Employee Empowerment - Sluggish Changes

Employee Empowerment - Sluggish Changes

Written by: Dr.Gandham Sri Rama Krishna

Published in the Journal of HRD Times, Chennai, January, 2011, Vol.13, No.1, PP. 8-9, ISSN:0976-7401.

            Empowerment  is the  activity  of passing authority and responsibility to individuals at lower levels in the organizational hierarchy.  To achieve empowerment, managers must ensure that employees at the lowest hierarchical levels have the right mix of information, knowledge, power and rewards, to work independently of management control and direction. The advantages of an empowerment are said to include higher quality products and services, less absenteeism, lower turnover, better decision-making and better problem solving which, in turn, result in greater organizational effectiveness.

            According to the Second National Commission on Labour (2002), “Empowerment is the process by which  people can change their circumstances and begin to exercise control over their lives. Empowerment results in a change in the balance of power, in living conditions and in relationships”. Most organizations   realized   human resource involvement and recognized the capacity of their human resource to improve and enhance business performance. Empowerment as a motivational concept  is associated with ‘enabling’ rather than ‘delegating’. Enabling implies the creation of conditions by management so that people can experience  enhanced motivation to achieve the desired  level of performance.   

Gates conceptualize empowerment as a process resulting in the autonomy of individual employees, as well as increase accountability  towards their job  performance.  Every employee is involved at various stages of organizational development, which makes him or her a responsible and accountable for their actions. 

            The new management style encourages high degree of human resource  participation, group involvement, autonomy, self-managing work teams. These management styles are to empower human resource and thereby to increase human resource  commitment and to humanize the workplace.  More human work environment   are intended to result in improvements in work performance and good citizenship behaviours as well as the quality of work life.             

            In recent years, search for ways and means to enhance organizational  effectiveness has intensified tremendously. In the process, empowerment of the human resource has been identified as an instrument which merits serious consideration in the corporate context. And for those organizations which aim for the true global competitiveness, empowerment has assumed a new sense of urgency. It is true that empowerment does lead to greater involvement of human resource   in their work and in turn it does lead to greater care on their part. But, there is much more to empowerment than mere involvement. In fact, if properly understood, empowerment can lead to excellence in all spheres of activities by unleashing the full potential of people and thereby empowerment holds the key to a sustainable competitive edge for the business.  

Need for Empowerment

Empowerment is desirable at the macro level. In the corporate context, it is an important imperative today. One can think of empowerment of his/her subordinates only if the intrinsic potential of  others is recognized and given due respect. Thus empowerment is in a way an acknowledge of other’s abilities.  A few people take decisions, others are meant only to implement them. In an increasingly complex corporate world this can lead to wrong or sub-optimal decisions as top executives do not know everything they ought to know.

Whether it is public sector undertakings or private sector or small scale sector, it is extremely important today to empower  human resource  who are entrusted with responsibility. Empowerment basically implies the mode of encouraging human resource- to experiment with new ideas and practices to set goals and make decisions and to evolve new ways of doing jobs, all directed towards achieving organizational effectiveness and excellence. 

Five Approaches to Human Resource Empowerment:

Each of the five human resources  empowerment approaches used alone challenges the organizations which offer standard package to all their human resources.  

·        Absolute Empowerment  

·        Collaborative Empowerment  

·        Adoptive Empowerment-Transform Your Human Resources

·        Tacit Empowerment  

·        Cosmetic Empowerment

Principles of  Employee Empowerment

These are the ten most important principles for managing people in a way that reinforces employee empowerment, accomplishment, and contribution.

·        Demonstrate that value people

·        Share leadership vision

·        Share goals and direction

·        Trust people

·        Provide information for decision making

·        Delegate authority and impact opportunities, not just more work

·        Provide frequent feedback

·        Solve problems : don’t pinpoint problem people

·        Listen to learn and ask questions to provide guidance

·        Help employees feel rewarded and recognized for empowered behaviour.   

Conclusion:  

In any organization, empowerment fosters decision-making. It gives greater motivation and immense job satisfaction to the human resource. Empowerment is essential in the contemporary business  environment to be both more competitive and productive. Unfortunately, owing to the lack of organizational culture, that believes in trust, transparency, human resource development and management, this most important aspect, empowerment is not practiced in true spirit. It is high time, the human resource initiated work culture in influencing the organization to make the decentralization method a success.

              The Infosys Chief Mentor Narayana Murthy made each and every employee working in their organization as a shareholder  keeping in mind that each and every employee is  involved in the proper working of the organization  and thinking that it is his own organization and take better responsibilities. It is also a model path  of empowerment of human resource.    In the present day Liberalization, Privatization, Globalization(LPG), human resource empowerment plays a key role. More mechanization develops more jobs.

Reference :

1.      Argyris, Chris (1998), “Empowerment: The Emperors New Clothes”, Harvard Business Review, May-June, Pp: 98-105.

2.      Dennison, B (1984),  Bringing Corporate Culture to the Bottomline Organisational Dynamics, 13, Pp: 22-24.

3.      Gates, J.R(1995), Leadership in an Ownership Environment Foundation for Enterprise Development, Research Centre, USA.

4.      Harsh Dwivedi(1997), “Employee Empowerment: A Strategy for Sustainable Competitive Advantage”, Personnel Today, NIPM, Kolkata, Vol. XVIII. No.1.   April-June 1997.

5.      Reports of the National Commission on Labour (2002), Economic India Info-Service,  Academic Foundation, New Delhi.

6.      Sujit Sen & Shailendra Saxena(2003), “Empowerment of Employees”, OD Communication,  Organisation Development Institute,  New Delhi. July.