Employee Empowerment

How Does Employee Empowerment Work?

Employee empowerment varies based on an organization's culture and work design. However, empowerment is based on the concepts of job enlargement and job enrichment. Job enlargement differs from job enrichment in that job enlargement is horizontal expansion and job enrichment is considered vertical.

• Job enlargement: Horizontal job expansion by changing the scope of the job to include a greater portion.
  • Example: A bank teller not only handles deposits and disbursement, but now also distributes traveler's checks and sells certificates of deposit.
• Job enrichment: Vertical job expansion by increasing the depth of the job to include responsibilities that have traditionally been carried out at higher levels of the organization.
  • Example: The bank teller also has the authority to help a client fill out a loan application and can determine whether or not to approve the loan.

As these examples show, employee empowerment requires:

• Training in the skills necessary to carry out the additional responsibilities.
• Access to information on which decisions can be made.
• Initiative and confidence on the part of the employee to take on greater responsibility.

Employee empowerment also means giving up some of the power traditionally held by management, which means managers also must take on new roles, knowledge, and responsibilities. However, this does not mean that management relinquishes all authority, delegates all decision-making, or allows operations to run without accountability. It requires a significant investment of time and effort—especially from management, who also may need upskilling—to develop mutual trust, assess and add to individuals' capabilities, and develop clear agreements about roles, responsibilities, risks, and boundaries.

What Does an Empowered Organization Look Like?

Employee empowerment may require restructuring the organization to reduce levels of the hierarchy or to provide a more customer- and process-focused organization.

Employee empowerment is often viewed as an inverted triangle of organizational power. In the traditional view, management is at the top while customers are on the bottom; in an empowered environment, customers are at the top while management is in a support role at the bottom.

To support employee engagement at an organizational level, leadership must:

1. Give employees a voice by regularly providing them with safe ways to offer suggestions, ask questions, or raise concerns. This could be an anonymous suggestion box, regular internal surveys, an ongoing dialogue across workgroups and hierarchies.
2. Listen to the feedback from employees and act upon their suggestions. Leadership must also acknowledge ideas that are not being acted upon and explain why so that employees don’t feel ignored.
3. Foster a culture that prioritizes the psychological safety of its workforce and is open to change.
4. Recognize employees frequently and with incentives to increase their engagement and build their confidence. Be sure to ask what incentives employees are interested in too as the modern workforce is often more interested in work-life balance incentives versus traditional benefits.
5. Support workforce development through training in areas the employees voice are necessary or interesting.