Employee empowerment is a philosophy that emphasizes the importance of granting employees a certain level of autonomy to make independent decisions. It plays a key role in the organization’s performance management. Employees are provided a platform to carry out judgments and ensure accurate decision-making for empowerment. When employee empowerment is deployed rightly, it highly contributes to productivity, a platform to communicate personal and team goals, as well as a better quality of work life.
Google has set one of the best examples of employee empowerment:
There are three factors of employee empowerment.
This involves transparency and understanding of culture, policies, organization chart, job roles, responsibilities, promotion, etc.
This involves support regarding professional and personal queries.
Employees can create better decisions on their own.
Employee empowerment can be categorized into many types, and organizations use them differently as per the need. Some of the types are:
Empowering employees can produce better outcomes for the organization, which are mentioned below.
When employees’ decisions and problems are heard and appreciated for their contribution to the company targets, they feel more empowered and motivated. Therefore, recognition programs should be conducted, training should be provided, problems must be quickly solved, and feedback about practices must be collected to empower them.
Benefits of empowerment:
Drawbacks of empowerment: