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EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT
Employee Empowerment Defined
• It is a management approach wherein decision-making is shared with the subordinates.
• It pertains to an organizational state where employees are given the responsibility to make
improvements and the authority to make changes in the organization.

EXAMPLE: Line workers at Toyota Corporation can intervene in the production process to stop
defective cars from coming off the assembly line. The managers must make sure that the subordinates
have the training, tools, resources, and time required to make effective decisions. The goal is to create
a work culture in which employees are confident and knowledgeable enough to work without
supervision.

Rationale for Empowerment

The importance of empowerment to the organization can be summarized in the following points:
• Improved Work Outcomes. An empowered employee is attentive to details, efficient, and self-
confident since s/he doesn't need to stop working and consult a manager every time a decision
must be made.
• Increased Employee Satisfaction. An empowered employee finds his/her job satisfying since s/he
has a voice in the execution of his/her tasks.
• Cost Benefits. Empowering employees improves employee retention resulting to lesser cost
incurred by the organization in terms of recruiting, hiring, and training of new employees.
• Career Development. Empowering employees provides opportunities for the employees to develop
their skills and take on greater challenges and roles in the organization.

Inhibitors of Empowerment
• Resistance from employees and unions. Employees always resist change and even positive change
can be uncomfortable for employees because it involves a new unfamiliar territory. Unions usually
resent a new idea proposed by the management and they become suspicious in management’s
motives in implementing empowerment programs and how it will affect their future.
• Resistance from management. Managers may feel insecure because they perceive that full
implementation of employee empowerment will diminish their power as the boss. The ego of
managers by not accepting initiatives from employees and their personal belief that employees should
only follow orders from the boss may also hamper empowerment.

Manager’s Roles in Empowerment

The manager’s roles in empowerment are as follows:
• Commitment. A manager consistently supports empowerment programs and reinforces them in
tangible ways.
EXAMPLE: Google offices serve free food for day and night for all employees through “Google Cafés”
which are designed to encourage interactions between employees within and across teams, and to
spark conversation about work. It is one of the initiatives of Google that targets to increase employee
satisfaction in their work environment which may eventually lead to empowerment.
• Leadership. A manager promotes empowerment by being a consistent role model, mentor, and
trainer.

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EXAMPLE: Apple company has established 400 Apple distinguished schools in 29 countries all over the
world to promote leadership and educational excellence that demonstrates Apple’s vision for learning
with technology. This shows how Apple consistently applies leadership through empowering the next
generation of leaders.
• Facilitation. A manager constantly monitors employees to ensure that they are being empowered and
acts quickly on employee recommendations.
EXAMPLE: Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon believes that it is important to empower people in order to
avoid bureaucracy in the organization. Amazon also believes in the capabilities of individuals and small
groups in their organization to make high judgement in decision-making. Through this culture, the
company was able to innovate based on employee recommendations that bring them their success
today.

Implementing Empowerment
The widely used methods in the implementation of employee empowerment are as follows:
• Brainstorming. The process requires managers to serve as facilitators in drawing out
recommendations from group members. Participants are encouraged to share ideas that would
contribute in the process improvement of the organization. In this method, all ideas are considered
valid. After all ideas have been recorded, the participants will go through the list one item at a time,
weighing the relative merits of each. The process of selection will be repeated until the group
decides on the most effective idea that would help improve the current practices of the
organization.
• Nominal Group Technique. It is a sophisticated form of brainstorming involving five (5) steps. In the
first step, the manager states the problem. In the second step, each group member silently records
his or her ideas. In the third step, the ideas of individual members are made public by asking each
member to share one idea with the group. The ideas are recorded on a marker board or flipchart.
At this point, there is no discussion among group members. The process is repeated until all ideas
have been recorded. Taking the ideas one at a time from group members ensures a mix of recorded
ideas, making it more difficult for members to recall what ideas belong to which individual. In the
fourth step, recorded ideas are clarified to ensure that group members understand what is meant
by each. In the final step, employees silently vote their five (5) favorite ideas by recording them
separately in a 3 x 5 card.
• Quality Circles. It is a group of employees that meets regularly for the purpose of identifying,
recommending, and making workplace improvements.
• Suggestion Boxes. This involves placing of vessels in convenient locations into which employees
may put written suggestions for the process improvement of the organization.
• Walking and Talking. It requires managers to simply walk around the workplace and solicit inputs
or suggestions from the employees for the process improvement of the organization.

How to Recognize Empowered Employees

Managers may recognize empowered employees through the following comparisons:
• Waiting to be told versus taking the initiative. Empowered employees face ambiguous situations
by taking the initiative to define the problem, consider alternative solutions, and move ahead with
a solution rather than wait for an order from the management to do so.

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• Seeing only problems versus seeing opportunities. Empowered employees treat problems as
opportunities for improvement, learning, and professional growth rather than complain about the
problem and do nothing.
• Accepting input at face value versus thinking critically. Empowered employees apply logic, use
reasoning, and apply their experience to challenge assumptions rather than accept an input without
analyzation.
• Pass decisions up the line versus building consensus for solutions. Empowered employees take the
initiative to propose for solutions rather than pass the ball to the management to make decisions.

Empowerment Errors to Avoid

The following precautions will help organizations avoid the most common empowerment errors:
• Unclear meaning of empowerment. Managers must establish a certain level of boundary or
limitation to the employees in applying the concepts of empowerment. For instance, employees are
given the task to ensure high customer satisfaction. In doing so, a decision must be made that would
require huge amount of expenses for the company. In this case, the decision must still be made by
the management.
• Lack of training of the employees. Managers must provide training for all the employees in the
aspect of critical thinking and good decision-making. The training must include hands-on simulations
that reflect the types of situations employees are likely to face and the types of decisions they may
have to make when empowered.
• Lack of patience in the implementation of empowerment. Managers must extend patience in the
implementation of empowerment since employees need time to develop their skills, attitudes, and
perspectives in an empowered way.

References:
Adkins, W. (2017). The advantages of employee empowerment. Retrieved May 11, 2018 from
https://careertrend.com/advantages-employee-empowerment-4894.html
Education - Apple distinguished schools. (n.d.). Retrieved May 11, 2018 from
https://www.apple.com/ph/education/apple-distinguished-schools/
Heizer, J., Render, B., & Munson, C. (2017). Operations management: Sustainability and supply chain
management (12th ed.). Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.
ASQ.org. (n.d.). Nominal group technique (NGT). Retrieved May 11, 2018 from http://asq.org/learn-about-
quality/idea-creation-tools/overview/nominal-group.html
Krajewski, L., Malhotra, M. & Ritzman, L. (2016). Operations management: Process and supply chains.
United States of America: Courier Kendallville.
Mullaney, T. (2017). 5 key business lessons from Amazon's Jeff Bezos. Retrieved May 11, 2018 from
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/13/5-key-business-lessons-from-amazons-jeff-bezos.html
Stevenson, J. (2015). Operations management (12th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Education.
Strickland, J. (n.d.). How the Googleplex works. Retrieved May 11, 2018 from
https://computer.howstuffworks.com/googleplex2.htm

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