially in marketing, sales, and customer service, see customers problems and use these technologies to solve them. Most companies arent set up to harness technological innovation that comes from outside IT. Their IT departments cant launch and run these sorts of projectstheyre too far from customers and typically lack the budget and staff. As for managers, both senior and midlevel, they want to encourage innovation but worry about the risks associated with these projects. And the HEROes have trouble executing their plans at scale in the absence of consistent support. To tackle this problem, the solution is what we call the HERO Compact an agreement among the three groups to work together to manage technological innovation. Under the compact:

HEROes agree to innovate within a safe framework. The employees who come up with these projects must work within business structures. They must respond to support from management and IT by innovating in directions that align with corporate strategy and by observing security, legal, and other corporate policies. Having succeeded with a project, a HERO is responsible for spreading newly won knowledge to others in the organization that might benefit from it. Managers agree to encourage innovation and manage risk. Managers must communicate their openness to employee innovation, not just with words but by recognizing examples publicly and not punishing failures. To ensure that HERO activity is productive, managers must also clearly and regularly communicate strategic goals. And they must work with IT to understand and deal with the risks associated with HERO projects, modifying them or even shutting them down if the legal or regulatory risks are out of line with any expected benefit. He also needs to do cost-benefit analysis to check the feasibility to the innovation. IT agrees to support and scale up HERO projects. IT needs to advise HEROes and keep them safe. IT must assess and mitigate risk and give managers the tools to understand the risks in the context of the business benefits. It must also recognize when HERO projects have become strategic and help scale them up.

If an organization has not been actively cultivating employee empowerment, it may take considerable time and effort before employees start to respond. For an organization to enjoy the returns from employee empowerment the leadership must thoroughly work to create the work environment where it is obvious to all that employee empowerment is desired, wanted and cultivated. Managements responsibility is to create the environment for employee empowerment. When organizational leadership has started to take actions to encourage employee empowerment it is then up to the employees to decided if they wish to take advantage of the opportunity or not. It is not unusual for only a small minority to accept the challenge initially. Also it is very likely that some fraction will never respond. It is the large middle group that must be convinced to practice employee empowerment.

Management has the obligation to create the environment that fosters employee empowerment, employees have the duty to accept the opportunity and demonstrate they are willing and capable. Employee empowerment becomes a very important issue to organizations producing services. In that, the customers and the employees are, engaged simultaneously in the production of the service. Also employee empowerment is quiet important for businesses in retail sector. For example; Best Buy, an American retail company, has made Twelpforce consisting of 2500 employees. Twelpforce includes customer service staff, in-store sales associates (called Blue Shirts), and Geek Squad, the service reps who make house calls for technical assistance. Twelpforce exists because Best Buy empowers its employees to come up with technological solutions. Best Buys leaders support technological innovation regardless of where in the organization it comes from.

Fundamentals for Employee Empowerment: Employee empowerment requires the following fundamentals:
1. INVOLVEMENT:

Employees feel more committed to the organization when they are involved in the decision making process.
2. QUICK DECISION-MAKING:

Employees sometimes need on the spot decisions for the benefit of the organization. Employees work say in customer service need to be able to quickly respond to customers need and problems without having constantly to go up the chain of command. 3. SOLVING COMPLEX PROBLEMS: Employees directly involved with a problem can better determine the optimal solution. For example, a work group can figure out how to reengineer its work process far better than employees/managers that do not directly work on the process/project. 4. ENCOURAGE NEW IDEAS: Another important fundamental of employee empowerment is to encourage new ideas of employees. The management has to be

supportive enough to consider the new and innovative ideas given by employees of all levels regarding the problems of customers. For example Barry Judge, the CMO of Best Buy encouraged new ideas in Twelpforce. 5. REWARD AND RECOGNIZE: When employees feel under-compensated, under-titled for the responsibilities they take on, under-noticed, under-praised, and underappreciated, dont expect results from employee empowerment.
6. PROVIDE FREQUENT FEEDBACK:

Provide frequent feedback so that people know how they are doing. Sometimes, the purpose of feedback is reward and recognition. People deserve your constructive feedback, too, so they can continue to develop their knowledge and skills.

