Unit-5
Empowerment
Presented by
N.Vigneshwari
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What is empowerment? Empowerment and ownership are synonymous.
Empowerment of employees is one of the latest management techniques
deployed to result in continuous improvement in the organizations.
Empowerment means involvement of all the employees for improvement
of processes on continual basis. Empowerment is just the opposite of strict
hierarchical "do what I say" approach in the organizations. It is
a new concept, which matches well with TQM. To understand the right
implications of empowerment, the definition of empowerment, formulated
by Xerox Corporate Management Institute is reproduced below:
Empowerment is "an organizational state, where people are aligned with
business direction and understand their performance boundaries, thus
enabling them to take responsibility and ownership while seeking
improvements, identifying the best course of action and initiating steps to
satisfy customer requirements".
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Empowerment means transfer of responsibility of satisfying customers to
employees. It means that the employees own the process of satisfying the
customers. They conduct themselves as if they are the owners of the
process who know that they cannot get profit if the customers, both internal
and external, are not satisfied. The initiative for improvements have to be
taken by employees themselves and they should not wait for the
management to initiate. For this purpose, they have to identify the best
course of action.
Such delegation of authority to employees cuts across the organization. The
empowered teams should conduct themselves in a responsible manner, i.e.
they should know their performance boundaries; or in other words,
employees have to conduct themselves within delegated authority and
responsibility. They have to align with the management's philosophy,
approach to customer satisfaction and organization mission. They cannot
have their own way of doing things since management has to achieve
cohesion in the organization and will have more information about the
business than even the smartest employee and hence well equipped to
formulate the policies and overall directions.
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Empowerment of employees is not without bounds or limitations. It should
be structured and planned to achieve the corporate goals in the TQM way.
The employees are aligned with the business direction as brought out in the
vision and mission statements of the CEO. They have to be made to
understand their performance boundaries and expected performance /
results. It is the process of enabling employees to take responsibilities
themselves to carryon the tasks of the organization in line with the vision,
mission and objectives of the organization. The crux of the whole matter is
that the employees own their processes, which means the employees
themselves improve the quality of their processes, while the management is
watching and ready to help them in difficult situations. Therefore
empowering means the employee does what he is authorized to do and
takes management approval before major changes.
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A team of employees will be empowered not the individuals. Even'
when an individual is empowered, it is done so in his capacity as the
coordinator of the team. It is not personal to the individual. The team has to
achieve the objectives set forth by the management. The team
has to identify the best course of action in every context. The team has to
take decisions on its own within it's own boundaries. It also has to carry out
mid-course corrections wherever required. The teams should
function in a democratic manner to achieve success. The management
support should be banked upon for any crisis. Normally, the team members
themselves try to solve their problems within the organizational
framework. The management although will not directly participate in the
day-to-day activities, it should watch what is happening.
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The management should have a mechanism for obtaining feedback of the
results of the processes. It is not the detachment of the teams from the
management, but it is the process of equipping the teams with the
wherewithal and motivating and encouraging them to carry out the
assigned tasks, as per the requirements. In this manner, the teams have to
manage themselves and hence such teams are also called 'self-managing
teams'.
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One of the fundamental requirements before embarking on forming selfmanaging teams, is training of all the employees in the team till they are
perfect. They should learn to change. They should be able to manage
change. Each member of the team should learn the good qualities of the
other members of the team and establish a sound relationship with them.
All the members should agree to sail together in discharging their duties in
the best interests of the organization. They should cooperate with each
other in improving their processes. They should be trained so that they can
develop themselves as a self-managing team, pulling the organization
forward with perfect harmony.
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The employees should be trained in understanding corporate goals and
their role in achieving them.
Each employee should be encouraged to direct his efforts towards
achieving the goals of the organization.
For instance, a transporter could be educated in transporting items
carefully, safely and tactfully. He should be educated in identifying fragile
items and handling them. His mission should be that he delivers
at the right place, at the earliest with due security and safety, first time and
every time. He should be trained till he develops the skill to carry out the
job independently and correctly.
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The employees should be helped to develop self-awareness and decision
making ability. To improve decision-making ability they could be provided
with checklist indicating, for instance, what the transporter should do if the
addressee is not available. He could be provided with a road map and
telephone numbers of the addressee. These small things will go a long way
in practicing TQM. The checklist should match the skills of the employees.
As time goes, when the employees come across different situations, which
are not listed, they can be added in the checklist after approval of the team
coordinator. In this manner, the decision-making ability of the
employees should be enhanced systematically. The training should result in
the employees fitting well into the system. Their ideology, as far as work is
concerned, should match the organization's stated goals.
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Before empowering, management has to train the employees, ask them to
carry on and check whether they are going in the right direction and if so,
empower them. This checking is also a continuous process. The evaluation
of every employee of the team is essential before empowering. The
employees should be encouraged to participate willingly in the
improvement process. They should be encouraged to bring forth
genuine problems fearlessly.
The following steps are involved in the operation of selfmanaged teams:
 Agree on what they will produce or carry out.
 Decide how to organize the team.
 Decide on the responsibility within the team.
 Decide on flow of work.
 Audit the process.
 Decide on improvements and restart.
