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 employees 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 employees
to make some decisions(typically minor ones)
• Self-management- employees make most
decisions pertaining to their work and
work setting
 Empowered People
• Gretchen Spreitzer found that employees
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 Participative Decision-
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)
• Employees need the skills and training to
manage risks and decision-making.
• Many employees 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 employees.
• Employees 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.
 Education
&
Training
Low role Org.
ambiguity Climate
Conditions
inspiring
Empowerment
Wide span
Access to
Of
information
control
Political

Support
 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.”