INTRODUCTION:
This assignment deals with employee empowerment and participative work redesign. In the starting, I would be explaining the importance of employee empowerment and why should employers consider developing employee empowerment and participative work redesign. Then it is followed by the challenges faced when managing innovation at work and then follows that what the senior manager should do in order to overcome any difficulties and promote empowerment within their own organizations followed by a short conclusion.
EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT AND PARTIICPATIVE WORK REEDEISGN:
Employee empowerment and participation has been the most debatable topic in the present organization fashion as different authors perceives different definition(Lashley,1999).Some consider empowerment as sharing of power from higher management to employees by involving them in decision making, while others considers that it is less to do with power but stresses more on motivational development among workers(Howard,1997). Hence an organization which says that it has implemented effectively, if asked he/she would have different definition of empowerment. Thus the multiple dimension of employee empowerment makes it difficult concept to define(Collins,1998).
Thus the company to remain competitive in this global environment needs their employees to share their knowledge among the team members so that they can ensure development at all levels. The company should assist by sharing all the information to the employees in the best possible way. They need to delegate functions to employees at nearly all the organizational levels in continuous improvement efforts which was previously preserved for senior management members. This would result in the employees to institutionalize involvement on a permanent basis (Hill,1991, pg 541). This would not only help the organization to innovate new ideas through the learning from its employees, but would also help the organization to adapt to any difficulties(Wilkinson,1998).For example Xerox was able to decrease the overall customer complaint by 38% and Motorola too had dramatically reduced the number of problems in its products by 80%. When interrogated with the self managed teams, they claimed that they had succeeded because they were customer focussed and promote sound management practices like team working, continuous learning and continuous development. (Lockamy and Smith,1998)
Thus employee empowerment is basically a way to overcome the traditional bureaucratic system of working also known as Tayloristic (scientific management). The problems in the traditional system was that the whole power was vested in the hands of the senior management and the employees did not had any power apart from doing the work in a similar fashion. This resulted the employees to feel discontent with the job as it did not create any creativity and also they felt that they did not have any power. The report generated for Health Education and Welfare stated, “Significant numbers of American workers are dissatisfied with the quality of their working lives. Dull, repetitive, seemingly meaningless tasks, offering little challenge or autonomy, are causing discontent among the workers.”[6,xv]. Thus employee empowerment is the way of distributing power among the employees which increases their participation which in turn leads to the expansion of the organization business(Wilkinson,1998)
The liberalization of Government mainly due to globalization has made the market so competitive that it’s not possible for the business owners or managers to be everywhere at once. Thus the employers should recognize the importance of employee empowerment and participation. It’s the employees who do the job which determines the success of the organization. Hence the organization needs to provide the tools to employees such as by enabling the employees to take action of their work and also contributing in decision making in a self governing way. Thus by empowering the employees not only improves the economic performance of the organizations but it also boosts the morale of the employees by enhancing their productivity and creativity(Gardiner,2007)
The senior management when taking important decisions specially which requires task specific knowledge, they should consult the employees. This is because the managers may not have the necessarily adequate information or skills required to make a decision as it might happen that they might overlook certain information which is quite obvious visible to the front line employees(Michie et.al,2002)For example Toyota gives power to employees to take action whenever any problem arises in the assembly line. Thus when an automobile coming out from the assembly line had paint defects. The employee dwelled into the root cause of the problem instead of merely fixing the defect and passing it on to the distributor for sales.
Many theorist and researchers have asserted that to increase employee contentment and performance, one needs to enrich the employees job(Hackman and Lawler, 1971; Hackman and Oldham,1980). As Lawler and Hall(1969) pointed out, it is recommended that the way the job is redesigned has a significant impact upon the mind-set, values and feelings of the employee. Thus employers should also think of developing participative work redesign process such as social technological theory. For example in the initial period, the coal mining industry was using more of manual work. This resulted in less productivity. But as they employed job redesign process, their productivity was increased. This helped in enhancing the participation of employees which in turn increased their motivation and performance and it also enhanced the productivity of the organization. Even the Volvo at Kamar plant had changed their traditional automobile assembly lines to a new one thereby reducing accident rates, absenteeism, and employee turnover and enhanced their product quality and efficiency. (Trist et al., 1963).
The employers should also look for participative team work within their organization as the team has collective responsibility for better allocation of resources and division of job to increase their output to a more focussed one. (Belbin,1996).This helps the group to adapt to any turbulent business environments.(Swenson,1997) This helps in boosting up the morale of the employees, having better understanding among the employees as well as increases the efficiency of the organization(Wimalasiri andKouzmin,2000). For example in a furniture factory, an employee rather working on one part of the production process, each person can perform multitasking such as assembling, tarnishing and polishing the entire chair or table. This would increase the skill variety as well as help in task identity as each employee would be responsible for the job from the start to the end.
