EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT

EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT

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

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 variety—The various skills needed to perform a given task, where increased skill requirements are associated with increased motivation • Task identity—The degree to which employees perceive how their job impacts the overall production of a product or service • Task significance—Whether the task is meaningful beyond the task itself • Autonomy—Employee discretion over how to perform a task • Feedback—Input from peers and supervisors regarding the quality of an employee's work

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Leadership • Steering committees • Advisory councils

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

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

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.

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?

EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT