Empowerment at workplace!!

• INTRODUCTION:

• The Wikipedia defines the term empowerment as “Empowerment refers toincreasing the spiritual, political, social or economic strength of individualsand communities. It often involves the empowered developing confidence in theirown capacities. Answers.com defines empowerment as a form ofparticipative management where employees share management responsibilities,including decision making.

• Empowerment at workplace basically means to understand the capabilities andabilities of workforce and getting best out of it. Thus, it is similar toManagement function, but slightly differs in context of UNDERSTANDING andthen managing. So we can term it as Smart Management.

• WHY & HOW OF EMPOWERMENT??

• With ever increasing size of companies and corporations, staff size alsoexpands both geographically and horizontally. It then becomes importantto identify the abilities of people before assigning work to them.
• Human interaction is decreasing day by day between colleagues as well as in the management hierarchy. At such time, knowing each other helps.
• Lot of organizations suffer from absence of feedback or two way or multi way communication. In such cases, empowered workforce is a boon.
• Noted management guru C. K. Prahlad explains that empowerment is basically transition from handling/managing workforce to understanding workforce.
• Allow your employees to follow their heart, and not your mind always.Say, an employee is a good artist or painter, and wants some time off from the job for his concert/exhibition; allow him to fulfill his desire. His productivity will in fact improve for rest of the time at work.
• Shift from an organization structure of ROLE TAKING (managing people/giving orders) to ROLE MAKING (jobs customized/designed for specific staff).
• Be bothered about the PRODUCT and not the PROCESS. Allow some leeway to employees to work as per their way, considering that final output should be as you desire.
• Have a balance between how much freedom you can give to staff and how much control you should exercise over them. This decision should be made considering the Vision, Mission and Goals of the organization.
• Make sure your staff arrives at office with a SMILE and leaves with the same possession.
• Have a CIRCULAR APPROACH to management, rather than a PYRAMIDAL STRUCTURE.

• BENEFITS OF AN EMPOWERED WORKPLACE/EMPOWERED STAFF:

• Empowerment means building relationships. We all know, relationships are so scarce commodities these days.
• Increases a sense of mutuality – You care for me, I care for you.
• Increases dialogue between people at work, which leads to healthy work atmosphere
• Allows your employees to make a mistake, don’t scorn: but policy should be simple: Make a mistake once, and learn from it. It should not be repeated.
• In any discussion/argument, make sure the closure is good and amicable.
• Creates an atmosphere of trust and mutual belief in each others abilities where People can count on each other.
• Before making any decision related to staff, adopt the VIP formula:
  

Validation, Information & Participation.

• Boosts your staff’s SELF ESTEEM.
• Discards the IFs and BUTs culture.
• Enhances your brand image amongst employees and other stake holders.
• Nurtures qualities like Empathy and Mutual Understanding.
• Encourages a well defined systems model, where people know what they can do, and how they have to do, subject to what should finally be achieved. Example: Many corporations in USA adopt Flexi time approach for ladies, particularly working mothers, and boast of much higher productivity.
• Allows you to take much needed and required planned vacations and allow your staff to take the same.
• As Wayne Dyer says, “ Authentic Empowerment is the knowing that you are on purpose, doing God’s work, peacefully and harmoniously”

• CONCLUSION:

In the words of Bill Gates, “There’s a basic philosophy here that by empowering
workers… you’ll make their jobs far more interesting, and they’ll be able to
work at a higher level, than they would have without all that information just a
few clicks away.”

We should strive towards moving mindsets from:

• FROM:
• Being powerless TO Being empowered
• Waiting for orders TO Taking Action
• Doing things right TO Doing the right thing
• Reactive TO Creative & Proactive
• Content TO Process & content
• Quantity TO Quality & quantity
• Boss responsible TO All responsible
• Blame Placing TO Problem Solving
  

3 SELF EMPOWERMENT Keys:
i. Accept Responsibility.
ii. Surrender Yourself &
iii. Have a free will

Useful references:

a. Wikipedia
b. Answers.com
c. “Workshop on Empowerment-From the Pyramid to the Circle” by Dr.
Shailendra Gupta
d. www.amaindia.org