Employee Empowerment
Why should you learn about Employee Empowerment?
If your organisation is a quality organisation striving to be excellent or applying for
quality awards, pursuing TQM (Total Quality Management), then as a leader, you
already know the importance of employee empowerment. It’s well documented in all
Quality Award application forms.
But, let me alert you – YOU CANNOT EMPOWER IF YOU DON’T KNOW HOW.
This is the fundamental reason why you should learn about employee
empowerment.
It’s only through clarity of understanding that leaders can learn about empowerment, and progress can be made.
Perhaps by generating a clearer understanding of empowerment … some progress can be made. Christensen Hughes (1999: 127).
In my blogs, Leadership Learning with Dr Rozana™, I am fully committed to share
knowledge and help you get through the pain points in employee empowerment:
Pain points.
➡️ Lack of knowledge and understanding of what employee empowerment is.
➡️ Lack of framework on how to implement it.
➡️ No focused communication strategy to get people on board.
➡️ Employees don’t feel a sense of belonging – they feel ‘alienated.’
Why should you learn from me?
Employee empowerment is a subject that I have studied deeply, researched
extensively.
During my doctoral research in the UK, I interviewed 235 people from senior, middle
and junior management, including people in non-management positions, which gave
me an advantage to understand the subject deeply from the perspective of people
from both management and non-management positions, at the grass roots level.
The case studies are valuable references for learning organisations, what worked
and what did not, when these organisations went down the empowerment route.
I taught at Universities for the last decade, and gave several presentations about
employee empowerment, at Universities, conferences, including businesses,
companies and non-profit organisations. I have published, written books and journal articles about employee empowerment and created a framework for implementation.
In my blogs, I will share my research findings, my own observations, and review of
literatures.
I could not let important things that people I have interviewed said to me about how
they experienced and felt about employee empowerment sit inside my leather bound
thesis, it needs to be shared; their voices freed. After all, one of the outcomes of
empowerment is that people’s voices need to be heard.
My research has made a notable contribution to knowledge in this area of employee
empowerment, (Wilkinson). https://www.rhmleadership.com/testimonials
Professor Adrian Wilkinson (Director, Centre for Work,
Organisation and Well-being, of Griffith University) read my book, ‘Employee Empowerment the rhetoric & the reality’ and remarked: ‘Rozana Huq has made an important contribution to the subject of employee empowerment with this book’ (Huq, 2010; p.v).
Read more reviews: https://www.rhmleadership.com/book-reviews
Lack of knowledge and understanding of what employee empowerment is.
There are concerns in the management literature about the significant lack of knowledge with regards to employee empowerment, not only at the conceptual level, but at the practice level too. (Conger and Kanungo and 2 more]
The dangers of practising employee empowerment without an adequate knowledge base are unsafe for organisations; it is confusing and counter-productive, as organisations do not achieve what they set out to achieve.
A better understanding of employee empowerment means that organisations can move forward with confidence, knowing what they want to implement, being aware of the pitfalls, and having the employee empowerment framework for leaders to work from.
Lack of framework on how to implement it.
In my book the Psychology of …(2016)
And this is highly interesting as I draw the psychological aspects of empowerment and explain how I created the framework ‘A Kaleidoscope of Themes’ for the implementation of employee empowerment.
Understanding the themes make it plausible why the framework is needed, and it also enables senior management and leaders to know what to do to make the transition to empowerment for everyone. This is the execution of the employee empowerment strategy.
It’s at the execution level, most employee empowerment slows down, gets derailed and fails.
No focused communication strategy to get people on board.
Most of the employee empowerment lacks a focused communication strategy, that is, letting people the why and how of the programme.
If the organisation is coming from a ‘command and control’ culture, as was one of my case studies, then it is critical to have a focused strategy.
If people are not involved or consulted right from the beginning almost at the conceptual stage, then the danger is it is going to be difficult to get people to buy in into the idea and get them on board.
Instead of empowering, leaders need to realise they are ‘disempowering’ people.
Employees don’t feel a sense of belonging – they feel ‘alienated.’
The importance of a ‘sense of belonging’ goes hand in hand during implementation of any change programmes in organisations, otherwise the danger is that people do not wholeheartedly take part, feel responsible or welcome the change. In contrast, they feel ‘alienated.’ Fear and insecurity take over, work and task completion get disrupted.
Strengthening ‘sense of belonging’ in people starts with awareness of these issues by leaders. The more a leader understand what drives behaviour in embracing change, the more effective the change process and implementation will be.
Employee empowerment needs full co-operation from people. You can read more in the ‘Research Findings’.
References
Christensen Hughes, J.M. (1999); Organisational Empowerment: A Historical Perspective and Conceptual Framework. In Quinn, J. J. and Davies, P.W.F. (Editors), Ethics and Empowerment, Hampshire, Macmillan Press Ltd.
Conger, J.A. and Kanungo, R.N. (1988); The Empowerment Process: Integrating Theory and Practice, Academy of Management Review, 13, 3, pp. 471-482.
Huq, R. (2010); Employee Empowerment the rhetoric & reality. Triarchy Press, UK, Devon.
Huq, R. (2016) The Psychology of Employee Empowerment. Concepts, Critical Themes and a Framework for Implementation. Publisher Routledge.
Wilkinson, A. (1998); Empowerment: Theory and Practice, Personnel Review, 27, 1, pp. 40-56.
Leadership Learning with Dr Rozana™ is written by
Dr Rozana Huq
Founder and Director
RHM LEADERSHIP
➡️ Empower ➡️ Inspire ➡️ Lead