Employee Empowerment

Employee empowerment is the process by which organizations enable their employees to feel valued, engaged, and autonomous in their roles. This concept gained prominence in management theory during the late twentieth century, contrasting with earlier, more procedure-focused management styles. Empowered employees tend to have a better understanding of their work's significance, leading to improved relationships with colleagues and a healthier organizational culture. Central to fostering empowerment is the style of leadership known as servant leadership, which prioritizes the needs of employees and encourages open communication and collaboration.

Research indicates a positive correlation between employee empowerment and organizational performance, including increased productivity and reduced absenteeism. Empowered employees often feel a greater sense of belonging and are more likely to contribute creatively to their organizations. Effective employee empowerment involves not just providing resources and autonomy, but also ensuring that employees are actively engaged in organizational goals and receive meaningful feedback. Ultimately, the empowerment of employees can enhance overall business performance, demonstrating that investments in empowerment are as crucial as investments in other profit-generating areas of an organization.

Published in: 2021

By:

Subject Terms

Employee Empowerment

Abstract

Employee empowerment is the process of making employees in an organization feel important, engaged in their work, valued by those around them, and sufficiently free in enacting their job roles. The benefits of employees feeling empowered have been recognized by managerial theorists since the last decades of the twentieth century, and one style of leadership in particular, usually called servant leadership, is especially well suited to developing that empowerment. Multiple studies have found correlations between employee engagement and company profits.

Overview

In management and organizational theory, employee empowerment refers to the state of employees feeling empowered in their roles—that is, that they have freedom, power, and importance—as well as to the process of achieving that state. In contrast with procedure-focused management approaches of the early twentieth century, the focus in the late twentieth century on organizational culture has made employee empowerment a priority. Empowered employees better understand the nature and importance of their work; have better relationships with their coworkers, subordinates, and superiors; and contribute to a healthier organizational culture.

Empowered employees are more self-directed and autonomous employees, which ideally reduces the resources needed for oversight—micromanaging employees is the opposite of empowering them. Instead, managing employees should consist not of monitoring and directing their every move, but of helping them develop their skills and creativity, motivating them, and engaging them in their work, their job roles, and the organizational culture. While micromanaging—to continue using that as a contrasting example—is a style of managing that does not require employees to know much about the nature or importance of their work or even about the business’s organizational goals and overall strategy, leadership that cultivates empowerment instead involves employees in those goals and strategy. This creates clear channels of communication that help employees connect their job roles to those goals and understand how their work contributes to a larger picture.

Organizational culture became an important concept in managerial theory in the late twentieth century. It refers simply to the shared values, assumptions, and habits of an organization, most of which go unstated and contribute to the belief by members of the organization that there are certain norms of behavior they are expected to follow—not just explicitly defined rules and procedures, but implicit ones that deal not just with work-specific behavior but the social environment of the workplace, even the common topics of conversation in the break room. Specifics of organizational culture vary considerably, not just in response to the choices made by the organization’s leadership but as a result of the personalities and demeanor of the organization’s members. There is a relationship, therefore, between organizational culture and employee empowerment.

Some organizational cultures are more empowering than others, in that in some organizations those unspoken norms encourage autonomy and communication, motivate employees, and inculcate employee engagement, while others are authoritarian and bureaucratic, making employees feel less like participants and more like parts of a machine over which they have no control. In turn, employees who are empowered and engaged in their work are more likely to possess a feeling of belonging, of true membership in the organization, which not only makes organizational culture healthier (and improves numerous quantifiable performance metrics) but reduces absenteeism and attrition because employees simply have more reasons to feel rewarded by the work they do.

Involving employees in the organization and in their work increases employees' self-confidence and their sense that management notices and values their contributions (Armache, 2013). Real empowerment means a true sharing of power, no longer concentrated at the top of the organization but distributed throughout it. “Power” here is not an ephemeral concept but means access to information, control of resources, autonomy, and participation in organizational culture and mission.

