Employee empowerment seems like such a great idea. And, when it works it is. Who better to work on projects designed to increase productivity than the people actually doing the jobs. As great a concept as it is, like most in which people are involved, implementation isn't as simple as it seems.
Although the idea of employee empowerment has always played a role in North American Management, it really gained impetus in the 1970s when we started to look toward Japan for the reasons that its industry was beating ours when it came to productivity, price and quality. One simple concept that appeared easily transferable was the concept of employee teams, often referred to as Quality Circles. Thus, an integral part of the resulting North American quality movement involved empowering employees to sit on teams designed to generate and implement ideas that reinforced the concept of continuous improvement.
Although this quality movement has reappeared many times with a new name but few substantive changes, we still struggle to make it work, and one of the reasons for this is that, in many cases we still haven't fully grasped the basics of employee empowerment. So, whether your organization is about to embark on a fully blown form of employee empowerment, or you as a manager want to tap further into the potential of your work team, here are a few basics that will bring you success.
The Four T's of Successful Empowerment
1, Tread Carefully, particularly at the outset. This is particularly important if the employees have never been involved in similar initiatives. The most critical element of this guideline is to ensure that you decide in advance just how much power will be given, and communicate this to the empowered party. Here are some of the degrees of empowerment that you can grant:
- The employees make the final decision without need for final approval from others.
- The employees make a decision to present to others as a recommendation.
- The employees develop a range of options with a recommendation to present to others.
- The employees develop a range of options to present to others. Whichever you decide, you must communicate clearly in advance. There is nothing more disheartening for a team than to present a completed project believing that it will be implemented only to have it unexpectedly vetoed.
2. Tolerate Early Scepticism. Sometimes the manager introducing the concept of empowerment meets with a less than enthusiastic response from both employees and their supervisors. You should expect this. Employees are usually suspicious of change and until they fully understand the concept may be sceptical. Also, some employees simply won't be interested. They simply want to do their jobs and go home. Not everyone is motivated by increased power. Some supervisors will also voice scepticism. They may see it as a challenge or a threat. They may also see it as a subtle signal that they are not doing their jobs properly. Some may believe that such sessions will be little more than a forum for employee complaints. If the program is implemented effectively, all of these concerns will be short lived, but in the early stages should be expected, tolerated and managed.
3. Time. Success will take lots of it. If employees have never been asked for ideas or to participate in problem solving or decision making, they will rarely do well at first. There's a concept in psychology called learned helplessness, which describes such a situation. In an environment in which people are powerless, they have no opportunity to suggest or make changes to their environment. They eventually accept the situation and actually learn to be helpless. It takes time to unlearn this feeling of helplessness and to re-learn to use limited power over their work environment. One way to combat this is to give them a meaningful project, but one which is set up to succeed. Success will breed success and the learned helplessness will quickly dissipate.
4. Training. When the "quality" movement was at its dizzying heights, many consulting companies sprung up offering a complete Quality Program. A large part of this program was training. One puzzling element though, was that in many cases, the executive and middle management of the client company were given up to a week's training and it was often at the consultants offices which were often located somewhere warm (Florida, California). Supervisors were also provided training, often 2-3 days and delivered by the consultant's facilitators. The employee's, those who were the least skilled in team problem solving and the science of quality, were provided only one or two days training, on-site by an employee of the client. Given the skills required of a successfully empowered team, I thought this was backward, and was probably reflected in the degree of success of the program.
There are many skill-sets that contribute to the success of an empowered team. Team skills, influence skills and conflict management skills will ensure the teamwork element will succeed. Then there are a second set of skills related to problem solving and work efficiencies. It would be unreasonable to cover all of them in one training session. However great care should be taken to identify the most critical skill sets; decide which must be addressed prior to the project's start, and which can be learned experientially or with the guidance of a skilled facilitator. Power without the skills required to use it effectively will lead to failure.
Back in the 70's, those packaged empowerment programs were seen by many as a quick fix. Managers were convinced that by buying a package they would quickly match Japanese industry standards of quality and productivity. Of course this wasn't the case. So of all the lessons we can learn about empowerment, the most useful is that we shouldn't set our expectations too high. Success doesn't come easily. To repeat a phrase in our introduction " Where people are involved, implementation isn't as simple as it seems.
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