EMPOWERMENT

INTRODUCTION
Empowerment occurs when employees are adequately trained, provided with all relevant information and the best possible tools, fully involved in key decision and are fairly rewarded for result. Empowerment is a key building block of progressive management by those who view power an unlimited resource. The more power you give away (to the lower levels), the more you have in terms of productivity and performance. This can be a difficult concept to grasp for traditional authoritarian managers who see empowerment as a threat to their authority. Today, the issue is not empowerment versus no empowerment. Rather, the issue is how empowerment should take place. The famous example of empowerment is Total Quality Management (TQM) which is employee driven for ensuring best possible quality products and services for the satisfaction of customers. TQM empowers employees at all levels in order to tap their full creativity, motivation, and commitment. The other practices which encourage teamwork and employer involvement include suggestion system, quality circles, self-managed team, participative leadership, etc.

MEANING AND DEFINITIONS

Empowerment means encouraging and allowing individuals to take personal responsibility for improving the way they do their jobs and contribute to the organizations goals. Empowerment has been defined by Richard Carver, an authority, in terms of encouraging and allowing individuals to take personal responsibility for improving the way they do their jobs and contribute to the organizations goals. It requires the creation of a culture which both encourages people at all levels to feel they can make a difference and helps them to acquire the confidence and skills to do so. According to Nancy Foy Empowerment is simply gaining the power to make you voice heard, to contribute to plans and decision that affect you, to use your expertise at work to improve your performance and with it the performance of your whole organisation. David Clutterbuck defines empowerment as, Finding new ways to concentrate power in the hands of the people who need it most to get the job done- putting authority, responsibility, resources and rights at the most appropriate level for each task. Empowerment is the concept of giving people more responsibility for how they do their own job. It is concerned with more involvement in decision making. Empowerment is a process to increase efficiency and make greater use of each individuals contribution. It implies synergy- the whole can be greater than the sum of the parts.

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. On the other hand, empowerment means giving up control on employees and letting every employee make decisions, set goals, accomplish results and receive rewards. It means making a person able to manage by himself. It is a process for helping right person at the right levels to makes the right decision for the right reasons.

ELEMENTS OF EMPOWERMENT
Elements of empowerment include control over work solution, self-sufficiency or competence, purposefulness, belief system and trust. 1. Control over work situation: The employees of the organisation must have a sense of parental control over ones immediate work situation. This is very much essential to understand the situation in which an employee is expected to discharge his duties. 2. Self-sufficiency or Competence: The employee must be capable of successfully performing the assigned task. The employee must have confidence in his performance. He should not accept responsibility for making decisions until they are confident of their abilities. 3. Purposefulness: The empowered employee must feel the significance and importance of the task assigned to him. He should not only know the value of the work for himself but also to the organisation. Every employee must know how his/her task fits into the larger scheme of things. 4. Belief System and Trust: The employee must clearly understand the impact of the decision taken on the performance and effectiveness of the organisation. The impact is felt when employees perceive that their behavior has caused important outcomes.

TYPES OF EMPOWERMENT
Bowen and Lawler define three types of empowerment. 1. Suggestion Involvement. It represents a small shift away from the control model. Employees are encouraged to contribute ideas through formal suggestion programmes or quality circles but their day to day work activities do not really change. Also they are only empowered to recommend, management typically retains the power to decide whether or not to implement any ideas they generate.

Suggestion involvement can produce some empowerment without altering the basic production line approach.

2. Job involvement. It represents a significant departure from the control model because of its dramatic opening up of job content. Jobs are re-designed so that employees use a variety of skills. Employees believe their tasks are significant, they have considerable freedom in deciding how to do work, they get more feedback than employees in a command and control organizations and they each handle a whole, identified piece of work. However, despite the heightened level of empowerment that it brings, the job involvement approach does not change higher level strategic decisions concerning organizational structure, power and allocation of rewards. These remain the responsibility of senior management.

3. High involvement. High involvement organizations give their lowest level employees a sense of involvement not just in how they do their jobs or how effectively their group performs, but in the total organizations performance. Virtually every aspect of the organisation is different from that of a control- oriented one. Information on all aspects of business performance is shared horizontally across the organisation as well as up and down the structure. Employees develop extensive skills in team -work, problem-solving and business operations and participate in work unit management decisions. High involvement organizations often use profitsharing and employee ownership.