Some of the chief roles of supervisors in an employee-empowering organization should be the delegation of authority, the dissemination of information, and the reception and provision of feedback. Additionally, managers should ensure that they are proactively listening to their employees' suggestions and ideas, offering appropriate development training, and providing the resources necessary for employees to complete their tasks and develop their skills (Ravisha & Pakkerappa, 2017). Many managerial theorists believe that empowerment is best cultivated in an organization with a flattened hierarchy, where the difference in authority between a typical employee and a manager is lesser than in a highly hierarchical bureaucracy (Armache, 2013). Employees should feel that they are participating not in rote tasks or empty trust-building exercises meant to make them feel empowered, but in processes that truly influence the direction of the organization.

Some theorists have compared empowerment to organization-wide mentorship, not mentoring employees individually but creating conditions in which they flourish much as they would in a mentoring relationship (Armache, 2013). Of particular importance to this flourishing is making employees feel that their work has meaning and purpose. Organizations can accomplish this through constant communication and feedback that clarifies the role of employees' work in contributing to organizational goals. As discussed below, engagement is also critical in creating meaning for work.

Empowering employees while also tending to organizational needs is a challenge for any business, and approaches to empowerment work best when organizations treat empowerment not as a separate organizational priority but rather as part of the overall organizational culture. Because empowered employees become more competent, engaged, and productive employees, employee empowerment leads to overall increased profits, and resources invested in empowerment are no different than resources invested in any other profit-contributing aspect of the organization. For instance, any business of sufficient size, especially in white-collar industries, tends to organize much of its communication and decision-making through meetings.

Meetings are an important part of organizational culture: they bring peers, subordinates, and superiors together in a time devoted to discussing specific issues, bring employees from different work groups together for face-to-face communication, and provide a venue where employees have confidence that they will be heard. However, a frequent complaint is the amount of time they consume, taking time away from the “real work” of employees’ job roles. Being mindful of this and using meetings as an opportunity to empower employees by ensuring that they are occasions when information and resources are shared, organizations contribute to communication that is open and healthy, and no one walks away feeling their time was wasted. This is one example of using a common managerial tool and maximizing its usefulness (Allen, Lehmann-Willenbrock & Sands, 2016). Furthermore, many meetings are an opportunity for managers to delegate authority, putting other employees in leadership roles temporarily, and to provide and receive ongoing feedback, a vital process in helping employees feel valued and heard. While leaders delegating responsibility in general can help employees to feel more empowered, some research has been done to examine whether women in leadership positions are less likely to delegate than men due to concerns over employees' perceptions of the assertiveness of the act (Akinola, Martin, & Phillips, 2018).

In addition to increasing employees' dedication to everyday work and tasks through a greater sense of value in their work, a relationship between employee empowerment and greater creative tendencies beneficial to organizations has been emphasized in research. It has been argued that employees who work in an environment that fosters interactivity and autonomy develop and possess the kind of internal motivation that leads to a higher desire to actively pursue innovative solutions to problems as well as products in both the short term and the long term (Min, Uggadan, & Park, 2017).

Further Insights

Leadership theorists have suggested that of the various leadership styles (for example, authoritarian, paternalistic, democratic, or transactional), the one best suited to developing employee empowerment is servant leadership. Servant leadership is a style of leading in which the ostensible leader shares power with subordinates, an approach dating back to ancient philosophy but revived in a modern managerial context by Robert Greenleaf (Greenleaf, 1977).

A servant leader, as Greenleaf’s name for this style suggests, puts the needs of the “followers” (employees, in this case) before the needs of the organization, which in turn come before the needs of the leader (Jones, 2012). Greenleaf identified some of a servant leader’s qualities as the desire for service, empathy, trust, acceptance, and empowerment (Greenleaf, 1977). In contrast with an organization resembling a pyramid with the leader at the peak, Greenleaf’s servant leader is not at the top of the organization (leading through intermediaries or predetermined policies) but rather leads from within it.

Some call this style of leadership stewardship, characterized by a desire to perform a service, rather than to seek power. Provided the leader is also competent in their job, this style of leadership naturally leads to empowering leader-employee relationships. Greater resources are shared with employees, greater opportunities for advancement are made available, greater autonomy is given them, and the leader has less of an ego to protect, so it is easier to share credit or give prestigious tasks or resources to subordinates rather than over-committing leadership. Furthermore, because servant leaders seek out interaction with their employees more, the channels of communication are more open, feedback is more clear, organizational goals are more clearly articulated, employees have a better sense of their roles, and leaders are in turn better able to persuade employees to pursue goals rather than relying on authoritarian measures (Gupta, 2014).

