As HR manager have you ever identified the reasons of frustration and discontentment among employees even after paying handsome salaries and incentives?
Recently, I was encountered with similar question by a CEO of a service organization who was concerned about the reasons why employees were not satisfied and motivated to give their best to the organization in spite of matching salaries and incentives. When the issue was probed in depth, low motivation and frustration was found because employees were not empowered enough to discharge their function. There was lack of support, problems with seniors, irrational changes in priorities, infighting and politicking etc.
The fact remains that real process of human resources development in most of the Indian organizations are not being effectively practiced by HR professionals in empowering the employees to motivate them in right perspective. One of the reason attributed to the failure of empowerment process is due to excessive controls set by managers and top management in the organizations.
It is the process of empowerment which enables the employees to unleash their potential and responding effectively to the demands of the organization. If we look at the past, it will be easier to find that every human being carries the roots of empowerment. It is only to realize that everyone has infinite energy to be organized in a collective form which helps an individual to actualize the inner potential. It is for the HR professionals to understand each employee on individual’s basis and stimulate their uniqueness which brings empowerment.
Empowerment is a process in any organization in which managers share their power with subordinates. It is a trust based process of assigning authority to make decisions within one's own area of operations without looking for any approval from his seniors. In this process employees are encouraged to use their initiative in delivering results. In empowerment process it is not the authority which works but also the resources are required to make a person fully empowered. It differs from delegation authority. Delegation involves the distributing the power while participation in employees is only the sharing of power. Job enrichment should be major activity in any empowerment process. Self managed work teams who are empowered allocate activities, schedule work, set production targets, resolve operation problems and ensure that everybody in the team is encouraged. This process creates as supportive culture in which managers have to become facilitators rather than controllers. The basic purpose of empowerment is lost in majority of organization because employees expect it as a delegation process instead of initiating and ongoing process in which an individual enabling himself to take action, control work and take decision in autonomous way. Empowered employees are more innovative, creative and resourceful. They are free from shackles of management, happy and motivated at work ready to deliver their best.
Empowerment prevents negative attitudes and offers encouragement and support. It enables every employee to influence the organization and take action accordingly. It provides more power to people who at present exercise little control over what they do and possess little power to influence the decisions being taken regarding their work area.
The objective the empowerment process is to generate positive feelings among employees at personal level and enable them to develop sound relationship with each-other in the organization be it senior or junior based on empathy and trust thus making full contributions in their roles. Effective employee empowerment requires that you must trust your people but track their performance regularly. Empower managers to run the organization but emission the future personality and at last identify managers with motivational intelligence who alone encourage the employees.
Approach to empowerment can be developed by helping employees achieve job speciality, providing successful roles model, using social reinforcement and persuasion and providing emotional support. Only after using these approaches by managers, employees start feeling that they are relevant, competent and have enough opportunities to use their talent in the interest of the organization.
No organization can empower their employees. It is the head of an organization who creates a culture which would support an approach where employee relations are healthy, management attention is always available to employees, provide sufficient resources and facilitate the guidance. It is also required that employees should also have the inclination towards accepting the empowerment in right perspective and have full commitment towards organization’s goals. Some times empowerment process gets set back because managers are afraid of getting punished for the mistakes of their juniors. If such culture exist, managers will not delegate the authority to juniors. If empowerment is to work, this fear has to be removed from the managers’ mind. Attitudinal change is also required in this process because barriers have to be removed by making managers and head of the organization change their attitude.
The empowering leadership facilitate the process by developing organizational structure which necessitate collective involvement in decision making. An empowered leader can cause a basic shift in the nature of control of authority in organization setting. The empowering attitude can be developed by causing a shift in management thinking by expecting the best from people. An attitude has to be developed which stresses the value of trust and positive expectations as the most effective way of motivating people. The empowering attitude implies that there are varied solutions to a problem depending upon the situational factors. At the same time empowerment should be implemented taking into consideration the needs and abilities of each employees in the organizations. It cannot be given by the management to the employees alone. Employees have also to seek and accept it with full responsibility.
Managers must recognize their responsibility as ambassadors of organizational values and purpose. They provide strong leadership when they are clear about their beliefs and the translation of those beliefs into specific policy and practice. Empowerment invites managers to create meaning and challenges for themselves. Empowerment is one of the most effective ways of enabling employees at all levels in the organizations to use their potential to give their best in the organization they work for. Unless a culture conducive to empowerment is created by the organization head, no empowerment programme can achieve its desired results... I don't know what the generation of one click has to say about it ... but yes ...
Dr. Siddhartha Pandey....
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