Employee Empowerment

Empowerment is the process of enabling or authorizing an individual to think, behave, take action, and control work and decision making in autonomous ways. It is the state of feeling selfempowered to take control of one's own destiny When thinking about empowerment in human relations terms, try to avoid thinking of it as something that one individual does for another. This is one of the problems organizations have experienced with the concept of empowerment. People think that "someone," usually the manager, has empowerment on the people who report to him.

 Consequently, the reporting staff members "wait" for empowerment, and the manager asks why people won't act in empowered ways. This led to a general unhappiness, mostly undeserved, with the concept of empowerment in many organizations. Think of empowerment, instead, as the process of an individual enabling himself to take action and control work and decision making in autonomous ways. Empowerment comes from the individual

 The organization has the responsibility to create a work environment which helps foster the ability and desire of employees to act in empowered ways. The work organization has the responsibility to remove barriers that limit the ability of staff to act in empowered ways Employee involvement and participative management are often used to mean empowerment. They are not really interchangeable

 Examples

John empowered himself to discuss the career objectives he wished to pursue with his supervisor. He told his supervisor, frankly, that if the opportunities were not available in his current company, he would move on to another company

Employee Involvement
Employee involvement is creating an environment in which people have an impact on decisions and actions that affect their jobs Employee involvement is not the goal nor is it a tool, as practiced in many organizations. Rather, it is a management and leadership philosophy about how people are most enabled to contribute to continuous improvement and the ongoing success of their work organization

 My bias, from working with people for 40+ years, is to involve people as much as possible in all aspects of work decisions and planning. This involvement increases ownership and commitment, retains your best employees, and fosters an environment in which people choose to be motivated and contributing How to involve employees in decisionmaking and continuous improvement activities is the strategic aspect of involvement and can include such methods as suggestion systems, manufacturing cells, work teams, continuous improvement meetings, Kaizen (continuous improvement) events, corrective action processes, and periodic discussions with the supervisor

 Intrinsic to most employee involvement processes is training in team effectiveness, communication, and problem solving; the development of reward and recognition systems; and frequently, the sharing of gains made through employee involvement efforts.

Employee Involvement Model

For people and organizations who desire a model to apply, the best I have discovered was developed from work by Tannenbaum and Schmidt (1958) and Sadler (1970). They provide a continuum for leadership and involvement that includes an increasing role for employees and a decreasing role for supervisors in the decision process. The continuum includes this progression

 Tell: the supervisor makes the decision and announces it to staff. The supervisor provides complete direction. Sell: the supervisor makes the decision and then attempts to gain commitment from staff by "selling" the positive aspects of the decision. Consult: the supervisor invites input into a decision while retaining authority to make the final decision herself. Join: the supervisor invites employees to make the decision with the supervisor. The supervisor considers her voice equal in the decision process.

Telecommuting
Telecommuting or working from home is a flexible work arrangement that enables an employee, a consultant, or a contractor, to work distantly from the employer's location all or part of the time. Telecommuting is also an option for bad weather days and days that require an adult present in the home for events such as furniture delivery days, furnace cleaning days, and mid-day doctor appointments.

 Telecommuting can be challenging, depending upon the employee. Some employees separate work and personal lives successfully; others may require the separation a work location offers. Sometimes, only allowing the employee to telecommute for a time will answer this question, but generally, independent, self-starters will succeed while telecommuting. Managing telecommuting employees requires additional thought about staying in touch. Managing telecommuting employees requires a resultsoriented management style that flows from . Managers are generally comfortable providing telecommuting jobs as an option when the results from the job are highly measurable, too.