EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT

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EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT
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• A primary goal of employee empowerment is to give
  workers a greater voice in decisions about
  work-related matters.
• Their decision-making authority can range from
  offering suggestions to exercising veto power
  over management decisions.
• possible areas include how jobs are to be
  performed, working conditions, company policies,
  work hours, peer review, and how supervisors are
  evaluated

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Organizational improvement through employee
empowerment

• First, empowerment can strengthen motivation by
  providing employees with the opportunity to
  attain intrinsic rewards from their work, such as
  a greater sense of accomplishment and a feeling
  of importance.
• Intrinsic rewards such as job satisfaction and a
  sense of purposeful work can be more powerful
  than extrinsic rewards such as higher wages or
  bonuses.

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• The second means by which employee empowerment
  can increase productivity is through better
  decisions. Especially when decisions require
  task-specific knowledge, those on the front line
  can often better identify problems.

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TOYOTA

• Toyota Motor Company empowers some of its
  employees to identify and help remedy problems
  occurring during product assembly. An automobile
  coming off Toyota's assembly line with a paint
  defect is seen as an opportunity to delve into
  the root cause of the defect, as opposed to
  merely fixing the defect and passing it on to
  distributors for resale.

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• Solutions resulting from employee involvement
  tend to have more employee buy-in when it comes
  to implementation. Because such solutions are
  generated from the front lines, this further
  enhances the potential for productivity
  improvements by reducing the attitude that
  solutions are "passed down from above."

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• A number of different human resource management
  programs are available that grant employee
  empowerment to some extent. A number of these are
  discussed in the following sections, including
  informal participative decision-making programs,
  job enrichment, continuous improvement, and
  self-managed work teams.

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INFORMAL PARTICIPATIVEDECISION-MAKING PROGRAMS

• Informal participative decision-making programs
  involve managers and subordinates making joint
  decisions on a daily basis. Employees do not
  enjoy blanket authority to make all work-related
  decisions managers decide just how much
  decision-making authority employees should have
  in each instance. The amount of authority varies
  depending on such situational factors as decision
  complexity and the importance of employee
  acceptance of the decision.

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• While it may seem obvious, one key to empowerment
  is choosing under what conditions to empower
  employees. Employees should be empowered in
  situations where they can make decisions that are
  as good as, or better than, those made by their
  managers.

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• One possible problem is that the interests of
  workers may not align with those of the
  organization. For example, at one university a
  department head delegated the task of determining
  job performance standards to the faculty. Because
  the faculty believed that it was not in their own
  best interest to develop challenging standards,
  the standards they eventually developed were
  easily attainable.
• The success of empowerment also often hinges on
  whether employees want to participate in decision
  making. Some employees, for instance, have no
  desire to make work-related decisions.

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Suggestions for increasing employee participation
levels include work situations where

• All possible solutions are equally effective. For
  example, consider employee vacation schedules. If
  one solution is as good as another, employee
  groups can be empowered to work out the
  scheduling.
• Managers do not possess sufficient information or
  expertise to make a quality decision without
  employee input. Managers should at least consult
  their employees before a decision is reached to
  prevent overlooking solutions that may appear
  obvious to front-line employees, but which may be
  more evasive for higher-level managers who are
  unfamiliar with front-line practices.

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• Managers do not know exactly what information is
  needed or how to find it. Again, managers should
  at least consult their employees before a
  decision is reached to determine whether
  employees have the information required to make
  an effective decision.

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• The group's acceptance of or commitment to
  effective implementation is crucial and the group
  is unlikely to accept a manager's unilateral
  decision. If employees' acceptance is crucial,
  participative decision-making should be used. As
  alluded to previously, employees tend to accept
  decisions more willingly if they have had a voice
  in the decision-making process. One caveat is
  that the participation should be genuine
  managers should not ask for employee input simply
  to give the appearance of participation.
  Employees can usually recognize this ploy and, if
  they do, feelings of distrust will likely
  develop.
• Employees' goals are aligned with those of
  management. If employees do not share
  management's goals, participative decision-making
  would be inappropriate, because the two parties
  would be at odds.

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JOB ENRICHMENT

• Job enrichment aims to redesign jobs to be more
  intrinsically rewarding. Certain job
  characteristics help managers to build enrichment
  into jobs. These characteristics (summarized in
  Exhibit 1) include
• Skill varietyThe various skills needed to
  perform a given task, where increased skill
  requirements are associated with increased
  motivation
• Task identityThe degree to which employees
  perceive how their job impacts the overall
  production of a product or service
• Task significanceWhether the task is meaningful
  beyond the task itself
• AutonomyEmployee discretion over how to perform
  a task
• FeedbackInput from peers and supervisors
  regarding the quality of an employee's work

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• Exhibit 1Job Characteristics That Enhance
  Intrinsic Motivation
• Skill Variety The degree to which a job requires
  a variety of different activities to carry out
  the work. A job has high skill variety if it
  requires a number of different skills and
  talents.
• Task Identity The degree to which a job requires
  completion of the whole and identifiable piece of
  work. A job has high task identity, if the worker
  does the job from the beginning to end with a
  visible outcome.
• Task Significance The degree to which the job
  has a substantial impact on the lives of other
  people, whether these people are in the immediate
  organization or in the world at large. A job has
  a task significance if people benefit greatly
  from results of the job.
• Autonomy The degree to which the job provides
  the workers with autonomy. A job has high
  autonomy if workers are given substantial
  freedom, independence, and discretion in
  scheduling the work and determining the
  procedures to be used in carrying it out.
• Job Feedback The degree to which the job
  provides the worker with knowledge of results. A
  job has high job feedback if carrying out the
  work activities required by the job provides the
  individual with direct and clear information
  about the effectiveness of his or her
  performance.

