Empowering Employees on Team Processes - Research Paper Example

Empowering Employees on Team Processes Introduction Empowerment refers to the practice of facilitating or giving authority to an individual to perform, suppose, and take-action in addition to manipulating tasks given and making judgments in an independent manner. One of the key objectives to employee’s empowerment is to offer the workforce a greater say in decisions concerning vocational related issues. Some of the employees’ decision-making authorities may entail giving their opinions on exercising refusal power over the decisions of the management. However, the range of resolutions the employees can take part in, is dependent on the organizational policies. Some of the areas employees may have a voice in include, the working conditions, vocational hours, company policies, the manner in which jobs are to be undertaken, peer reviews as well as how supervisors are appraised. To achieve employee empowerment, the management has to undertake capacity building and the development of the human resources under their control or payroll. In view of this, employees and teams ought to possess the self-belief and capacity to perform assignments and ought to have the opportunities to grow and shine. Performance and employees self-assurance is boosted when they gain additional skills in organizational as well as management issues, and when they obtain fresh skills and expertise. Employees’ empowerment is not a one days undertaking and it is not straightforward. This essay looks at employees’ empowerment and manners in which managers can undertake the process to boost the quality of employees-management relationship as well as the total productivity of their organizations. Terms synonymous to employees’ employment include employee mobilization, high involvement vocational practices and employee involvement. Empowered workforces perform better than under-empowered workforces. Employee empowerment in an organization setting Human resource professionals believe that businesses can increase their productivity by empowering their employees. Other human resource scholars put forward that the majority of organizations take part in employees’ empowerment because of its potential to augment organizational innovations and value (Boudrias, Brunet, Morin, Savoie, Plunier, & Cacciatore, 2010). In an organizational set up employee involvement, entails the supervisors supporting immediate workforces in taking part in decisions concerning their vocational responsibilities, and offering them power over their working environment. This strategy is believed to increase workforce enthusiasm and in due course makes them to increase their output. However, some researches have downplayed this hypothesis by arguing that employees empowerment is influenced by many factors other than giving employees control over their work environment. Boudrias, Brunet, Morin, Savoie, Plunier, and Cacciatore, (2010) ascertain that the empowerment of the employee does not take place in an organizational void. This is because the supervisors may endeavor to boost the empowerment of their workforces through awarding the workforces decision-making tasks and offering them the chance to take part, but other organizational system aspects such as procedures governing decision-making, capacity building as well as the reward process may be contradicting to the power given to the employee. Hence, the probability of an empowerment effort by the supervisor to enhance the employees’ empowerment could be conditional to the existence of organizational sustaining features. Therefore, empirical research suggests that effectual empowerment of employees necessitates the creation of an organizational environment distinguished by acknowledgment, support, autonomy support and justice (Boudrias, Brunet, Morin, Savoie, Plunier, & Cacciatore, 2010). Employees’ empowerment Employee empowerment takes place in two broad ways. To start with, employee empowerment can reinforce motivation through offering an employee the chance to achieve inherent compensations from his responsibilities. This may include an increased feeling of accomplishment and importance. In view of this, in some situations, inherent paybacks for instance a feeling of decisive work and job satisfaction may be more influential in motivating the workforce to get empowered, than extrinsic paybacks a such as increased salaries and bonuses. A motivated workforce tends to input additional efforts than one which lacks motivation or lesser in motivation (Kleiman & Droege, 2011). The second technique through which workforces’ empowerment can boost organizational productivity is by better decision making. This is particularly so in an event in which decisions necessitate task-specific experience and skills; the employees at the front line of the problem may better recognize the problem. Giving workforces the power to recognize problems together with the supervisory management brings together answers across departmental lines within an organization and may increase the overall problem solving process and boost organizational learning. For instance, the Toyota Motor Corporation is known to empower some of its workforces to recognize and facilitate solutions to problems taking place during automobile assembly. Hence, a car leaving the Toyota assembly plant with a defect is perceived as an opening to look into the origin of the imperfection rather than fixing the imperfection and forwarding the car for resale (Kleiman & Droege, 2011). Solutions to organizational problems consequential to workforces’ involvement have a tendency to workforces’ acceptance during the implementation process. In addition, since the solutions originate front the employees, this further boosts the probability for productivity enhancement, through the reduction of the feelings that the answer to the problem are from the management. Several human resource management models have been formulated which offer workforces power over their working environment to certain degrees. Human resources empowerment models Casual participative decision-making empowerment plans This approach in workforces’ empowerment entails managers and their juniors making shared decisions concerning work on an every day basis. This strategy recognizes that workforces do not take pleasure in blanket authority in making all vocation-related judgments; hence, the management comes to a decision on how much autonomy in decision making the workforces can have in any given circumstance. The level of empowerment is variable depending on the circumstantial factors, the complexity of the decision to be made, as well as the significance of workforce approval of the decision. Although it may appear simple to empower employees, one fundamental aspect of the empowerment entails deciding under what circumstances the employees should be empowered. In view of this, employees need to be given authority to make