Is empowerment a valuable tool for increasing efficiency and effectiveness in todays organisations - Essay Example

Employee empowerment Employee empowerment is giving employees the opportunity to make workplace decisions by enlarging their autonomy in decision making within an organization. Empowerment can also be viewed as the act of breaking down the traditional hierarchical structures. Employee empowerment gives them the authority to make company resolutions about customer care and service. In the context of organizational and industrial psychology, employee empowerment refers to enhancement of employee involvement of autonomy with an aim to increase their ability to make decisions. This helps the organizations to achieve its interests and agenda with ease and effectiveness. It entails giving the employees the necessary guideline and tools to help them acquire autonomy in decision making (Crawford 2008). This empowerment entails the responsibility and accountability of the employees to make decisions within the acceptable parameters. This practice is then entrenched in the organizational culture. In modern organizations, an empowered and motivated workforce is seen as essential for the profitability of an organization. This paper focuses on the value of employee empowerment on organizational effectiveness in the modern world. Employee empowerment has been found to increase workers commitment to the organizational policies and goals (Siebert & Randholph 2004). Employee empowerment can be viewed through two perspectives: the psychological perspective and the empowerment climate which is known to focus of the employee working environment. Psychological empowerment of employees focuses of the strength of the mental capacity of employees at the level of an individual (Areiqa& Zamil 2011). The empowerment climate tends to place emphasis on the employee working environment (Sahoo & Tripathy 2010). The idea of using structures, practices and employees in an organization to support employees was introduced by Scott and his friends. He argued that, it is essential to create a conducive, working environment for employees for them to feel free to participate in decision making process and the goals of the organization. It refers to the work atmosphere and environment directly (Crawford 2008). According to Blanchard and Randolph, there are three principal practices that are associated with the working environment and the empowerment climate of employees. They include the team accountability, autonomy through boundaries and sharing of information. Organizational climate practices deal with individual behaviors and attitudes. Psychological empowerment is perceived to be the ability of employees to have the opportunity to determine their work responsibilities and influence importance decisions (Areiqa& Zamil 2011). This gives them a chance to participate directly in the building of an organization (Huq 2010). Under this approach, the workers can be held responsible for their decisions. Through this approach, employees are able to achieve meaningful work. This has led to increased motivation, group processes, leadership and decision making. According to research, psychological empowerment leads to improved quality and innovation within an organization. Psychological employee empowerment is known to promote commitment to organizational projects and targets and increase satisfaction on job (Siebert & Randholph 2004). According to studies, management programs and leadership traits that enhance psychological empowerment result in increased outcomes per unit within the organizational employees’ workforce. One element of psychological empowerment of employees is choice. Choice refers to the causal responsibility of an employee’s actions and whether self-determination is the real motive behind the behavior (Areiqa& Zamil 2011). Employees with a strong locus of control believe events happen through determination and not chance. Employee empowerment facilitates the ability of the locus of control to make useful organizational decisions (Huq 2010). Self determination in an organization is the ability of an employee to have a choice of initiating action (Hardinna 2006). It entails regulation of self determined actions to be consistent with the organizational goals and targets. Employees’ empowerment with regard to choices and self determination makes employees responsible for the success of their decisions and initiatives (Sahoo & Tripathy 2010). This is known to lessen reliance on managers and supervisors. Other that choice, the other concept of employee empowerment is competence. This is referred to the extent to which a worker can do a task skillfully, and he attempts. This concept is exploited through psychological empowerment. According to Bandura, this concept is analogous to personal mastery. Employee empowerment exposes the degree of self belief when it comes to performing their work. It captures the essence of workers capability to perform organizational duties with success. The other concepts of employee competence can be argued to be meaningfulness and impact (Bailey 2009). Meaningfulness refers to the value that employees attaches to their daily organizational duties. Impact refers to the extent of difference caused by the autonomous decisions that employees make within an organization. Every organization intends to bring meaning to employees’ involvement and decision making. The aim is to cause a significant impact to the organizational, internal and external environment (Hardinna 2006). Employee empowerment chances can be limited or constrained if the employees perform repetitive service and production jobs. Organizational assignments designed with only technology in mind rarely promote employee empowerment. In the same vein, tasks that are designed for self determination and meaningful potential tend to be complex and enriching when it comes to characteristics (Bailey 2009). However, socio-technical assignments designed with flexible technology promote employee empowerment. According to Bowen, customer service assignments are known to empower employees. This is because they allow for customized business strategy and employees have long interaction section with customers. This establishes continuing relationships with employees and personalized attention. According to Linden and Tewksbury, the crux of empowerment is the extent of choice in employees’ environment. Routine and repetitive jobs are known to be de-motivating (Hardinna 2006). Such jobs are redesigned with an aim to increase employees