Servant leadership encourages a more participative organizational culture, which better engages employees and changes the traditional balance of power: the leader has less power than in an authoritarian or paternalistic structure (in which most of the power rests at the top), while each individual employee has more. Communication tends to be more open-ended rather than flowing only through the formal channels of a bureaucracy. Because servant leaders put the needs of their employees first, employees develop more fully not only in their job roles but also in their professional roles, cultivating skills and competencies that can guide them throughout their careers.

As David Jones points out in a paper on servant leadership’s impact on employee empowerment and profit, while the links between servant leadership and employee empowerment are clear, there has been less work on how to motivate an organization to hire and retain a servant leader as senior manager (Jones, 2012). This is especially a problem since in most modern cultures, including the United States, servant leadership is not the dominant leadership style. As a result, managers who display the traits of competent servant leaders do not display the traits that employers and recruiters may be looking for—ambition in particular, since by definition a leader driven by personal ambition cannot be an effective servant leader.

Though the benefits of servant leadership are clear: Servant leadership drives employee empowerment and employee empowerment drives productivity, efficiency, and profit, this “recruitment filter” is still a considerable obstacle. Because leadership of this kind is one that depends on and reflects a leader’s character, rather than a behavior to emulate, it does not seem reasonable to suggest that recruiting ambitious managers and then training them to put their ambition aside can rectify this. Instead, it is necessary to recruit managers who are already servant leaders or to train employees from within the organization to fill the role (Jones, 2012).

Alternatively, another successful leadership style is transformational leadership, developed by James V. Downton, James MacGregor Burns, and Bernard M. Bass in the 1970s and 1980s. Like servant leadership, transformational leadership is highly communication-driven and less hierarchical. A transformational leader works with employees to involve them in the organization’s vision and motivates them by inspiring them and acting as a role model (Mozammel & Haan, 2016). This still places the leader significantly above the employees than in the servant leadership model, however, and does not necessarily grant them the same amount of autonomy.

Issues

Employee empowerment closely connects to employee engagement, the degree to which an employee is actively interested in day-to-day work, and job satisfaction (or employee satisfaction). While employees need access to resources and need to be granted sufficient autonomy in their roles to feel empowered, this may not be enough if they do not feel engaged in their work. Drivers of engagement primarily deal with employees' perceptions (such as their perceptions of the importance of their tasks and how those tasks relate to organizational objectives) and relationships with superiors, subordinates, and peers.

Engagement correlates particularly with low levels of absenteeism and higher levels of productivity, but is also increasingly important as the world of work changes (Jha & Kumar, 2016). More and more Americans are telecommuting at least part time, for example, trading the distractions of the office for the distractions of home or a coffee shop with WiFi, where being truly engaged with their work makes up for the lack of connectedness they may feel as a result of being outside the physical work environment and the presence of their coworkers. While supervisors are sometimes uncomfortable with telecommuting because of this lack of on-site supervision, in many organizations it is unavoidable because of the nature of the work involved. Even when it is avoidable, the freedom to work from home provides employees with a level of self-direction and control over their own time management that empowers them by making them more autonomous.

Consider engagement in terms of the different drives feeding it, with the understanding that different job roles and work environments will be more conducive to different types of engagement. An employee engages socially, through work relationships (including those with peers, subordinates, superiors, and customers or vendors), work-related communications, and the social environment of the workplace. This, for instance, would be one of the drives of engagement diminished by working from home, though many telecommuting employees videoconference and use messaging software. Work can also be intellectually engaging when it is challenging, allows employees to use their skills, and gives them an opportunity to improve those skills.

Perhaps the most difficult drive of engagement to plan for is emotional engagement. Employees engage emotionally when they feel emotionally connected with their work, identify with their job role or their organization, and feel part of the organizational culture. All of these drives are important to employee empowerment, helping employees feel important, valued, autonomous, and part of the culture, as well as connected to each other: healthy social activity in the workplace can feed emotional engagement, for instance, while networking with peers can drive intellectual engagement. Nor are these drives important merely for the sake of employees’ happiness. Multiple studies have found correlations between employee engagement and company profits (Jha & Kumar, 2016).