Thus employees value intrinsic rewards such as job satisfaction more than extrinsic rewards such as high salaries or bonuses as they feel that they get a chance of contributing in the success of the organization. Even the organizations in 1980 had concentrated employees as more of an asset.(Piore and Sabel,1983). Nykodym et al.(1994) had found that the employees which regard themselves to be empowered have less disagreement and uncertainty in their task as they are able to manage their own environment.
The employees, who are more committed towards the organization, tend to identify thevision and mission of their organizations (Hunt et al.,1998; Buchanan, 1974; Hrebiniak and Alutto,1972) and are also willing to take more sacrifices for their organizations(Jaworski and Kohli,1993).
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewPDF.jsp?contentType=Article&Filename=html/Output/Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Pdf/1180020203.pdf
Thus empowerment if implemented effectively, benefits the organization by creating an atmosphere which promotes more of problem solving, innovation capabilities and challenges, continual improvements, proper utilization of employee skills, motivation and enrichment of business performance. (Mullins and Peacock,1991). Even empowerment benefits the employees as well. It provides them with a sense of high self respect, greater jab satisfaction, high degree of contribution and participation, a learning environment opportunity for personal growth and development. (Foy,1994,pg5)
The companies which have engaged in developing empowerment have achieved better organizational gains. Harvester Restaurants had imposed empowerment by eliminating the supervisors from each restaurants and formed employees to self managed teams. This resulted in the increase of sales and profitability of the restaurants. The employees were more satisfied as they felt that they are part of the organization and hence they took more of such type of challenges. This resulted in low labour turnover and also the customer complaints were also reduced to minimal.(Ashness and Lashley,1995)
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/ViewContentServlet?contentType=Article&Filename=Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Articles/0140280306.html
To implement empowerment effectively, one requires a culture change within the organization. The employer needs to be the visionary who can provide the ideas to which employees can dedicate themselves. Supervisors should learn to be an advisor to employees and all the members of the organization must dedicate themselves in sharing information and knowledge.
http://www.google.co.in/interstitial?url=http://www.gu.edu.pk/GUJR/PDF/pdf%2520june%25202006/7-Dr%2520Shafiq%2520Employees%252033-48.pdf
CHALLENGES INVOLVED IN MANAGING INNOVATION AT WORK:
Whenever an organization implements any innovation at work, it becomes more of cultural and structural problems among people. Innovation requires more of change in corporate ethics, core values, attitudes and beliefs.(book) Thus one sees that the resistance usually comes from the people who have been functioning in an authoritarian style as they are unable to cope up with the changes in culture. (Neumann,1993). These people could be line managers, technical experts or middle managers who have been working with the organization for many years and had been rewarded in terms of promotion for what they were doing previously.
The managers and leaders are very much resistant to empowerment. They perceive it to be a reduction of power. This inflicts a sense of insecurity of job loss or job status. Thus they view the decrease of power as a threat(Denham et.al,1997) during the downsizing process when the organization structure becomes flatter.(Ainger et.al,1995)
Apart from difficulties of job security, they also fear that the employees which are left would be handed over much of work and with little chance of being recognized in salary scales and also the discretion given to them would be very limited.(Cunningham et.al,1996, pg 153)
There could also be a problem associated if one encourages employee empowerment to its employees as the decision taken by the people at lower level could lead to inconsistencies with the corporate policy (Legge,1989). For example in my previous industry, the General Manager(GM) production was empowered to speak to the machine manufacturer by providing him the requisite information for purchase of machinery. But he took undue advantage of the management’s authority by asking the manufacturer to support him with the commission in order to get the machine approved. This came to the limelight of the management when the manufacturer complained about the behaviour of the GM. This posed a problem for the management.
Even when implementing innovation it may happen that the employers do empower employees to take action. But employees are afraid of taking any responsibility as they fear that they need to do additional work and also they would be held accountable for any decision which they make.
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewContentItem.do?contentType=Article&hdAction=lnkhtml&contentId=879183
Eccles(1993) had pointed out that those encouraging empowerment mistakenly thinks that those at lower and middle levels in the organization necessarily want more power, in fact, ever-increasing degrees of answerability linked to very tough budget target are often interpreted by those on the receiving end as undesirable work load being passed on to them from top(Walker,1992)
Even the communication gap and attitudes between the employees and employers during the implementation of innovation could lead to several problems. The organization spends lot of money for conducting training, coaching to employees and also they provide information to the employees so that they can take a good decision. But due to the communication gap, the employees feel dissatisfied which could result in the employees leaving their job. This could lead to high labour turnover.
