Ratan being one of the department managers in his company believes in encouraging his subordinate's empowerment as much as possible. He believes employee empowerment gets the best of an employee and allows them to develop their career at a higher frequency. After being inculcated among employees, the practice gives them agency to participate in decision-making and eventually contributes to them stepping out of their comfort zones. When an employee does something different and beyond their usual work routine that contributes to the enlargement and enrichment of their job. With the agency and autonomy, there is a rapid increase in the accountability and productivity of the employees.
Manish is another department manager who claims employee engagement to be a greater element in productivity. Unlike employee empowerment, employee engagement doesn't focus on the deployment of authority and expectation of productivity rather emphasizes the employee and their skills. However, it is believed empowerment is a necessary step to reach engagement and an employee can not voluntarily engage without being empowered, though it is not the sole step involved to reach employee engagement but is the most significant.
While employee empowerment expects employees to finish a job after extending a certain amount of agency to them and employee engagement focuses on the needs and purpose of employees to increase productivity. Further empowerment plays an essential role in development, engagement plays a crucial role in growth and creativity.
How it unfolds?
Manish to ensure appropriate engagement of employees encourages open dialogue from everyone in the department, where everyone is allowed to pitch in ideas, suggest changes and extend criticism and feedback. Further, Manish involves active interaction from everyone by holding quick face-to-face meetings where ideas are exchanged through visuals instead of listening to one-sided lectures. The department manager, Manish also enables the establishment of goals that are collective and specific. Goals like these involve the organization as the primary beneficiary however have employees as the secondary beneficiary as completion of these goals leads to completion of specific personal goals of the employees.
While the above-mentioned are instances of ensuring the engagement of employees in an organization they are also instances of empowering the employees to take a step further. The engagement is possible only after employees are empowered because in the instance above without Manish encouraging, involving, or enabling certain aspects the engagement of employees might not even take place.
Sharing power can be tricky
While Manish and Ratan follow such practices other department managers don't. This happens because people at a level of authority don't tend to share their agency with others as it threatens them and they feel the fear of being undermined by their subordinates. The results of the other departments vary from Manish and Ratan's departments, as their departments have had better results than other departments. While the process of empowering employees can be risky and uncertain it does come with a set of responsibilities and if the employee is unable to fulfill them then the agency given them to is taken away.
Employee Empowerment is an essential element for establishing strong employee engagement. It can lead to a strong emotional bond to their organizations, higher level of commitment, and often propels employees to go beyond their immediate job responsibilities for the good of the organization.
By and large empowerment of team members ensures engagement which in turn further promises productivity and efficiency along with a reduction in turnover rates and increased level of trust in the organization. Such organizational atmosphere and practices ensure the development of both employees and the organization along with high satisfaction levels.
“Dispirited, unmotivated, unappreciated workers cannot compete in a highly competitive world.” - Francis Hesselbein
Image Credit: Unsplash
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