Going a step ahead of motivation, do organisations really understand the importance of empowerment? Does employee empowerment really bring success to the organisation as well as the employee? The answer, according to experts, is in the affirmative, if employees are empowered carefully with proper planning and articulation of various factors within the organisation and of the employee.
According to Rekha Murali, Consultant at NCR Consultants, “Employee empowerment is a two-way street between employee and management in which trust and responsibility go hand in hand. This requires autonomy at the workplace and enhances the employee-employer relationship.”
Employees and decision making
Most companies formulate streamlined policies and frameworks that draw clear lines to encourage employee decision making. The key is to motivate the employees to participate better in the regular functioning of the organisation. It might begin with allowing the bottom line employees to contribute ideas to improve the existing processes. As employees become experts in their processes, they can play a significant role in decision making.
According to Srinivas Rao Taduri, Senior Manager - Unit Operations, Sentini Technologies Private Limited, “Most of the decisions we take are after thorough discussions involving the employees and their teams/team leads and mid-management. This system gives confidence to the employees to feel that they are part of the managerial thought process.”
While encouraging employees to take decisions in their operations, the management should have no ambiguity with regard to the scope and limitations of decision making. Rekha Murali opines, “The management on their part should give complete autonomy and support in implementation to the employee and involve the empowered employees in decision-making.”
Delegation and decentralization
Along with gaining expertise in the field of operation, every employee needs to prove his worth in various ways and gain the confidence of the top management. Only then, can the managers be willing to delegate work to an employee. No manager would be willing to take risk by delegating work to an incompetent or irresponsible employee. Srinivas Rao Taduri, on delegation in his company, says, “Delegation happens only with the employees' capability of understanding the criticality of the task and how soon he/she finds an answer to the problem.”
Rekha Murali adds, “The employee needs to display certain characteristics to develop the trust of the employer including initiating, controlling and implementing the work with discipline and timeliness.”
Accountability
Once you decide to give the authority, you also need to check for the results. While trust plays a significant role in delegating work, there should also be a mechanism in which organisations can make employees accountable for their work. Regular monthly updates from the employees about the status of work and weekly trackers are the commonly used tools to keep the employees accountable for their work. These trackers and updates can also form the inputs for the performance management system at the end of every quarter or month. Srinivas Rao says, “Empowerment of employees is there but with defined limitations and boundaries. These limitations will measure the accountability at all the levels of the organisation.”
Most managers prefer regular interaction with the employees to ensure proper accountability. According to Rekha Murali, “The best practices for employee empowerment where accountability can be managed would involve initial discussion and brainstorming, group decision making with senior management, interim discussions to ensure adherence, focus on training for knowledge enhancement and skill sets, and provision of incentives and rewards for quality of work delivered which would motivate the employees for better performance.”
Rather than merely providing employees to take decisions in a structured manner, companies must appreciate employees for their good decisions and let them consider the company as their own and get rewarded for such high levels of motivation.
On the other end, the management must also consider the enormity of the work offloaded to each individual. Stress often plays spoilsport when the management relies heavily on capable people and tends to give them more work, power, and authority. Such high levels of stress might prove detrimental to both personal and organisational growth. Hence, management needs to delegate appropriately to a good number of capable employees.
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