work related decision in situations where they can make better decision than those of the management or decisions which are as good as those of the management (Huq, 2010). A possible challenge in giving employees power in some areas is that the interests of the organization may not correspond with those of the employee hence resulting to a conflict of interest. For instance, if employees were given a chance to determine the organizational standards of the organization they work for, and which would affect them directly, the employees would feel it is not in their favor to develop exigent standards; hence they would formulate easily achievable standards. For this reason, human resource experts postulate that the effectiveness of employees’ empowerment is dependent on whether the workforce wants to take part in decision-making. Suggestions to enhance the employees’ involvement levels have been made for various work circumstances. The first circumstance is the circumstance in which the management is incapable of providing the exact information needed. In such a situation, the management should confer with the workforce before a decision is made to establish whether they have the required facts concerning the decision to be made. The second circumstance is a situation in which the management lacks sufficient facts or experience to make a superior decision devoid of the employees’ participation. Under such a circumstance, the management should consult with the workforce before reaching a decision to avoid ignoring solutions, which might appear clear to junior employees but which might be more elusive for superior managers who are not conversant with junior level vocational practices. The final circumstance is the circumstance in which workforces’ goals are united with those of the managers. In a situation in which the managers do not share similar goals with the workforce, involvement in decision making would prove inapplicable since the two involved parties are not in harmony. Majority of organizational managers are hesitant to totally accept, and implement employee empowerment, as they perceive the process as letting go of their control of the work environment and power over their junior workers (Boudrias, Brunet, Morin, Savoie, Plunier, & Cacciatore, 2010). However, employee empowerment entails sharing of workplace powers with the juniors. Although employee empowerment changes vocational processes such as decision making and problem solving within an organization, it is an extra step forward from employees’ participation to autonomy in problem analysis and decision-making. An effectual empowerment process entails respect, trust and openness (Management Skills Advisor, 2011). Casual participative decision-making empowerment plans have been shown to impact positively on the human resource productivity (Black & Gregersen, 1997). Continuous employees’ improvement Organizations adopting this empowerment tool endeavor to create excellence in all stages of product or service plans assembly and delivery. This concept is nowadays known as total quality management. The plan presents the workforce with the power to solve problems from their root causes and instituting changes, which will ensure the problems, are not realized again through the utilization of statistical and other problem solving techniques. Continuous involvement arose from the need for workforces to participate in almost all levels of organizational management. The Motorola Corporation is instrumental in this concept as it is accredited for developing the six-sigma concept. The six-sigma concept entails improving all aspects of an organization from employees’ empowerment and the creation of quality goods and services which ensure customer satisfaction (Jha, Michela, & Noori, 1996). Self-managed vocational teams Self-managed vocational teams have achieved noteworthy success and have been commended for promoting reliable management performances such as teamwork, incessant improvement and learning opportunities for employees. Empowered teams refer to autonomous groups of individuals working collectively with specific objectives. Empowered teams’ possess organizational authority, expertise, responsibility and ability, to endorse their judgments on behalf of the organization they work for. The top management harmonizes the teams’ supervision, which directs the empowerment course by way of linking it to the organization’s wishes and metrics. This means that the management is centered on enhancing employees’ capacity in addition to supporting the managerial goals, whereas the employees are dedicated to and are accountable for managerial goals. Through empowered teams, the employees get to have their vocational responsibilities redefined, expanded and added, in that some tasks previously accomplished by others fall under their jurisdictions. Empowered teams categories Work unit teams This category entails employees working together on a daily basis, focusing on the basic output of their work (Calder & Douglas, 1999). Total clientele satisfaction empowered teams This category addresses clientele as well as business organization issues. They undertake their roles under the principle that ingenuity, intellect and potential are present in all workers and not just within the management. Furthermore, they operate under the rationale that employees can do more in their day-to-day responsibilities and they can advance on an organization’s processes and productivity. Under this category, once a crisis is recognized, team members are chosen based on skills and experience by the person who identified the problem to focus on finding solutions to the problem. This empowers employees through the learning of skills. The team members selected can be in different locations of the world (Calder & Douglas, 1999). Project empowered teams This category entails employees from different disciplines coming together to work on a project for a specified period. It may entail teams from different organizational departments such as marketing, finance, manufacturing and management. This kind of amalgamation allows teams to learn how various department work by allowing the selected employees acquire some skills in the area (Calder & Douglas, 1999). Building team work among employees Several teamwork-building plans are available for organization to exploit in enhancing the capacity of their employees. Some of most popular options, which have been used for ages by organizations, include employees’ retreats, which integrate team-building abilities. The programs try to instill comradeship and teamwork amongst the workforce, which promotes better working relations within an office set up. However, no any given sum of instruction on teamwork unaided can produce a strictly empowered group of employees an organization requires when it involves its employees in these programs. In view of these several fundamental aspects of team building, must be implemented to