Ways to Enhance Employee Empowerment

According to Fadal (2003), the greatest source of competitive advantage for organizations is competent,  talented,  motivated,  committed  and conscientious employees. Employees are believed to be the cornerstones of success in organizations deduced by many researchers. Currently organizations are continuing to transform as per the demands of its business environment. In the present day,  customers  and  competition  require  speedy  responses, and organizations cannot allow any negative aspects that will affect  its  relationship  to  the marketplace.

Based on this it is very important to build and sustain competitive advantages and human resources are one such advantage. Therefore, in  order  to remain  competitive,  organizations must achieve high levels of  performance, quality,  cost  and speed.  

Empowerment is considered to be a concept that is practiced widely by many organizations and  these organizations enjoy the benefits of consisting of highly committed  employees experienced  that leads to positive behaviors such as creativity  and innovation  and  higher  productivity (Ramesh & Kumar, 2017).

 

Human resource management now is considered as a strategic partner in organizations and this shows us what an important role employee empowerment can play.Employee empowerment will affect in reducing absenteeism, the turnover and impact positively on job satisfaction, citizenship behavior, productivity, and which will in turn affect the organizations’ performance.

 

A model  was  developed  consisting of  six  factors,  in which results have proven that empowerment is successful as follows (Spreitzer, 1995,1997; Gorden,1995; Honold,1997)

1.    Job  design will determine  complex  challenging  flexible  work that will give employees autonomy to make decisions and feel important.

 

2.   Transformational  leadership  who can inspire employees and guide them to a  shared  vision.

 

3.    Decision making  authority by  giving  employees

 

4.    Training and development that will enhance employees’ skills which will enable them to take on additional  responsibilities and  activities with  high performance.  

 

5.    Information  sharing about  the  organization’s  vision,  mission,  strategy, objectives and the action plan with all employees. 

 

6.    Self-managed teams where organizations shift their management from focusing on employees  to  focusing on teams,  as teams can result in greater  performance,  improved  problem-solving possibilities, and higher motivation.

       By focusing on these six factors organizations can easily enhance their employee empowerment to contribute to Organizational performance

 

References

Fadal,  S.  (2003).  Employee  Empowerment  as  a  business  optimization  techniqu utilizing continuous training and development, participation rights and decision-making authority. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Argosy University-orange country, USA.

Ramesh, R., & Kumar, K. S. (2017). Role of  employee  empowerment  in  organizational development. International Journal of scientific research and management, 2(8), 1241-1245. 

Randolph, W. A. (1995). Navigating the journey to empowerment. Organizational dynamics, 23(4), 19-32.

Spreitzer,  G.  M.,  Kizilos,  M.  A.,  &  Nason,  S.  W.  (1997).  A  dimensional  analysis  of  the relationship between psychological empowerment and effectiveness, satisfaction and strain. Journal of Management, 23, 679-704

Gorden,  W.  I.  (1995).  People  should  be  as  important  as  profits:  from  enchantment  to empowerment. Vital Speeches of the Day, 285-88.

Honold, L.(1997). A review of the literature on  employee empowerment.  Empowerment in organizations, 5(4), 202-212