Guidelines for effective employee empowerment are Select the right managers. Choose the right employees. Provide training. Offer guidance. Hold everyone accountable. Build trust. Focus on relationships. Stress organizational values. Transform mistakes into opportunities. Reward and recognize. Share authority instead of giving it up. Encourage dissent. Give it time. Accept increased turnover. Share information. Realize that empowerment has its limitations. Watch for mixed messages. Face your own ambivalence Involve employees in decision-making. Be prepared for increased variation.

Benefit of Employee Empowerment: The major benefits are employee empowerments are as under: 1- Employee Motivation: Having an employee empowerment effort will help an organization by improving individual self-esteem, self-efficacy, and other behaviors. The investment in the workforce will yield direct cost saving for the organization- as well as improved morale of employees. Job Satisfaction According to the online information resource Dawn, when employees are given the ability to create a more efficient job process, there is a feeling of accomplishment that boosts employee morale. The employees feel vested in the success of the company, and employee decision-making has a direct impact on revenue. The increase in employee morale can make interactions with customers more positive, and that can result in more revenue as well. Employees feel responsible for the company's success or failure, and work harder to create positive results. Increased Productivity and Morale Empowering your employees to make decisions on their own can increase productivity. When employees don't have to wait for approval from a manager or supervisor, workflow doesn't slow down or stop. Employees solve their own problems, and move on to the next task. Being able to make decisions and devise innovative solutions increases employee satisfaction as well. Empowered employees feel as if their

contributions matter; when the company trusts them to make decisions, morale increases, and as a result, so does productivity. Improved Quality Giving your employees the training, tools and guidance to make independent decisions often encourages them to produce quality work and helps your business meet its goals. In fact, a 1999 study of Canadian hospitals conducted by the University of Alberta found that a culture of employee empowerment and ownership is a key to reaching quality improvement goals and maintaining quality standards. When properly trained employees are empowered to solve problems, take risks or be creative in their approach to work, they are more likely to assume ownership of the tasks. Whether the job is caring for ill patients, developing an entire product line or simply selling movie tickets, empowered employees often feel as if they have a stake in the organization and their work and strive to consistently produce quality results. 2- Innovation: It also leads to creativity and innovation since the employees have the authority to act on their own.

Barriers to empowerment Increased Risk: While empowering employees can increase morale, productivity and quality, it also has its drawbacks. Without proper training and a set of guidelines, empowerment can lead to chaos. It doesn't make sense to have each employee operate under his own set of values and goals. Employees need guidance in the mission, vision and values of the organization so that their decisions fall in line with company goals and don't cause harm. Empowering organizations need to be comfortable with a certain amount of risk, both in terms of security -- empowered employees often have access to information that could damage the company if leaked -- and in terms of loss due to entrepreneurial failure. Management Disdain Managers that prefer total control will have a difficult time adjusting to employee empowerment. If the organizational structure is not changed, and managers are still responsible for the performance of their group, then those managers may be lees willing to relinquish control. Without proper planning a program of employee empowerment can create an feeling of disdain and distrust among managers. Chaos According to Dawn, one of the potential issues with employee empowerment is chaos. Employees will feel that they are empowered to make their own decisions, so the lines of managerial responsibility can

become blurred. Company communication can start to break down as employees feel less need to report to a central governing body and begin working under their own set of rules. Eventually, the organizational structure could start to break down and the company would be in trouble. Employees Not Ready: Some employees may not be ready to be empowered. Employees may not be able to handle the increased stress that the added responsibility and decision making will bring. Some employees may also take advantage of their new responsibility and abuse their power. It is important to make sure that employees are completely ready for, and informed of, their new responsibilities before they are assigned. Empowerment can fail for any one of several reasons: * The manager's fear of losing power. * Pressure from the manager's boss to be on top of all details. * Rationalization that employees are not ready. * Fear of losing control reduces empowerment. * The feeling that "Only I can make the right decisions". * Fear of having nothing to do...being redundant or having no purpose. * Fear of losing face or status. * Not accepting that subordinates are more knowledgeable or better placed to make some decisions. * Lack of support from the organization's culture - demands for more centralized decision making. * Preaching the value of making mistakes while still punishing them. * Not providing clear authority or boundaries.