20-03-2024

DEFINITION

Newstrom and Davis have defined

empowerment as
“Empowerment is any process that provides
greater autonomy through the sharing of
relevant information and the provision of
control over factors affecting job
performance.”
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MEANING

 Empowerment is the process of giving employees in the

organisation the power, authority, responsibility,
resources, freedom to take decisions and solve work
related problems.
 In order to take such initiatives and decisions, they are
given adequate authority and resources.
 The empowered employee becomes “self-directed” and
“self-controlled”.
 Empowerment focuses on employees to make use of their
full potential.

MEANING
• Empowerment is the process of giving employees in the
organisation the power, authority, responsibility, resources,
freedom to take decisions and solve work related problems. In
order to take such initiatives and decisions, they are given
adequate authority and resources.
• This allocation of authority is not based on the concept of
“delegation” based relationship. In empowerment it is a “trust
based relationship”, which is established between management
and employees. It is a continuous process.
• The empowered employee becomes “self-directed” and “self-
controlled”. Empowerment focuses on employees to make use of
their full potential.
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CONCEPT
• Employee Empowerment in work setting means giving employees the means, ability, and
authority to do something.
• Various techniques of empowerment range from participation in decision-making to the
use of self-managed or empowered teams.
• Employees’ empowerment is the process of sharing power with employees, thereby
enhancing their confidence in their ability to perform their jobs, and their belief that they
are influential contributors to the organization.

PURPOSE
• The purpose of empowerment is to free the employees from rigorous
control and give them freedom to take responsibility for their own ideas
and actions, to release hidden talents which would otherwise remain
inaccessible.
• Empowerment offers a way of treating people with respect and dignity.
It is a must for organisations that want to be successful in the
competitive world.
• Empowerment should not be confused with delegation of authority.
Delegation is granting of authority by a superior to a subordinate for a
specific purpose such as buying specific materials from a specified
vendor.
• But empowerment has a wider scope because the subordinate is given
adequate autonomy or freedom to select the type of materials from the
vendor he thinks is the best.
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EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT – NEED

(i) Increasing pace of change, turbulence of environment and the changing

expectations of customers requires a speedy and flexible response which is
incompatible with the old-style command and control model of organisational
functioning.
(ii) Organisations are using new types of structures to achieve their objectives. The
impact of downsizing, delayering and decentralising means that the old methods
of achieving co-ordination and control are no longer appropriate.
(iii) Organisations require cross-functional working and greater integration in their
processes if they are to meet the customers’ needs. Such cooperation can be
achieved through empowerment.
(iv) 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.
(v) Empowerment can provide opportunities to the employees at lower levels to
develop their competencies.

CHARACTERISTRICS OF EMPLOYEE
EMPOWERMENT IN ORGANAZATION
1. Empowered organizations put emphasis on delegation, decentralization, and
diffusion of power and information.
2. Their organizational hierarchy is flat instead of series of levels which
command and control the one immediately beneath them.
3. They appoint fewer managers with wider responsibilities. The span of
management is well above twenty in which a manager’s role shifts from
controller to coach and mentor.
4. They set unstructured guidelines so that the employees know their decision-
making parameters.
5. Their employee-related core value is employee satisfaction.
6. They invest lot of time and effort to ensure that newly recruited employees are
able to handle workplace freedom.
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EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT – 3 IMPORTANT TYPES:

SUGGESTION

Type # 1. Suggestion Involvement:

Type # 2. Job Involvement:
Type # 3. High Involvement:

EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT – DIMENSIONS

(i) Self-determination
(ii) Meaningfulness
(iii) Competence
(iv) Feeling of impact
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EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT –
APPROACHES
(i) Helping employees achieve job mastery—giving training, coaching,
and guided experience that are required for initial success,
(ii) Allowing more control—giving employees discretion over job
performance and making them accountable for the performance
outcomes.
(iii) Providing successful role models—allowing them to observe peers
who are performing successfully on the job.
(iv) Using social reinforcement and persuasion—giving praise,
encouragement, and verbal feedback to raise confidence of the
employees.
(v) Giving emotional support-reduction of stress and anxiety through
better role prescription, task assistance, and personal care.

EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT – ELEMENTS:

1. Control over Work Situation:
2. Self-Sufficiency or Competence
3. Purposefulness:
4. Belief System and Trust:
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EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT – IMPORTANCE

(i) Employee empowerment improves quality of goods produced by employees.
(ii) In changing scenario, workers need acceptance of changes in Operation,
methods, techniques, quality of products and this is possible if organizations
practice employee empowerment.
(iii) It brings congenial and conducive atmosphere in the organization to achieve
organizational goals.
(iv) A culture of openness and trust is developed which establishes healthy
relations between supervisors and employees.
(v) It helps to create motivated and committed work force in organization.
(vi) It satiates the need of workers for recognition, status, challenging work,
responsibility (that means workers’ esteem need is satisfied through
empowerment).

EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT : BENEFITS

• Increased Productivity
• Reduced Costs
• Improved Quality,
• Competitive Edge
• Better Job Satisfaction and Retention
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EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT – BARRIERS TO

EMPOWERING EMPLOYEES
• Incongruent Organization Culture
• Rigid Control Systems
• Inadequate Delegation of Authority

EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT – HOW TO MAKE

EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT EFFECTIVE?

• There are four factors in a job which are intrinsically motivating.These

are impact, competence, meaningfulness, and choice.
• When an employee feels that the completion of task will make a
difference, such a task has impact on his performance.
• When the employee has the ability, skills, and knowledge to perform
a task, he feels the sense of competence.
• When the employee feels that the task assigned to him is worthwhile,
he develops a sense of meaningfulness in the job.
• When the employee feels that he has freedom to make decisions and
initiate actions, he experiences the sense of choice.
• Empowerment can be undertaken on individual basis or on group
basis.
• However, recent emphasis is on groups and empowered teams are
created in organizations.
• One of the most popular empowered teams is quality circle.
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EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT – EMPOWERMENT OF

WOMEN

• Women constitute half of the world population, but a majority of them world over
are engaged in the informal work sector.
• This is not because women are inferior to men in terms of knowledge, initiative
and energy to do higher level jobs.
• Cultural and social stigmas, customs and traditions have confined them to home
and low level jobs.
• In recent years, education and constitutional guarantee of equal opportunity have
helped women in many countries to come up on the front in industry and other
professions where they have excelled.
• A Fortune 500 study (2008) found that big corporations with more women
directors had significantly higher financial returns, including 53% higher return on
equity, 24% higher return on sales and 67% higher return on invested capital.
• Empowerment of women for higher administrative and managerial jobs require
change in the attitudes of men holding senior positions, attitude of women
themselves.
• Organisations should provide training for new skills and higher managerial
assignments to women, encourage them to participate in decision-marking and
reward them for showing excellence without discrimination.