Employee Empowerment

Shifting of business practice: from Command and control corporate culture to employee empowerment

In the past, most of the organizations organized work based on the traditional Taylor model which is reducing a process to individual steps so that everyone is only focusing on their tasks and only the top management will make the decision. However, since 1990s, after the concept of employee empowerment has been invented, more and more Companies are redistributing power, authority and responsibility so that even junior staff has decision-making capability. For instance, company like AT&T, Federal Express, Johnson and Johnson are all practicing employee empowerment.

Among all the companies, one of the most famous successful examples of employee empowerment is Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co. (3M), which is a diversified manufacturer. 3M found that increasing employee empowerment is not only a good thing to do; it is a “business thing” to do. There are mainly three changes in the work practice: the work system is changed into a full participation of the people doing the work, work groups in line divisions are moving into self-directed, and functional departments are becoming increasingly team-based and self-directed. 

For instance, in 1994, 3M’s new Brockville, Ontario, facility came on-line as the organization’s first “Greenfield” site. It was designed and built to operate with self-directed work teams. Many work groups in line divisions and staff groups are moving more and more into self-direction. 3M’s commercial office supply divisions, finance, logistics, are becoming increasingly team-based and self-directed.

What are the global forces for employee empowerment?

1.     1. Fast Changing World

With the advancement of technology, the information could now be transmitted freely and the world is changing rapidly. Managers are now having the problem of information overloaded and they could foresee that if managers are the only one who is making the decision, they won’t be able to respond to the change efficiently. Hence, it is necessary to empower the employees to be engaged in the decision making process so that more qualitative ideas could be reached through collaborative thinking to respond to the changing world. For example, in 3M, a diversified manufacturer who is famous for their innovative products has already established a culture of for empowerment. Their employees not only are strongly encouraged to submit new ideas at 3M, but they also spend 15% of their work time on research projects of their choice. In this way, by involving employees to innovate, they won’t be eliminated easily in this fast changing world and maintain their competitiveness.

2. 2. Increasing mobility of employees

Because of globalization, company could recruit people from world-wide which increases the mobility of the employees, making the job market more competitive. As said in the article, “baby boomers, the competitive job market and the multigenerational workforce … [are] factors [that] are pressing organizations to find ways to retain their top talent and that are necessitating the need for engaged workers.” (Ketter, Jan 2008) Hence, in order to retain employees, especially those knowledge workers, it would be better to empower them to increase their commitments.

      3. Higher needs of customers

Globalization intensifies market competition. While at the same time, with the emergence of internet, customers can compare organizations’ products or services with their competitors easily without incurring high cost. Hence, customers now have more choices than before. In this situation, the bargaining power of customers has increased and would be normal to lose customers easily if company’s service cannot satisfy their needs within a short time. Hence, in order to retain customers, it is important to delegate some authority to frontline staff so that they can act on their own to take care of customer’s needs efficiently. For instance, the Universal Cards Services (UCS) of AT&T has a strong culture of concern for its people. They tried to make their staff feel that they are the keys to “delighting the customer”. Hence, all customer-contact employees already have considerable authority to act on their own such as they can grant credit line increases and adjust customers’ bills without management approval.

How can the employees being empowered??

After knowing why it is important to empower employees, we have to know the way to empower them. According to the book “Empowerment Takes More Than a Minute”, one of the keys of empowering employees is to replace the old hierarchy with self-managed teams. (Ken Blanchard, 1998). However, the organization has to face a lot of challenges when developing the teams. As teams have to go through several stages of increasing involvement on their way to self-management. This journey can take between two and five years, and is never-ending from a learning and renewal perspective. For instance, in order to be empowered, not only the self-managed teams have to adapt to the new leadership style, develop skills in decision making in ethical manner and intra-team communication, but the organization has to develop a systematic process to manage knowledge as well. The following will show how each area is interlinked with each other.  