Terms & Concepts

Employee Engagement: Employees' interest in the specific tasks that constitute their work responsibilities.

Empowerment: The act of giving power to someone or something, such as by providing resources and opportunities.

Job Satisfaction: The sum of employees' feelings about their job, work environment, responsibilities, and organization.

Management Theory: A body of theory devoted to studying effective management techniques.

Organizational Climate: The conditions of an organization from an employee’s point of view.

Servant Leadership: A philosophy of leadership grounded in power sharing by the ostensible leader.

Bibliography

Akinola, M., Martin, A. E., & Phillips, K. W. (2018). To delegate or not to delegate: Gender differences in affective associations and behavioral responses to delegation. Academy of Management Journal, 61(4), 1467–1491. Retrieved October 18, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=131176287&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Allen, J. A., Lehmann-Willenbrock, N., & Sands, S. J. (2016). Meetings as a positive boost? How and when meeting satisfaction impacts employee empowerment. Journal of Business Research, 69(10), 4340–4347. Retrieved November 2, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=116987599&site=ehost-live

Armache, J. (2013). The benefits of employees’ empowerment. Franklin Business & Law Journal, 2013(4), 19–28. Retrieved November 2, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=93433204&site=ehost-live

Chan, Y. H., Nadler, S. S., & Hargis, M. B. (2015). Attitudinal and behavioral outcomes of employees’ psychological empowerment: A structural equation modeling approach. Journal of Organizational Culture, Communications & Conflict, 19(1), 24–41. Retrieved November 2, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=108522803&site=ehost-live

Garg, N., & Sharma, B. (2015). Comparative study of employee empowerment in public and private insurance companies. Journal of the Insurance Institute of India, 2(4), 41–47. Retrieved November 2, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=102853458&site=ehost-live

Greenleaf, Robert K. (1977). Servant Leadership. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.

Gupta, K. S. (2014). Servant leadership and employee empowerment: A conceptual framework. Essence: Journal of Management Science & Research, 3(3), 85–94. Retrieved November 2, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=111874703&site=ehost-live

Han, S., Seo, G., Li, J., & Yoon, S. W. (2016). The mediating effect of organizational commitment and employee empowerment: how transformational leadership impacts employee knowledge sharing intention. Human Resource Development International, 19(2), 98–115. Retrieved November 2, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=113744305&site=ehost-live

Jain, S., & Jain, R. (2014). Employee empowerment in Indian banks: An empirical study. Journal of Institute of Public Enterprise, 37(3/4), 32–49. Retrieved November 2, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=101028749&site=ehost-live

Jha, B., & Kumar, A. (2016). Employee engagement: A strategic tool to enhance performance. DAWN: Journal for Contemporary Research in Management, 3(2), 21–29. Retrieved November 2, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=117637764&site=ehost-live

Jones, D. (2012). Servant leadership’s impact on profit, employee satisfaction, and empowerment within the framework of a participative culture in business. Business Studies Journal, 4(1), 35–49. Retrieved November 2, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=77782149&site=ehost-live

Min, K. R., Ugaddan, R. G., & Park, S. M. (2017). Is the creative tendency affected by organizational leadership and employee empowerment? An empirical analysis of U.S. federal employees. Public Performance & Management Review, 40(2), 382–408. Retrieved January 5, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=119952931&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Mozammel, S., & Haan, P. (2016). Transformational leadership and employee engagement in the banking sector in Bangladesh. Journal of Developing Areas, 50, 43–55. Retrieved November 2, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=117020708&site=ehost-live

Nwachukwu, C. (2016). The impact of performance management and employee empowerment on organisational culture of selected banks in Nigeria. Ekonomika A Management, (2), 1–9. Retrieved November 2, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=116212830&site=ehost-live

Ravisha, B., & Pakkerappa, P. (2017). Impact of employee empowerment on performance management. Amity Business Review, 18(2), 57–61. Retrieved October 18, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=128926994&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Employee Empowerment

On this Page

Subject Terms

Employee Empowerment

Abstract

Overview

Further Insights

Issues

Terms & Concepts

Bibliography

Suggested Reading