Employee Empowerment

Employee Empowerment

Employee empowerment is defined as “A management practice of sharing information, rewards, and power with employees so that they can take initiative and make decisions to solve problems and improve service and performance.” (Web Finance, Inc., 2015) There is a big difference between employee involvement and employee empowerment. It is said that employees should be empowered in a total quality setting and I couldn’t agree more. Just being involved is not enough in this type of setting. Empowered employees have ownership of their work and therefore take pride in it. “An empowered employee will care as much or even more about the quality of the work than the supervisor or the CEO.” (Goetsch & Davis, 2013, p. 113)

In order to become an empowered employee, management has to be encouraging, offer rewards for employee’s accomplishments and give recognition of exceptional work. It is important for managers of the company to facilitate empowerment. Giving employees ownership of their job to make a difference in the company makes them want to do better and create successful results in their work. In earlier days it was just a goal to get the employees involved or engaged but nowadays it is different. It starts on the top and if management has a hard time empowering employees, it will be hard to achieve this altogether in the work place. Change in the culture of the company needs to happen. Manager’s should be on board and change the way they work and operate in order for everyone else to follow.

Empowerment gives the initiative for promotion and motivates employees. “Empowerment is about getting employees to help themselves, each other, and the company.” (Goetsch & Davis, 2013, p. 115) Many employees could be resistant to being empowered as it requests for some type of change. It is extremely important to have the support of management and this could not be emphasized enough. Resistance from management could stem from insecurity, personal...