Empowerment means encouraging and allowing individuals to take
personal responsibility for improving the way they do their jobs and contribute
to the organizational goals. It require
creation of a culture which would encourage people at all levels to feel that
they can make a difference and also help them to acquire the confidence and
skills to do so.
The famous example of
empowerment is Total Quality Management which is an employee driven process for
ensuring best possible quality products and services for the satisfaction of
customer.
TQM empower employee at all levels in order to tape their full
creativity, motivation and commitment.
The other practices which encourage employee involvement includes
suggestion system, job enlargement, job enrichment, quality circle, self
managed team, participative leadership etc.
Empowerment brings about far reaching change in the organization.
Its essence leads to development of mature human resources, effective
communication, and readiness for change and an atmosphere of trust in the
organization.
Implication of empowerment
|
From
|
To
|
|
Fear
Learning
is a responsibility
People
take little initiative
Scant
training and development
Avoiding
change
Feedback
is seen as criticism
Training and development is the responsibility of personnel
Lack
of vision
Problem
avoiding
Closed
communication
Suspicion
|
Challenge
and adventure
Learning
is an adventure
People
solve their own problems
Continuous
development
Change
welcomed
Feed
back is seen as essential
Training
and development is everybody’s responsibility
Strong,
focused, and share vision
Problem
solving
Open
Communication
·
Sharing of information
·
Sharing of
ideas
·
Sharing of
skills
Trust
|
Thus many responsibilities have been shifted from managers to work
groups in the form of employee empowerment. Companies with the culture of
empowerment reflect the following features:
·
Everyone in
the organization is valued and encouraged to make personal contribution.
·
Individuals
are constantly aware, not only of what they are seeking to achieve, but also
why they are seeking to achieve it and how it fits with the wider corporate
goals.
·
The culture
is likely to be cooperative and purposeful rather than towards finding faults
·
Individuals
have a real willingness to take personnel responsibility for their own success,
the success of the team in which they work and the organization as a whole.
The significance of empowerment of workers and groups arises
because of the following factors:
·
Increasing
pace of change, turbulence of environment and the changing expectations of
customers require a speed and flexibility of response which is incompatible
with the old style command and control model or organizational functioning.
·
Organizations
are using new types of structures to achieve their objectives. The impact of downsizing, de-layering and
decentralizing means that the old methods of achieving coordination and control
are no longer appropriate. Achieving performance under these circumstances
require that staff take and exercise much greater responsibility.
·
Organization
requires cross functional working and greater integration in their process if
they are to meet the customer needs. Such cooperation can be achieved through
empowerment.
·
Employees now
have greater awareness and are more concerned with the satisfaction of higher
level needs. Empowerment can be used to
satisfy such needs of employees and thus motivate them.
·
Employees now
have greater awareness and are more concerned with the satisfaction of higher
level needs. Empowerment can be used to
satisfy such needs of employees and thus motivate them.
·
Empowerment
provides opportunities to the lower level to develop their competencies. Thus it can be used as source of managerial
talent for the organization.
Dynamic concept of Empowerment
·
Total Quality
Management
TQM refers to meeting the requirement of customer
consistently by continuous improvement in the quality of work of all employees.
For achieving TQM these three things are essential
Meeting customer’s requirements
Continuous improvement through
management process
Involvement of all employees
·
Quality
Circle
A quality circle is a small group
of employees doing similar work or related work who meet regularly to identify,
analyze and solve product quality problems and to improve general operations
Overall
improvement in quality product
Improvement of
production method and productivity
Self development
of employees
Encouragement of
innovative ideas among the employee
To build up a high morale and team
spirit in the organization’s atmosphere and among the employees.
