EMPOWERMENT OF HUMAN RESOURCES TO ENSURE SUCCESS AND PROGRESS IN THE AREAS OF EDUCATION, HEALTH AND ECONOMY

EMPOWERMENT OF HUMAN RESOURCES TO ENSURE SUCCESS AND PROGRESS IN THE AREAS OF EDUCATION, HEALTH AND ECONOMY

Dr.Gandham Sri Rama Krishna: 

Contributed one chapter title “Empowerment of Human Resources to Ensure Success and Progress in the Areas of Education, Health and Economy” in the Edited Book entitled “Changing Scenario of Human Resources in India” Published by Himalaya Publishing House, Mumbai, in the year, 2012, ISBN; 978-93-5097-139-0. 

ABSTRACT

Empowerment of Human resources in India is a continuous and ongoing process. Employee empowerment is a strategy and philosophy that enables employees to make decisions about their jobs. Employee empowerment helps employees own their work and take responsibility for their results. Importance of empowerment include the creation of a Positive environment, Creativity, Productivity, Motivation, Team work, Conflicts, More skilled workers as a resulting of workers. This paper examines the topic of employee empowerment and seeks to provide principles and strategies based upon perceptions of an individual regarding education, health and economy. The organizations has the responsibility to create a work environment which helps foster the ability and desire of individuals to act in empowered ways

KEY WORDS: Human Resources Empowerment NRHM

INTRODUCTION

Empowerment is the process of enabling or authorizing an individual to think, behave, and take actions in autonomous ways. It is the state of feeling self-empowered to take control of one’s own destiny. Empowerment is a desirable management and organizational style that enables employees to perform their skills and abilities to benefit both their organization and society. A management practice of sharing information, rewards and power with employees so that they can take initiative and make decisions to solve problems and improve service and performance. Empowerment is based on the idea that giving employees skills, resources, authority, opportunity, motivation, as well holding them responsible and accountable for outcomes of their actions, will contribute to their competence and satisfaction.

Rapport (1984) states that employee empowerment  is the process of  unleashing an individual potential and enhancing his abilities to nurture growth in the organization, therefore empowerment  involves a process  by which an individual is provided with proper information regarding performance of the organization. In an organization empowerment is important in that it helps remove the feelings of powerlessness through enhancement of self efficiency of the individual. It therefore enables the individuals tope with problems that face them. Empowerment that can be defined as the process, by which we can increase the capacity of an individual or a group in order for them to make their own choices which will lead to increased productivity in an organization.

DEFINITION

Employee empowerment is creating a working environment where an employee is allowed to make his own decisions in specific work-related situations. The decisions can be big or small, and the size and effect of the decision is up to the employer. The logic behind employee empowerment is to increase the employee’s responsibility, to build employee morale and to improve the quality of your employee’s work life. Ideally, when an employee feels vested in an organization, he will be more productive, loyal and more confident.

According to professor Seibert “Empowerment is an effective approach for improving employee attitudes and work behaviors in a broad range of industries, occupations and geographic regions,”

IMPORTANCE OF EMPOWERMENT

Employee plays a major role in the success of an organization. Many organizations today have adopted these strategies that help them achieve growth and success in their business undertakings, the importance of employee include:

• POSITIVE ENVIRONMENT: Employee empowerment leads to the creation of positive environment in the workplace; this will lead to increased productivity and boost employee morale, as a result the organization gains due to increased productivity and efficiency in the workplace. Employee empowerment will increase employees learning, growth, improvement and enhancement of performance ability.
• CREATIVITY: Empowerment involves letting employees make decision on their own and also solve problems, this increases their creativity and also improve the working environment and this encourages a positive working environment where employees are in position to become more creative and productive to the organization.
• PRODUCTIVITY: Empowerment ensures that the employees perform their tasks in the most effective way that saves time and energy, as a result the employees become more productive than in an organization does not empower its workers, as a result there is increased productivity of the workers which will benefit the organization.  (Rapport-1984)
• MOTIVATION: Employee empowerment will motivate workers which will in turn increase employee productivity, motivation as a result of empowerment will increase commitment by employees and as a result the employee will more satisfied with work.
• TEAM WORK: Empowerment will encourage team work and as a result there will increase motivation to undertake tasks.
• CONFLICTS: It will reduce conflicts between managers and workers; also there will be a decline in the demand for supervisors and administrators reducing the cost of production in the organization resulting to increased competitive advantage of the organization over its competitors. Also the involvement of workers in the decision making process will increase the possibility of workers agreeing to changes in the organization. (Kreisberg-1999
• MORE SKILLED WORKERS: Through empowerment the employees become more skilled through education and training offered by the organization, this will lead to employee productivity, employees will also increase competence as a result of training offered.

