Empowerment and Goal Setting - Essay Example

Delphi is applying empowerment as stated in the Holbeche quote from a management perspective, the lead engineer responsible for the day-to-day engineering management of the Ford Transit Project has been empowered to request overtime for contractors and permanent staff. The necessity for it and the amount of time required needs to be agreed upon by senior management. The lead engineer also has the responsibility for giving appraisals and assigning staff responsibilities. All of which merely removes some of the repetitive tasks from the HR department.

In opposition, the junior staff at Delphi have been given more empowerment as an engineer can act on his decision to make changes to the system without the need to consult the lead engineer. Personal experience (Delphi) supports the level of empowerment an engineer has, as the lead engineer's favorite saying is 'just do it. The reason for Delphi's approach to empowerment is that Delphi is a multinational organization with a parent company in America, the main HR decisions and strategy are agreed upon in director-level meetings and the outcomes are filtered to the separate business units.

The HR strategy, having been decided in Dearborn, Detroit, is first passed to Delphi offices in Germany, which in turn reports the necessary details to Delphi offices in England. This is information is further filtered to the individual Delphi sites. As such Delphi, operating as a separate business unit with minimal HR presence, a single person for Packard's 150 staff, is forced to apply the empowerment process in this manner and rely on the individual managers to be responsible for the minor HR decisions.

Ritz Carlton Hotels have the same HR structure, one central department, and each business unit (hotel) has individual staff responsible for the day-to-day HR tasks. In comparison Ritz Carlton has fully empowered their staff, to the extent, they are giving all staff spending authority to the value of $2000 and the authority to call in co-workers for help, Ritz Carlton wants staff to move heaven and earth for the customer.