APPROACHES OF EMPOWERMENT

The real problem is, in fact, how to empower employees. Like other behavioral problems, the researchers have studied the problem and have suggested five broad approaches to empowerment these are: 1. Job mastery: Helping employees achieve job mastery (Giving proper training, coaching, and guided experience that will result in initial successes.) 2. Control: Allowing more control (Giving them discretion over job performance and then holding them accountable for outcome.) 3. Role Models: Providing successful role models.(Allowing them observe peers who have already perform successfully on their jobs.) 4. Social reinforcement and persuation: Using social reinforcement and persuation. (Giving praise, encouragement, and verbal feedback designed to raise self confidence.)

5. Emotional support: Giving emotional support.(Providing reduction of stress and anxiety through better definition, task assistance, and honest caring.)

CONDITIONS NECESSARY FOR EMPOWERMWNT

As the existence of a minimum prior built-up infrastructure in required to start any economic activity, similarly some necessary condition to be satisfied are also necessary for implementing employee empowerment scheme.These necessary gain credibility and acceptance at various levels in an orhanisation. H.H. Dobbs has suggested four conditions necessary for empowerment. These are: 1. Participation: As mentioned earlier, participation is a subset of empowerment. Hence, efforts should be made to encourage employees/workers to take initiatives in the participative process. Two actions can be taken for this purpose. First, the bureaucratic hurdles, whatsoever these becoming in the way must be kept at bay or removed. Second, employees should be imparted necessary training and coaching to enable them to participate more effectively. 2. Innovation: Innovation has been the hallmark of much talked about and referred to Japanese management. In Japan, empowerment, inter alia, ushered in innovation. The reason is not difficult to seek. Empowerment allows employees to do things in their ways and manners. This breeds creative and innovative culture of doing things in an organisation. Therefore, management must encourage employees to try out new ideas and new methods of decision making. Even when employees fail in their efforts. Management should encourage them to keep their efforts on. Employees should be made realize that failures are stepping stones to success. With supportive conditions, employees are sure to ride the tidal wave of success on one day. 3. Information: Information is the power. It is also as raw material for performing various activities by the employees. Good decision depends, among other things, on good information or data, hence, employees must have free access to information and the required information must be made readily available to them. 4. Accountability: Along with giving to the employees, they also must be held accountable for their result. The purpose behind it is not to identify their black spots and single out and them for punishment, but to know that they are giving their best efforts. Experience shows that tagging accountability with authority leads to better use of authority.

IMPORTANCE OF EMPOWERMENT
Empowerment has become important in recent years due to the following reasons:

1. The increasing pace of change, turbulence of the environment, the speed of competitive response and the acceleration of customer demands require a speed and flexibility of response which is incompatible with the old-style command and control model of organizational functioning. 2. Organisations themselves are changing. The impact of downsizing, de-layering and decentralizing means that the old methods of achieving co-ordination and control are no longer appropriate. Achieving performance in these new circumstances requires that staff take and exercise much greater responsibility.

3. Organisations require more cross-functional working, more cooperation between areas, and more integration in their process if they are to meet the customers needs. Such co-operation can be achieved through empowerment. 4. Excellent managerial talent is increasingly perceived as scarce and expensive. Using it for direct supervision of efficient staff compounds these difficulties. On the other hand, empowerment enables managerial talent to be focused more on external changes and less on internal problem-solving. 5. Empowerment may reveal sources of managerial talent, which were previously unrecognized, and creating circumstances in which such talent can flourish. 6. Staff are no longer prepared to accept the old command and control systems. Much wider availability of education, greater emphasis on lifetime development and the end of the previous certainties of job security and steady advancement have contributed to a situation where jobs are valued for the development of opportunities that they offer, rather than in themselves. Organisations which fail to meet these aspirations will not generate the performance they require and will suffer a continuous drain of their best staff.

Empowered companies should therefore reflect the following characteristics: a) Everyone in the organisation is valued and encouraged to make a personal contribution; b) 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; c) The culture is likely to be co-operative and purposeful rather than blame-oriented; d) Individuals have a real willingness to take personal responsibility for their own success, the success of the team in which they work and the organisation as a whole.

PARTICIPATION OF EMPLOYEES I EMPOWERMENT

Employee participation in management is nothing new. It is as old as the institution of owners and workers. But its importance has increased and has been brought into sharp focus with the industrial revolution and the advent of large enterprises. In its narrow sense, participative management exists when employees are involved in decision making process, not in mere job related activities, but at all levels of management. Workers participation in

management is synonymous with co-determination- a term popularly used in former East Germany to describe this participation. Participative management is also called employee empowerment.

Empowered Teams:
Empowering refers to passing on authority and responsibility. Empowerment occurs when power goes to employees who then experience a sense of ownership and control over their jobs. Empowered individuals know that their jobs belong to them. Given a say on how things are employees feel more responsible. When they feel responsible, they show more initiative in their work more done, and enjoy the work more. Empowerment is facilitated by a combination of factors, including values, leadership actions, job structure, and reward systems.