control on tasks. They are ordinarily done through supervision, and the results are bound to be positive. For instance, when employees are involved in determining the working schedule, they feel duty bound to achieve the organizational targets and follow the schedule to the core. Employee beliefs and shared values held by organizational employees are referred to as organizational culture. An organizational culture that places a lot of value to employees and their input into an organization enhances employee empowerment (Hardinna 2006). An effective organizational culture supports creative problem solving by promoting strong values and sharing of information. Through employee empowerment, constructive and fair judgments are supported. Employees who come with new ideas are rewarded. Cultures that place emphasis on avoiding mistakes and traditional approaches tend to weaken the ability of employees to make decisions and create creative problem solving. Power sharing with workers in organizations is known to increase employee empowerment. Therefore, empowerment has risen to become one of the valuable tools in the modern organizations. The process entails shifting decision making downwards in an organizational hierarchy (Bailey 2009). Activities that lead to problem solving are held outside the normal work processes. These empowerment initiatives are referred to as parallel structures. They involve employee participation, use of feedback and quality circles. According to Lawler, the quality- of -work organizational groups and systems are useful in empowering employees in an organization. The parallel structures give employees the chances to give their recommendations and input. These structures are easy to introduce and need no fundamental change in an organization. In most cases, research shows they give positive results. There is evidence showing that employee empowerment or participation which involves survey feedbacks works well. This happens when these practices are involved in overall employee practices. Employee empowerment programs have continued to gain popularity for the last two decades. Organizations can raise the level of employee empowerment through giving the employees room to elect their leaders. This entails the ability to remove leaders or representatives who head the decision making groups or departments. For instance, academic departments in universities have chairpersons who have a clearly determined term of office and are elected by the faculty in the department (Aamodt 2009). Organizations have elected persons who hold open hearings on decisions that affect the productivity of employees. Some of these hearings touch on budgetary decisions and financial control and transactions (Aamodt 2009). Democratic decision making processes demand that workers become involved in the making of crucial decisions that affect their organizational roles and effectiveness (Elloy 2012). This has added value in the running of the modern organizations. Democratic processes in the organization reduce the ability of employees to blame top leadership of the organization for every failure. The decisions made by organizational employees make then effective or irrelevant. Employees are aware that the freedom to chose is meant to make them productive and raise organizational turnover. In a way, this reduces the roles of managers and supervisors. Employee empowerment is said to be related to their characteristics. When employees have high motivation, self-efficacy and self confidence, they are likely to be responsible to opportunities and participation. According to Argyris, the locus of control is directly influenced by the employee confidence and participation. Furthermore, employees who are educated and security of tenure are known to have a high sense of empowerment. According to Rapp, sales employees show low level of knowledge. High knowledge organizational employees are said not to reap any outright benefits. According to Leach, empowerment of employees leads to increased knowledge of the job in a field where they have little experience. Empowerment of employees leads to cognitive growth through sharing of information. According to Wagner and Locke, transfer ok knowledge among workers is facilitated through employee empowerment. As a result, organizations are turning to investing in empowering employee self confidence and employee skills (Johnson 2011). Research shows that successful employee empowerment leads to organizational growth. According to Forrester, building employee skills and orientation to achievement leads to fruitful employee empowerment. Employee empowerment in organizations is likely to be enhanced when leaders are elected for a definite and limited leadership span (Huq 2010). Limited terms are likely to keep leaders from accumulating excess power compared to their subjects (Elloy 2012). One of the ways to enhance employee empowerment is observing the type of leadership influencing workers. According to Jong, most private organizations rarely use open methods to determine the organizational leadership systems that affect employees directly. However, when members are actively involved in assessing the performance of leaders, then empowerment is seen to have a greater impact. This entails their ability to remove the leaders with unsatisfactory performance (Johnson 2011). Organizations that are known to centralize control and power in the top level management have little authority over low-level managers and the middle level organizational levels. Organizations, which are known to adhere strictly to formal structures and procedures, limit employee empowerment. Decentralizing power in organizations entails giving power to employees to determine how to attend to their roles and responsibilities. In conclusion, employee empowerment has added enormous value to organizational profitability. The employees are given an atmosphere and opportunity to made decisions to affect their organizational productivity. Many organizations are embracing employee empowerment as a way to enhance their effectiveness and promote teamwork. Some of the ways to enhance employee empowerment is establishing democratic ways to choosing employee leadership. Besides, organizations are decentralizing decision making with an aim of encouraging employees to come up with policy decisions that affect the working environment in an organization. This has added much value in organizations and raised the level of effectiveness in the modern running of organizations. 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