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Self-managed process teams can be organized in any type of business. It
may consist of staff of any grade. It does not mean that only a particular
level of people can be constituted as a team, allowed to be
self-managed. It again does not mean that they can do what they want.
They have to work within the boundaries set by the management. The most
important contributor to make empowerment successful is the teamwork of
the employees. If the employees cannot practice teamwork, empowerment
cannot be implemented. The culture of "passing the buck" will be
detrimental to empowerment. Hence, employees should come forward for
sharing the responsibilities.
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Empowerment does not mean that the management has no responsibility. In
fact the management has more responsibilities. They have to continuously
assess the skills required for carrying out the ever-changing
complexity of the jobs of the teams. They should be willing to help when
the team members are unable to solve the problems themselves. The
responsibilities of the management is to control the processes and not
the people. It has been estimated that the average productivity increase due
to empowerment could be about 30 per cent. It is also reported that the
average cost of process gets reduced by 40 per cent due to
empowerment. Even if the philosophy of empowerment does not appeal to
the management, the above statistics pertaining to improvement of quality
and productivity should be able to attract management to
venture into empowering employees. Empowerment also demands cultural
change in the organizations. The employees should be encouraged to own
the responsibility for their actions. In summary, the top
management should take the following actions to practice empowerment.
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Accept that teamwork is more beneficial than hierarchical management
Invest time and money on the team building and training before
empowerment
Formulate a clear-cut, unambiguous vision and mission statement and the
system for quality
Be prepared to spend more time at the initial stages and later on to listen to
the problems of the team members
Prepare to wait patiently for the success of the empowered teams
Prepare to equip the teams with facts and trust them
Provide support and tools wherever required for problem solving
Reward worthy teams
Provide communications infrastructure and Information Technology
infrastructure for the teams to carry on the tasks, without difficulty.
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The team members should realize that the management may withdraw the
delegated authority, if the teams do not show results. There will always be
individuals who would not be willing to work as part of the
team. Such problems should be handled tactfully. The team members
should agree upon a collective decision-making process so that every
employee in the team is involved in the decision making process. The most
important is the faith of each team member in teamwork and
empowerment.
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Empowerment and ownership should provide a viable solution for
establishing flat organization. In flat organizations, more than 20 persons
may report to a person. This will be impossible to visualize, but for
the empowerment of self-managed teams. A supervisor cannot manage 20
persons in the conventional system of management. Therefore,
empowerment is a prerequisite for flat organization. Quality cannot be
achieved in a flat organization without empowerment. However, time can
only say whether flat organizations and empowerment are there to stay, or
will management revert back to the old hierarchical pyramidal
structure of organizations.
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Like other TQM concepts, empowerment is also not easily implementable.
It requires the strongest management commitment to overcome the hurdles
to success. Some of the hurdles and how to overcome them are discussed
below:
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Empowerment calls for a change in the management style, which was
hitherto not practiced. Till then, the supervisor decided and the others
were simply following the orders. Organizations were following "boss is
right" syndrome all along. This will no longer hold good in the empowered
scenario. Empowerment calls for a totally different approach.
Team coordinator is only first among equals. Generally, the former
supervisors are designed as team coordinator in the empowered
organization. Therefore, the supervisor has to change his approach to get
the work done. He has to treat the employees as colleagues rather than
subordinates.
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Similarly, the employees who were under tight supervision
will not be able to realize the correct implication of the new
relationship quickly and may not assume responsibility. Some
over enthusiastic team members may be demanding and start
disrupting teamwork since there is no strict supervision.
Added to this, they have to learn to raise
their level to self-managed team member. All these will lead to
resistance due to fear of managing change, both from the
supervisor and the other employees. The top management will
be able to remove this barrier with a lot of coaching and
abundant motivation.
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It may be rather easier to convince the team members or junior employees
about the new approach. They have to be further trained in carrying out the
jobs more independently which is an achievable task. If they have any
problem with the new setup, they should express it fearlessly.
Therefore, the management will know the apprehensions and clear the
same. But, the supervisors won‘t come out openly with their problems of
the new setup. They may not tell the problem to the top management.
They may tell juniors that it is not going to work and even scare them. This
is a psychological problem which arises out of insecurity of the seniors.
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They have been comfortable in their previous role of keeping themselves
busy in managing the work of others. The new role will need them to learn
new techniques or new area of work and their doing work on their own.
The management has to understand this kind of psychological barrier of the
supervisors and try to solve them. They could convince them that
empowerment is in the interest of the organization and the supervisor will
be able to adapt very soon with dedicated efforts.
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Another problem in the empowerment process is misalignment of team
members. Such misalignment will not help in achieving teamwork. If
empowered teams cannot practice teamwork, it will affect the productivity
and quality of the organization. The management may feel on seeing such
results that it may be due to the failure of empowerment in the
organization. This will be a wrong conclusion. It is only due to the failure
of teamwork. Therefore, the empowered teams have to be formed
thoughtfully. The management can keep on experimenting till it is able to
achieve
proper
alignment.
This
is
essential
because
the matching of human beings cannot be estimated correctly at the first
attempt. The management should also try to remove irritants in the team so
that the teams can perform well.
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Total quality
Ramasamy
management
–
Subburaj
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Thank you