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• Combining tasks. This involves assigning tasks
  performed by different workers to a single
  individual. For example, in a furniture factory,
  rather than working on just one part of the
  production process, each person could assemble,
  sand, and stain an entire table or chair. This
  change would increase skill variety, as well as
  task identity, as each worker would be
  responsible for the job from start to finish.
• Establish client relationships. Client
  relationships could be established by putting the
  worker in touch with customers. For example, an
  auto dealership service department could allow
  its mechanics to discuss service problems
  directly with customers, rather than going
  through the service manager. By establishing
  client relationships, skill variety is increased
  because workers have a chance to develop
  interpersonal skills. It also provides them with
  a chance to do a larger part of the job (task
  identity), to see how their work impacts
  customers (task significance), and to have more
  decision-making authority (autonomy).
• Reduce direct supervision. Workers gain autonomy
  when they are given responsibility for doing
  things previously done by supervisors. For
  instance, clerks could be allowed to check for
  their own errors or be allowed to order supplies
  directly.

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CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

• Often referred to as total quality management,
  these programs empower workers to trace product
  or service problems to their root causes and
  redesign production processes to eliminate them
  using various problem-solving and statistical
  techniques. In these situations, empowerment
  arises from the need to involve employees at
  nearly all organizational levels in continuous
  improvement efforts. The use of continuous
  improvement programs have grown rapidly, built on
  the successful experiences of numerous companies.
  Xerox, for example, was able to decrease the
  number of customer complaints it received by 38
  percent after implementing continuous improvement
  methods, and Motorola reduced the number of
  defects in its products by 80 percent. Proponents
  of self-managed work teams claim they succeed
  because they are customer-focused and promote
  sound management practices like team-work,
  continuous learning, and continuous improvement.

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SELF-MANAGED WORK TEAMS

• Self-managed work teams are not for all
  organizations characteristic needed for success
  include
• Technical skills. Cross-training, which allows
  team members to move from job to job within the
  team, is essential. Thus, team members should
  receive training in the specific skills that will
  broaden their personal contributions to the
  overall effort.
• Interpersonal skills. Team members must
  communicate effectively, both one-on-one and in
  groups. Cooperative decision-making within and
  among teams demands the skills of group problem
  solving, influencing others, and resolving
  conflicts. Team members must learn
  problem-solving skills that assist in zeroing in
  on problem areas, gathering facts, analyzing
  causes, generating alternatives, selecting
  solutions, and other related facets.
• Administrative skills. Self-managed work teams
  must perform tasks formerly handled by
  supervisors. The team must learn how to keep
  records, report procedures, budget, schedule,
  monitor, and appraise the performance of team
  members.

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Drawbacks can include

• Rivalry within and across teams
• A shortage of time and skills on the team to deal
  with conventional management concerns like
  hiring, training, and resolving interpersonal
  disputes
• Difficulty appraising employees in the absence of
  a traditional management figure

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Difficulty in implementing AWTs

• Sometimes, managers are reluctant to relinquish
  control and employees are reluctant to accept new
  responsibilities. To prepare team members f\or
  self-management, the organization must provide a
  considerable amount of training. Without proper
  training, teams are likely to become bogged down
  permanently in mid-process.

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INFORMAL TEAMS

• Informal teams are generally formed for social
  purposes. They can help to facilitate employee
  pursuits of common concerns, such as improving
  work conditions. More frequently however, these
  teams form out of a set of common concerns and
  interests, which may or may not be the same as
  the organization's. Leaders of these teams
  generally emerge from the membership and are not
  appointed by anyone in the organization.

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TRADITIONAL TEAMS

• Traditional teams are the organizational groups
  commonly thought of as departments or functional
  areas. Leaders or managers of these teams are
  appointed by the organization and have legitimate
  power in the team. The team is expected to
  produce a product, deliver a service, or perform
  a function that the organization has assigned.

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Informal

• Social in nature
• Leaders may differ from those appointed by the
  organization

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Problem-Solving

• Temporary teams
• Frequently cross-functional
• Focused on a particular project

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Leadership

• Steering committees
• Advisory councils

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Self-Directed

• Small teams
• Little or no status differences among team
  members
• Have authority to decide how to get the work done
  

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Virtual

• Geographically spread apart
• Meetings and functions rely on available
  technology

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SELECTING THE TEAM MEMBERS

• Forming an effective team is more complex than
  simply throwing a group of people together,
  assigning them a task, and hoping for the best.
  Potential team members need to be interviewed and
  their skills and knowledge should be assessed.
  Issues to consider in selecting team members
  include the individual's motivation with respect
  to both the team and the task at hand the
  attitudes and goals of potential team members
  potential problems with intragroup relationships
  and potential problems with relationships with
  external groups.

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Interview Process for Team Members

• What strengths does the individual bring to the
  team?
• What is she or he is willing to work on
  improving?
• What problem solving style does the individual
  employ?
• Can she or he share information in an effective
  manner?
• Does the individual have good listening skills?
• Can the individual provide constructive feedback?
  

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