The Benefits of Fostering Employee Empowerment
Employee empowerment is a concept that has been utilized by organizations to enhance their productivity. By definition, employee empowerment refers to the process through which employees are given the ability to think, act, behave, react and gain control of their work in an autonomous manner (Emerson, 2012). Although some organizations realize the importance of employee empowerment, some view the concept as a threat to the management’s authority. However, empowering employees has been associated with reducing the workload of organizations’ management since empowered employees need less supervision. Some of the benefits derived from employee empowerment include increased work efficiency and job satisfactio by employees.Work Efficiency Work efficiency refers to the extent to which cost, time and effort are used to accomplish the intended task.
Managements of many organizations strive to gain efficiency because it leads to higher profits and reduced costs. Empowering employees creates faith in their ability to work independently and make decisions that are relied upon by the entire organization for which they work. Consequently, they feel valued by the organization and gains more motivation to achieve the set out goals (Emerson, 2012). In their attempt to avert failure of their side, they learnt new skills that lead to improved work efficieency. Job satisfactionWhen employees are empowered, they get the freedom to use their initiatives and skills to improve their work.
Since they own their work, they feel motivated to achieve the set goals. Empowerment programs involve effective communication from the management to employees and from employees to the management. Employees feel very satisfied when the management communicates vital information affecting their work. Due to this satisfaction, they become loyal to the organization and are less willing to leave. Consequently, the organization experiences low employee turnover and high talent retention rate (Lipscomb, 2013).