Leading and motivating employees

First of all, in order to empower the employees, the leadership style has changed. Before, managers were using traditional leadership which leaded the teams by providing instruction, conducting communication, developing action plans and giving orders on what is to be accomplished. But now, the manager delegates specific responsibility and decision-making authority to the team itself. Even though no formal leader is designated by the authority within the self-managed team, leadership is still a critical element in the team process so that group activities could be unified. Yet, as a team leader, he or she maintains equal status with other members of the group and is not in a position to give orders or to make decisions independently. Instead, the team leader should provide group process facilitation, coordination and support like how can the leaders help create a working environment where their team members are willing to exert themselves to meet personal and team goals. However, because leadership is not designated in self-managed teams, it is possible that the self-managed teams emerge with a collective sense of leadership where the functions of leadership are shared among the team members. No matter which leadership style is chosen, every team member would have greater responsibility and accountability to the outcome of the decision eventually.

The following is a real life example of shared leadership in the company called AT&T. In 1981, AT&T was planning to open a new office without supervisors in Tempe. Ed Murdock, district manager for operator services for AT&T decided there would be one manager who would handle administrative and personnel matters. This manager was to be a resource person and a mentor rather than an overseer of the employees’ work. Instead, day-to-day operating decisions were made by a six person office committee. They wrote a statement of purpose based on self-management and problem solving through teamwork and the office committee took care of all of the tasks that would normally be handled by supervisors and managers.

In addition, by working in a self-managed team, the employees would also be motivated to perform better too. According to the article “What’s the Big Deal”, the author mentioned “The top drivers of engagement come down to employee’s connection between their work and the organization’s success. The second driver is an employee’s belief that his work matters to the organization.” (Ketter, Jan 2008) Since working as a self-managed team would have greater authority in making decisions and larger impact on company’s performance. Hence, employees would be more engaged and motivated to perform better as their performance could be projected from company’s performance.

Although employees could now have a chance to lead themselves and decide things in the way they want, employee empowerment could not be implemented successfully if employees do not have knowledge to make decision. Hence, it is important for the organization to know the knowledge management well.

Knowledge Management

Knowledge management is a process to develop a set of practices to create, capture, share and use knowledge to advance organizational goals. It ensures information can be shared with everyone within the company so that employees could access to the knowledge they need immediately and they could learn in a self-directed manner such as controlling both the learning objectives and the means of learning. Through this method of learning, their competence can be enhanced which increases their capabilities to make decisions.

However, one thing should bear in mind that the knowledge management system won’t work if it doesn’t fit the corporate culture. The cultural factors that impact knowledge management initiatives are information systems, organizational structure, reward systems, processes, people, and leadership. Take people as an example, the core value of people includes employee competence, trust and teamwork. Among these three, trust is the most important one. As persuading people to share their knowledge required not only new processes, but also a new covenant between employers and employees, as well as between employees and employees: Employees needed reassurance that they were still valued after they gave up their knowledge (Williams,2002; De Long and Fahey, 2000; Martin, 2000; Davenport and De Long, 1998). The level of trust that existed within an organization greatly influenced the amount of knowledge that was shared.

Leadership is also an important element. According to the article “Dynamic organizational learning: a conceptual framework”, the author said “To initiate Organizational Learning, the need and desire of organizations to advance and the will of management have been described as critical drivers.” (Kris M.Y. Law, 2009) The program cannot be successful if it does not receive the endorsement of top management, and if it is not pushed hard throughout the organization. Knowledge sharing is not necessarily easy and it will not work if the company management hierarchy is not committed to begin with.

For example, the top management in 3M specifically uses train-the trainer approach to enable 3M employees to develop high involvement in many of its businesses. 3M trains people to go back into their departments and provide teams with the knowledge and skills to manage their work process. The intent is to transfer as much of the capability as possible. With leader’s support, the knowledge management system could be implemented.