In a case study which deals with “the empowerment efforts that came undone” Rothstein(1995) describes a situation of a company which had declined sales. So the president of the company had empowered a team to deal with the cause of such decline. When the team submitted the report, it was highly criticized by the management. When this report was carefully evaluated by 5 expert critique, they said that the effort failed was not due to the empowerment problem but the management did not implement it well. This shows that the President did not support the team nor did they had any faith or trust in its teams. They just paid lip service that they have empowered the team.
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewPDF.jsp?contentType=Article&Filename=html/Output/Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Pdf/1180050405.pdf
HOW TO OVERCOME DIFFICULTIES AND PROMOTING EMPOWERMENT:
Whenever empowerment is implemented within an organization, the senior manager must be prepared for any problems which might creep in. There could be instances where the employees could challenge the status-quo, take more risks and implement new ideas. There might be a possibility of some mistakes creeping in. Thus the managers should be ready to accept the fact and move on. There is a strong saying that mistakes often leads to greatest success. Even the manager can train new employees by allowing the employees to take decision under the watchful eyes of the senior manager. In this way the managers can supervise the employees and also give them the advice for more improvement.
The senior manager should incorporate more of group work among the employees as it helps them to mix up with different people having different knowledge and experience. This group work collaboration helps them to be trained quickly as they work collectively to resolve a problem of challenge.
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewContentItem.do?contentType=Article&hdAction=lnkhtml&contentId=1410587
The managers should create boundaries for the employees as this helps the employees to understand what decision one can make. If boundaries are not specified then empowerment could prove to be ineffective.
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewContentItem.do?contentType=Article&hdAction=lnkhtml&contentId=879183
The senior manager should plan job redesign in such a manner that the employees should feel that the work which they have to do has some creativity in it. This would result the employees to take more responsibility and they would feel pride if they achieve those results. Even the managers should have a high degree of trust among its employees. If there is no trust then employee empowerment would be deemed to be ineffective.(Orchid,1981) the managers never should play a blame game with the employees as this lessen the morale of an employee.
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewPDF.jsp?contentType=Article&Filename=html/Output/Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Pdf/0680130402.pdf
If there are employees who seems to be ineffective or tries to violate the code of conduct, then those employees should be removed from the system. If they are allowed to stay within the organization, they would deem to cause lot of problems as employee would not be able to function independently because of distrust caused between the management and the employees.
The managers should truly care about their employees. The employees can easily see the managers action as how they are treating the employees. The studies have revealed that the managers who spend most of their time interacting with teams have resulted in higher performance which is in contrast to the managers who squander most of their time in issuing order and memos. Thus the managers who value people would see that the morale of the employees would be high which in turn would lead to high organizational gains.
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewPDF.jsp?contentType=Article&Filename=html/Output/Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Pdf/1180030202.pdf
The managers should make aware the employees the vision and mission of the company. The managers should make the employee feel that their influence can help the organization to achieve its goals. By inducting the employees in such a way, the people would feel proud to be associated with the organization because of their importance within the organization. This would instil the sign of improvement and would also strengthen their self esteem.
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewContentItem.do?contentType=Article&hdAction=lnkhtml&contentId=882360
The managers should give the employees the power and authority to function independently. They should make them feel that they are part of the organization by including them in decision making by providing all the necessary information. This would create a sense of ownership among the people. This would lead the employees to deliver results as they know that they would be accountable for the specified job. The manager should also provide necessary tool such as skills, techniques, information and training to handle any changed environment. Financial participation is another important aspect which the senior managers should look into. They should provide incentives to the employees on their work basis especially in the form of employee share ownership schemes.(Jenkins and Poole,1990).
Thus the manager should invest in people by providing them training. Though the training cost are expensive but in the long run the benefits achieved to the organization through this training would far outweigh the cost. Studies have revealed that if the mangers provide such job related training, the employees feel more satisfied with the job which in turn would lead to low labour turnover, productivity would be increased and the skills of employees would be enhanced.
The most important for the employees and the managers is that there should not be any communication gap, because communication is an issue which can lead the organization either to a success or to a failure. So managers should take care that the proper communication should be there within the system and there should be proper feedback. This helps either of the people to understand what was wrong if any and how to rectify those wrongs. This could lead to high degree of trust among the employees and senior managers.
CONCLUSION:
If employee empowerment is implemented effectively, it would results into twin benefits. Firstly it would increase the overall morale of the employees as they feel more satisfied with the jobs and secondly the organizational gains would be increased. The successful implantation would lead to eliminate the unions as they would be considered superfluous as they won’t require any mediator between employees’ and management(Babson,1998). But if the culture of an organization is not developed within the organization it would lead to failure of employee empowerment.(Foster-Fishman,1995) The management should be willing to allow the staff to have larger access to resources and should have its own discretionary to do their work. The manager must have environment of trust and should be willing to take risk.
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewPDF.jsp?contentType=Article&Filename=html/Output/Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Pdf/1180050405.pdf