EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT

• A primary goal of employee empowerment is to give workers a greater voice in decisions about work-related 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

• All ees view themselves as ‘Owners’ of the business• Improved productivity• Creativity & Innovation• Customer-focus• Faster decision-making• Organizational learning• Making full use of Human resources-• “Engaging the mind of every employee”

Degrees of Empowerment

• Total management control- No employee discretion• Participatory management- management generally

controls the work & the context,but allow ees to make some decisions(typically minor ones)

• Self-management- ees make most decisions pertaining to their work and work setting

Empowered People

• Gretchen Spreitzer found that ees who feel empowered share the following 4 beliefs:

• Meaning-belief that one’s work is aligned with his/her values

• Competence-belief that he/she has the ability to effectively complete his/her work role

• Self-determination-belief that he/she has the freedom & right to decide how to approach his/her work, without being micromanaged

• Impact-belief that he/she can influence organisation outcomes

Organizational improvement through employee empowerment

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

TOYOTA

• Toyota Motor Company empowers some of its employees to identify and help remedy problems occurring during product assembly. An automobile coming off Toyota's assembly line with a paint defect is seen as an opportunity to delve into the root cause of the defect, as opposed to merely fixing the defect and passing it on to distributors for resale.

• Solutions resulting from employee involvement tend to have more employee buy-in when it comes to implementation. Because such solutions are generated from the front lines, this further enhances the potential for productivity improvements by reducing the attitude that solutions are "passed down from above."

A number of different human resource management programs are available that grant employee empowerment to some extent. A number of these are discussed in the following sections including-

• Informal participative decision-making

programs

• Job enrichment

• Continuous improvement

• Self-managed work teams.

Informal ParticipativeDecision-making Programs

• Informal participative decision-making programs involve managers and subordinates making joint decisions on a daily basis. Employees do not enjoy blanket authority to make all work-related decisions; managers decide just how much decision-making authority employees should have in each instance. The amount of authority varies depending on such situational factors as decision complexity and the importance of employee acceptance of the decision.

• While it may seem obvious, one key to empowerment is choosing under what conditions to empower employees. Employees should be empowered in situations where they can make decisions that are as good as, or better than, those made by their managers.

Issues with Empowerment(Managers)

• Managers misunderstand it.• Managers only pay it “Lip Service”.• Organizations are not prepared in terms of

structure,culture & rewards.• Managers are displeased when empowered workers

make decisions that differ from their expectations.• Managers expect to see results without having to

make a strong commitment or taking risks.

Issues with Empowerment(Employees)

• ees need the skills and training to manage risks and decision-making.

• Many ees don’t want the added responsibility and accountable & are uncomfortable with “putting their necks on the line”.

• Not all people are conscientious enough to be empowered.

Job Enrichment

• Job enrichment aims to redesign jobs to be more intrinsically rewarding. Certain job characteristics help managers to build enrichment into jobs. These characteristics include:

• Skill variety- The various skills needed to perform a given task, where increased skill requirements are associated with increased motivation.

• Task identity- The degree to which employees perceive how their job impacts the overall production of a product or service.

• Task significance- Whether the task is meaningful beyond the task itself.

• Autonomy- Employee discretion over how to perform a task.• Feedback- Input from peers and supervisors regarding the

quality of an employee's work.

• Combining tasks- This involves assigning tasks performed by different workers to a single

individual. For example, in a furniture factory, rather than

working on just one part of the production process, each person could assemble, sand, and stain an entire table or chair. This change would increase skill variety, as well as task identity, as each worker would be responsible for the job from start to finish.

• Establish client relationships- Client relationships could be established by putting the worker in touch with customers.

For example, an auto dealership service department could allow its mechanics to discuss service problems directly with customers, rather than going through the service manager. By establishing client relationships, skill variety is increased because workers have a chance to develop interpersonal skills. It also provides them with a chance to do a larger part of the job (task identity), to see how their work impacts customers (task significance), and to have more decision-making authority(autonomy).

Continuous Improvement• Often referred to as Total Quality Management,

these programs empower workers to trace product or service problems to their root causes and redesign production processes to eliminate them using various problem-solving and statistical techniques. The use of continuous improvement programs have grown rapidly, built on the successful experiences of numerous companies.

• Xerox, for example, was able to decrease the number of customer complaints it received by 38 percent after implementing continuous improvement methods.

• Motorola reduced the number of defects in its products by 80 percent. .

Self-Managed Work Teams

Self-managed work teams are not for all organizations; characteristic needed for success include:

• Technical

• Interpersonal skills

• Administrative skills

Drawbacks can include:

• Rivalry within and across teams.• A shortage of time and skills on the team to deal with

conventional management concerns like hiring, training, and resolving interpersonal disputes.

• Difficulty appraising employees in the absence of a traditional management figure.

Success Factors

• Rewards have to encourage empowerment, not compliance with rules.

• Sharing responsbility means sharing in the rewards- performance based pay is crucial.

• Empowerment requires sharing of information- books need to be opened to ees.

• ees need to be trained to make smart decisions.

Success Factors Continued…

• Management needs to be committed to giving up direct control for value- based control.

• Management needs to be trained facilitators not controllers.

• Management must be willing to accept risk & uncertainity & to tolerate mistakes.

• Management must seek empowerment for the right decisions.

Low role

ambiguity

Wide span

Of

control

Political

Support

Access to

information

Org.

Climate

Education

&

Training

Conditions

inspiring

Empowerment

On empowerment…..

“ A funny thing happens when you take the

time to educate your employees, pay

them well, and treat them as equals. You

end up with extremely motivated and

enthusiastic people.”

Thank YouBy: Poonam Gupta