Ethical Decision Making

A good knowledge management system enables the self-directed teams to access the knowledge they want immediately when making decision. Although they can refer to the data from the system for decision making whenever they want, having good decision making skills is also an important criterion to make sure employees can make decision efficiently and effectively. A team ‘s decision-making effectiveness depends in part upon its members’ cooperativeness in providing information and in fully airing differences in assumptions and interpretations (Schweiger, Sandberg, & Rechner, 1989). The normative rational model of strategic decision making has focused on the production of high-quality decisions as a means of enhancing organization performance (Hitt & Tyler, 1991; Porter, 1980). On the other hand, a more complete view of effective decision processes should not only consider the quality of decisions but also the impact of such processes on team members’ affective responses, such as commitment to the decision, attachment to a team, and trust in its leader.

However, able to make decision in a team-based does not mean that they know how to deal with the ethical dilemmas. In fact, employees often face difficult ethical dilemmas, such as whether to cut corners on quality to meet a deadline or to cheat customers in an unethical way to achieve sales target. In our complex global business climate, ethical decision is rarely easy. ( POZNAK LAW FIRM LTD)When it comes to shaping ethical behavior, companies must be guided by three principles. (Donaldson, 1994)

• Respect for core human values, which determine the absolute moral threshold for all business activities.
• Respect for local traditions.
• The belief that context matters when deciding what are right and what is wrong.

Nevertheless, getting work done through others requires a free flow of accurate information and open, productive relationships with employees. But that’s easier said than done in a diverse workplace where many cultures collide. (Gardenswartz & Rowe, 2001) Hence, it is also important to know the skills of cross-cultural communication as well.

Cross-cultural communications

Because of globalization, there is a higher chance that there are team members coming from different cultural background. Hence, problems and block may occur because of cultural difference, for example, unclear roles among teammates, lack of trust between teammate, bias, etc. These may eventually create conflict in team and negatively effect on productivity. Hence, training should be given to this self-managed team so that cultural differences could be minimized. For instance, according to several articles, “Diversity should be understood as the varied perspectives and approaches to work that members of different identity group brings” (J.Ely, 1996) “; Also, [shouldn’t] interpret their behaviors through their own cultural background. (Gardenswartz & Rowe, 2001)

Besides, apart from noticing the cultural difference, constant communication is also important within the team, so it is better to have a formal communication channel even the team members are far away. For instance, Fedex Express established a FXTV (Federal Express Television Network) so that management and staff around the world can immediate contact with each other.

Conclusion

To conclude, the benefits of employee empowerment include helping the company to deal with fast changing world, increasing employees’ commitment and maintaining customer’s relationship. In order to make the self-managed team works, four components namely leadership, knowledge management, decision making in ethical manner and intra-team communication must be present. If not, the work team will have a high chance of failure if either one of the elements is absent.

Bibliography

Company Culture Impacts Knowledge Sharing. (2003, April 14). Retrieved 3 30, 2011, from TenStep: http://www.tenstep.fr/02_UtilisateursEnregistres/90.3_EspaceDeLaQualite/Anglais/700CompanyCultureImpactsKnowledgeSharing.pdf

Holowetzki, A. (2002). The relationship between knowledge management and organizational culture: An examination of cultural factors that support the flow and management of knowledge within an organization.

Ken Blanchard, J. P. (1998). Empowerment Takes More Than a Minute. Penguin.

Ketter, P. (Jan 2008). What's the Big Deal - About Employee engagement.

Kris M.Y. Law, A. G. (2009). Dynamic Organisational learning: a conceptual framework. Industrial and Commervcial Training , 315.

POZNAK LAW FIRM LTD. (n.d.). Business Ethics: Approches to Ethical Decision Making.

Donaldson, T. (1994). When is different just different, and when is different wrong?

Gardenswartz, L., & Rowe, A. (2001, March). Cross-Cultural Awareness. HR Magazine , p. 139.