Process of Empowerment

Presented
SUSHIL KANT
JKBS 090455
 Process of Empowerment

Process of empowerment differ from organisation to organisation

depending on their
Concept of empowerment
Their organisational objectives and strategies
Their resources, financial and nonfinancial
Attitude towards customer and employees
Employee’s knowledge skills enthusiasm towards job loyalty to
organisation etc.
The process of empowerment is one of a planned change
It is not one which takes place with time or change in working environment,
rather it has to be ushered in very carefully . The whole process can therefore be
spread in three phases
PHASE 1st –Studying the work environment of the employees
PHASE 2nd –Redefining tasks and reallocating resources
PHASE 3rd –Focusing on the psychological and motivational needs of employees
in empowered position

BISWAJEET PATTANAYAK has proposed the following guideline

• Understand why the organization is making the change and what it want
to achieve
• Select the leader to head the change
• Involve people in planning how to introduce empowerment
• Create transition project team to test and co-ordinate effort and
communicate result
• Provide training in new skill and behavior
• Acknowledge and reward achievement
PHASE 1 Studying the work environment of the customer contact employees
empowerment is brought in to meet several objectives , such as improving
the quality of service encounters , increasing efficiency and productivity ,
etc . Therefore it is of utmost important to study the work environment where
employee-customer interactions take place . It is therefore important to
consider the following

1- Present quality of service encounters or customer – employee interactions

and how they will improve with empowerment;
2 – Extent to which customer are satisfied by the service- encounters and
how empowerment will contribute towards it;
3 - present level of employee-skills, confidence , and enthusiasm towards job
etc.;
4 – financial and physical resource of the organization ;
5 – present level of decision making authority with customer contact
employees etc;
6 – Relationship between frontline employees and next , organizational
hierarchy
Phase 2 redefining task and reallocating resources
there is no specified process which can be universally applied to
organizations
it would include a number of activities such as information sharing ,
redesigning , communicating system , job enrichment , allocating
resources or providing decision making authority

Pailin has defined empowerment as having three major dimensions

Influence over standard / participative decision making :Frontline

employees know best what must be done to improve customer service .
they have first hand experience with the wide range of customer requests
, and they know what is requird to satisfied them . employee input is
essential to job design and setting of appropriate performance
standards , and it should be taken seriously . therefore , decision making
should be participative so that employee can give continuous feedback
to management on how to improve service delivery
Resource availability: To ve truly empowered , employees must be given
adequate tool to do the job . they need information about customers , about their
organization , its products , and its performance . they must have access to the
basic equipment and supplies necessary to serve customer well . they may also
require the assistance of support personnel to expedite their tasks and they
definitely need full support of senior management.
Decision making authority : Empowered employees must have the authority to
make timely decisions so as to be able to take the appropriate actions during the
initial moment of truth . such decisions might have clearly identified limits that
are instilled through training . this component of empowerment affects customer
satisfaction most directly
Bowen and Lawler defined empowerment as the sharing of four
commodities with frontline employees
Information about organization's performance
Rewards links to the organization’s performance
Knowledge that allows the workers to understand the organization’s
performance and make contribution to it
Power to make decisions that influence the organizational performance

Phase 3 Focusing on the psychological and motivational needs of

employees in empowered position :
It is not enough to mechanically undertake steps or activity to empower.

Cogner and Kanungo point out that delegating authority to employees

may be necessary to empower them , but it doesn’t guarantee that they
will have the will or incentive to use it . they propose that employment
should be thought as a motivational construct – the act of giving a person
a sense of power