Employee Involvement

In the paradigm of management, empowerment is viewed as losing authority and control over people and resources. Generally, people resent being driven, controlled and being seen as part of company equipment. This breeds apathy in employees towards the organisation’s intents in the market place and destroys accountability.

In many ways, empowerment embodies principles effective managers and leaders have practiced for years. Two new driving forces in business, increased diversity and high-speed change, magnify the need for empowerment. Empowering people is now indispensable for effective personal productivity and maximum team success.

Empowerment is a process that increases organizational power by including team working, sharing and solidarity. This relationship is based on trust which is considered as an output of empowerment. Empowerment deals with employees’ cognitive growth which enables them to control their fundamental behaviour towards their work environment. Implementation of empowerment is a holistic reorganization of the way a business thinks and does things (Page,

Employee empowerment is to give workers a greater voice in decisions about work-related matters. Their decision-making authority can range from offering suggestions to exercising veto power over management decisions. The range of decisions could go as far as: how jobs are to be performed, working conditions, company policies, work hours, peer review, and how supervisors are evaluated.

From the People Management perspective, “Communication, Involvement and Participation” is always playing an important role in the past, today and even in

Employee empowerment can be described as giving employees' accountability and ability to make choices about their work without managerial authorization. Good managers are expected to

Both management and employees interpret empowerment from their own viewpoints to suit their own needs and build up expectations of what the programme will bring. For management, empowerment promises a more committed and involved workforce who are willing to take responsibility at lower levels. Whilst for employees, empowerment pledges autonomy and the ability to move to a more equitable position within their organization. The failure of these expectations to share similar intentions or goals means that the psychological contract between management and worker could fail, promoting feelings of is trust on both sides (Hill & Huq, 2004)

Employee involvement and participation (EIP) became known as part of the new HRM practices of the late twentieth century when stable economic conditions encouraged employers to adopt them. While the method of choice varied between organisations and sectors, the general view was that it is beneficial for a company’s employees to be involved in management decisions. In the UK, workplace employment relations surveys (WERS) showed that direct forms of EIP (employee involvement) became more widespread through to 2004, whilst indirect participation (employee participation) became less extensive (Kersley et al. 2006). This might well be due to the fact that there is a need for the employees to be fully engaged with their work by having more information about their organisations’ activities and increased opportunities to use their experiences and unique knowledge to improve customer service.

The Working Paper Series would attempt to disseminate the findings of research in specific areas and also to facilitate discussions and sharing of perspectives and information about the identified areas. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The views, findings, and interpretations expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not represent the views of SIESCOMS and its management. These working papers would be available online at www.siescoms.edu. No part of the paper can be reproduced in any form without the prior permission of the author. However, they can be quoted by citing the reference.

Employee empowerment has been a major topic that is discussed thoroughly by human resource management teams in a lot of different companies. By definition, “employee empowerment is simply giving employees responsibility and authority to make decisions regarding all aspects of product development or customer service,” (Noe, 2016, p. 38). Companies are torn between the pros and cons of really trusting employees to give them the authority to draw their own conclusions. This is an important topic in HR because if this idea is done correctly, it can really improve the organizations overall performance and this in turn will make the company more profitable.

Empowerment is an important tool for progression and FWD needs to exercise it often when expecting employees to work together towards a global objective. Empowerment can be defined as providing employees the chance to exercise autonomy in making decisions (Vogt, 1997), which is rarely implemented at FWD.

The article this group chose to critique is titled, “Understanding Empowerment from an Employee Perspective: What Does It Mean and Do They Want It?”, by Kay Greasley, Alan Bryman, Andrew Dainty, Andrew Price, Nicola Naismith, and Robby Soetanto. The purpose of this article is to figure out exactly how employees define empowerment, and decide if they want to be empowered in the workplace. The methodology used for this study was a qualitative interview process consisting of, “Four employees [that] were sampled within each project, with the exception of one project where three employees were selected. Each employee was interviewed three times over the course of a year to provide a total of 45 interviews.” (Greasley et al., 2007, pg.45). The employees and 45 interviews only came from one sector. They were asked a series of question regarding their personal perception of empowerment in the workplace, and whether or not they felt like it was something they wanted. The only recommendation for further research in this study was to test more sectors since only one sector was tested in this study (Greasley et al, 2007, pg.49).

An employee involvement activity is a tool normally used for strategic human resource management. Its concentrates on how each employee in an organization can be fully involved and contribute towards organizational goals and success. Various means has been taken by organizations to encourage employee involvement, the basis of which lies on information sharing and involving them in decision-making process of the organization. These procedures comprise self-managed teams, independent work-groups, and high performance work systems among others. All of these initiatives were taken with the motive of increasing motivation and dedication in employees to increase their productivity, performance and quality and also to reduce their resistance to change.

An employee involvement activity is a tool normally used for strategic human resource management. Its concentrates on how each employee in an organization can be fully involved and contribute towards organizational goals and success. Various means has been taken by organizations to encourage employee involvement, the basis of which lies on information sharing and involving them in decision-making process of the organization. These procedures comprise self-managed teams, independent work-groups, and high performance work systems among others. All of these initiatives were taken with the motive of increasing motivation and dedication in employees to increase their productivity, performance and quality and also to reduce their resistance to change.

In the article composed by Morgeson, Mumford, and Campion, it is stated that organizational philosophies regarding employee involvement and commitment find great value in the inclusion of multiple views. 360 Degree Feedback consistently tends to foster formal and informal discussion regarding the effectiveness of employees in all positions. The increase in openness and communication leads to a greater amount of learning among coworkers as well as an increase in goal setting and desire to further skill development. Each of these benefits have a synergistic effect in the improvement of organizational culture (Antonioni, 1996; Bernardin & Beatty, 1987; Hoffman, 1995; London & Beatty, 1993, p. 198).