Actions for Empowering Employees

To empower employees the organisation must initiate certain actions which may be 1. Delegation of authority 2. Participative decision making

3. Encourage self management 4. Job enrichment 5. Creating self managed work teams 6. Creating job that provide intrinsic feedback 7. Installation of upward performance appraisal 8. Lessening of formalities 9. Creating supportive culture 10. Encouraging goal-setting 11. Education and training employees

Effective Employee Empowerment Conditions

In order for empowerment to take root and thrive organizations must encourage * Participation * Innovation * Access to information * Accountability

Other Empowerment conditions

Other conditions to make empowerment successful include: * Provide the information of the company to all employees * Employees should have multi-skills and knowledge * Employees should assume power to make substantive decisions * Employees should understand all the jobs

* Management should create and maintain the culture * Management should delegate authority and provide power * Management should encourage the employees to take risk * Management should reward the employees adequately

The characteristics of Empowered Organisation

The characteristics of empowered organizations include: * The empowered organizations have a flat organizational structure and high degree of performing work systems. * The attitude ad mindsets of employees of empowered organizations are also quite different. Each of the employees will be working towards the vision of the organization, there will be independent work teams at all levels, continuous improvement and learning, high degree of belief system and trust, environment of openness, authenticity and acceptance, freedom from all threats, accountability and commitment on the part of the employees, encouragement, creativity and development in all activities, confidence at all times in the minds of the employees.

* The empowered organizations invest a lot of time and effort in hiring, to make sure that new recruits can handle freedom given at the work place, these organizations have loose guidelines so that the employees can know their decision making parameters. * Results are important than the process, open and strong communication network, most importantly satisfaction of employees. * The empowered organizations also create the feeling of belongingness, and creativity is encouraged among the employees. The employees also learn and teach the art of self leadership. * Transparent ethics is another characteristic feature of empowered organization.

Secrecy and confidentiality are never the practices are other added features of an empowered organization.

* The ideal sets of work practices are other added features of an empowered organization. * Flexible scheduling of work, uncompromising employee integrity, low employee turn-over, quality, productivity, self directed work force, participative decision making systems, no boundaries or borderless relationships and no hard rules are the important characteristic features of an empowered organization.

Benefits of Empowerment
Empowerment benefits the organisation, employees and managers for organisation: Empowerment benefits the organisation by * Creating an environment which encourages proactively problem solving, accepting challenge, innovation, continuous improvement, optimum utilization of employees. * A high degree of employee motivation and enhancement of business performance. For Employees For employees empowerment provides a sense of high self esteem, high degree of involvement and participation, a learning environment opportunity for personal growth and development and a greater sense of achievement. For Managers Managers can think of empowerment process as involving in several stages. Managers can assume additional and new responsibilities. The managers of the empowered organizations will have greater commitment towards the organisation.

Delegation of Authority
Authority is delegated when a superior gives a subordinate discretion to make decisions. The process of delegation involves determining the results expected from a position, assigning tasks to the position, delegating authority for accomplishing these tasks and holding the person in that position responsible for the accomplishment of the task.

The art of Delegation

Most failures in effective delegation occur not because mangers do not understand the nature and principles of delegation but because they are unable or unwilling to apply them. Delegation is in a way an elementary act of managing.

Personal Attitudes toward Delegation

1. Receptiveness: An underlying attribute of managers who will delegate authority is a willingness to give other peoples idea a chance. 2. Willingness to let go: if the size or complexity of the organization forces delegation of authority, manager should realize that there is a law of comparative managerial advantage (same as law of comparative economic advantage, which states that, a countrys wealth will be enhanced if it exports what it produces most efficiently and imports what it produces least efficiently. 3. Willingness to let others make mistakes: Continual checking on the subordinate to ensure that no mistakes are ever made will make true delegation impossible. Since everyone makes mistakes, a subordinate must be allowed to make some, and their cost must be considered an investment in personal development. Serious or repeated mistakes can be largely avoided without nullifying delegation. 4. Willingness to trust subordinates: Superiors have no alternative to trusting their subordinates, for delegation implies a trustful attitude between them. This trust is sometimes hard to come by. 5. Willingness to establish and use broad controls: More often than not, reluctance to delegate and to trust subordinates comes from the superiors inadequate planning and understandable fear of loss of control.

Overcoming Weak Delegation

Following practical guides will facilitate a successful delegation: 1. Define assignments and delegate authority in the light of result expected. 2. Select the person in the light of the job to be done. 3. Maintain open lines of communication.

4. Establish proper controls. 5. Reward effective delegation and successful assumption of authority.