ensure success in creating an empowered workforce. Team work empowerment Formulating a need for empowerment Initially a reason must be found to necessitate the creation of a team. Hence, teams in an organization must be instituted around an assignment with a rationale and aims. This calls for employees to work in teams, because in the absence of a collective project, shared employees participation is impossible. Organizational goals such as enhanced client satisfaction would form an excellent starting point for team involvement. This is because, many department and groups of people would be involved in realizing the goal through bringing together of dissimilar functions of an organization to enhance the value of the organization as a whole. Team training as an empowerment tool To make certain that teams involved in a collective goal make the most of their capacities, all employee ranks within an organization must possess fundamental management as well as team skills. Nevertheless, some workforces may need additional project management dedicated skills training, to make certain they can work in a group environment. Instilling these abilities in employees is one of the most challenging parts an organization has to deal with in empowering its employees. Management support in employees’ empowerment The all-inclusive training of the workforce together with team building program rolling out in enhancing a company takes time, in addition to calling for organizational changes (Messmer & Messmer, 2007). As a result, an organization must offer management support in ensuring the success of team creation and programs achievement. Team creation within an organization is a process, which can take several years hence it necessitates a very accommodating organizational climate for the top management to create. Hence, organizations undertaking team building must make available a strategy for rolling out changes to guarantee that every individual within the organization is engaged in the process. This strategy calls for the top management to offer support, in addition to all the managers who possess the authority, to put into practice managerial-wide changes (Messmer & Messmer, 2007). Benefits of employee empowerment The process of empowering employees has its paybacks to individual employees, managers plus the productivity of the organization in general. Empowerment makes the workforce more involved in the decision-making process and they consider themselves valued by the employer hence their output is enhanced. Workforces that work on a profession grow their skills on a daily basis. Furthermore, teamwork enhances employees’ creativity in finding solutions to organizational problems, in addition to improving organizational circumstances. Empowerment goes a step further in creating prospect for employees to put on experience, generate ideas as well as discover fresh skills. Giving employees the power to design and execute projects bestow them ownership hence they are more committed to the project success (Management Skills Advisor, 2011). Employee empowerment obstacles Employee empowerment results to extra responsibilities and new challenges on the part of the employees. Following this school of thought, it is apparent some workers would not be interested in empowerment, as their jobs would become more demanding in a team setting, since they would they would have to make judgments on their own. Fear and doubt comprise another obstacle to employee empowerment. Many managers and employees fear that empowerment entails job loses and that the newly empowered employees are bound to make mistakes (Hellinghausen & Myers, n.d). Some of the drawbacks to self-managed teams include competition inside and across organizational teams, obscurity in appraising workers in the non-existence of conventional management statistics, and an inadequacy in finding solutions to interpersonal disagreements (Kleiman & Droege, 2011). Employee empowerment indicators The concept of employee empowerment is difficult to quantify since it cannot be put into figures. Hence, empowerment is measured qualitatively thorough the observable changes in employees output and attitudes toward work. Some of these indicators comprise team spirit, enhanced morale, and autonomy in every team member functioning such as clarity on individual jobs responsibilities and open management. Under open management, team members’ active participation in meetings is evident coupled with ability to make-out issues, scrutinize them and find solutions to them (Bowles & Cooper, 2009). Conclusion Most successful organizations across the world thrive under the investment they have made in their human resources. Across generations human resources scholars have emphasized to organizations that the most valuable asset they possess is their employees. The process of employees’ empowerment entails getting all ranks of employment involved, as it is a collective process, which entails setting clear expectations as to the reason behind organizational team creation. Every party in the organization needs to understand the reasons behind their participation on the team and commitment to the goals of the organization. Employee Empowerment thus involves giving employees control to increase the organizational overall productivity. References Black, S. J., & Gregersen, H. B. (1997). Participative Decision-Making: An Integration of Multiple Dimensions. Human Relations, 50 (7), 859-878. Boudrias, J.-S., Brunet, L., Morin, A. J., Savoie, A., Plunier, P., & Cacciatore, G. (2010). Empowering Employees: The Moderating Role of Perceived Organizational Climate and Justice. Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science, 42 (4), 201–211. Bowles, D., & Cooper, C. L. (2009). Employee morale: driving performance in challenging times. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Calder, N., & Douglas, P. C. (1999). Empowered Employee Teams: The New Key to Improving Corporate. Retrieved from http://www.qualitydigest.com/mar99/html/body_teams.html Hellinghausen, M. A., & Myers, J. (n.d). Empowered Employees: A New Team Concept for Total Customer Satisfaction. Retrieved from http://www.masetllc.com/pdfs/129.pdf Huq, R. (2010). Employee Empowerment: The Rhetoric and the Reality. Devon: Triarchy Press Limited. Jha, S., Michela, J. L., & Noori, H. (1996). The Dynamics of Continuous Improvement: Aligning Organizational Attributes and Activities for Quality and Productivity. International Journal of Quality Science, 1 (1), 19-47. Kleiman, L. S., & Droege, S. B. (2011). Empowerment. Retrieved from http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Em-Exp/Empowerment.html Management Skills Advisor. (2011). Employee Empowerment. Retrieved from http://www.managementskillsadvisor.com/employee-empowerment.html Messmer, M. J., & Messmer, M. (2007). Human Resources Kit for Dummies (2nd Edition). Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley Publication. Read More