TOP 10 PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN RESOURCE EMPOWERMENT

1.     Demonstrate the value of people

2.     Share leadership vision

3.     Share goals and direction

4.     Trust people

5.     Provide information for decision making

6.     Delegate authority

7.     Provide frequent feedback

8.     Solve problems

9.     Listen to learn and ask questions to provide guidance

10. Recognized empowered behavior.

EMPOWERMENT – EDUCATION

To empower people in terms of education means helping adults in facing the various challenges in their lives. For instance, effective parenting skills are essential in the face of increasing threats to the family institutions. It means helping citizens of whatever belief or cultural, background to have control over events in their daily lives. This includes giving them the opportunity to improve their lot, to have access to college education and pursue careers of their choice, to choose what they want to believe and so on. Knowledge and skills acquisition will go a long way in realizing. Efforts in developing human resources for higher-level manpower by institutions of learning come in levels. Colleges of Education award certificates

The ministry of Human resource Development (HRD or MHRD) in Hindi; Manav Samsthan Vikas Manthralay is an Indian government ministry, responsible for the development of human resources. The ministry is divided into two departments: the Department of School Education and Literacy and Department of Higher Education which deals with University Education, Technical Education and Scholarship etc.

EMPOWERMENT – HEALTH

Since the launch of the community Development Programme in 1951, India has gradually developed a vast public health infrastructure, which currently includes 1, 42, 655 sub-centers, 23, 109 primary health centers (PHCs) and 3,222 community Health Centers (CHCs), providing services to 742,49 million rural people (72.2% of the country’s population). Besides over 5,479 sub-divisional and district hospitals and other specialized hospitals are also in the public sector. The types of Human Resource for health (HRH) managing the public health system in India have been largely influenced by prevailing health situation, recommendations of the Bhore Committee (1946) and various other committees of the government. The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) launched by the honorable Prime minister of India on 12 April 2005, is an ambitious strategy of the government. It aims to restructure the delivery mechanism for health towards providing universal access to equitable, affordable and quality health care that is accountable and responsive to the people’s needs, reducing child and maternal deaths as well as stabilizing population and ensuring gender and demographic balance.

The Mission is an articulation of the government’s commitment to rise public spending on health from 0.9% of India’s gross domestic product (GDP) to 2-1% of GDP and aims to undertake architectural correction of the health system. The mission will enable the system to effectively handle increased allocation and promote policies that strengthen public health management and service delivery in the country. Wide-ranging stakeholder consultations were held over a six-month period with state governments, the planning commission, the National Advisory Council, Other government ministries/departments, health professionals and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to draw up the Mission strategy.

Towards achieving the National health Policy (2002) goals and the mission seeks convergences among the sectors of health, family welfare, AYUSH, nutrition and sanitation. This will be translated at the village level through the Village Health and Sanitation Committee of the Gram Panchayat and at the district level, by the District health Mission. The strategy encompasses the principles of ‘Health for All’ such as equitable distribution, community participation, inter-sectoral coordination and appropriate technology etc.

HR EMPOWERMENT CHALLENGES

• Creation of a sustainable health system improving the training curriculum and enhancing the training facilities for health workers.
• Motivational issues such as a positive work environment, adequate environment/ compensation, career development and a supportive health system, adequate compensation and working conditions to ensure retention of skilled workers in the health system.
• Advancing competencies through education to develop appropriate attitude and skills and creating conditions for continuous learning.
• Linking HRH to the NRHM in addressing health workforce issues and
• Recognizing solutions for HRH issues go beyond the health sector and are linked to broader fiscal, financing policies and processes. 

EMPOWERMENT – ECONOMY

Human resource is a key economic resource and a scare one. The rapid development of any nation depends largely on the caliber of its youths, since every sector of a nation’s economy is managed by competent personnel who are mostly young people. The resources employed in the management process are both material and human, human resources as the people with different specializations, roles and capabilities who are an integral part of the organization. Human resources constitute all people resident in the nation or organization who are not incapacitated beyond the possibility of contributing to the social and economic well being of that nation or organization. They may be direct employees, clients or customers, temporary employees or consultant, part-time persons or any person, with different types of other relationship to the organization. Physical/mental resources include: computer, audio video recording, infrastructural facilities stationeries, vehicles, television, sports equipment, models etc.

However, resources in education can also include a piece of evidence, any piece of information and idea and any contribution of these items which can help the young earner to develop his ability to learn, think, feel, discriminate and create, thereby being empowered. In organizational settings, human resources constitute the ultimate basis of a nation’s wealth. This implies that youths are active catalysts who constitute wealth creators, material resources exploiters, builders of social, economic and political organizations and agents that stimulate national development; while capital and material resources are passive productive factors.

CONCLUSION

Empowerment should be encouraged in an organization through adoption of changes in decision making in order to increase the organizations productivity. Today, more than 70 percent of organizations have adopted some kind of empowerment initiative for at least part of their workforce. To be successful in today’s global business environment, companies need the knowledge, ideas, energy, and creativity of every employee, from front line workers to the top level managers in the executive suite. Educative efforts enable employees to build knowledge, skills and abilities not only to do their own jobs better but also to learn about skills and the economies of the larger organizations.

REFERENCES

• Wilkinson. A (1998) Empowerment of employee’s theory and practice, McGraw Hill Publishers, New York.
• Rapport. J (1984) Studies in empowerment: introduction to empowerment, Beacon press, Boston.
• National Health Policy (2002), Department of health, ministry of health and family welfare, Government of India.

WEBSITES

• www. human resources.about.com
• www. Strategic-human-resources.com
• www.mbaskool.com
• www.wikipedia.org
• www.mhrd.gov.in
• www.businessdictionary.com
• www.hreric.com
• www.who.in
• www.clearpointhrcafe.com