Empowering empowerment

It can mean having liberty or permission to act and in this sense the word empowerment has crept into the management jargon. Empowering people typically means giving them the freedom to do things their way or to pursue their own ideas, often in association with an attempt to establish a climate in which creativity and initiative can flourish. 

Various strategies have been attempted to counteract this powerlessness phenomenon present in health care organizations. Health care literature is replete with efforts to empower the frontline health care practitioner. Empowerment is the sharing of power with those who actually do the work. For example, much has been written on the topic of shared governance within the nursing literature. There also has been recent discussion of shared governance within the profession of pharmacy. 

Empowerment 3 Monitoring process empower merit. Develop an action plan aimed at addressing the most serious areas of noncompliance first(e.g. those in violation of laws or basic human righte. those of greatest importance to st e holders). Establish and implement methods for monitoring global operations to ensure compliance with internal and external codes of conduct related to employee empower merit. Scrutiny... 

Employee training, empowerment, and participation In world-class quality organizations, employees are partners with management in making decisions about how work is done. People are empowered with the right training, tools, techniques, and authority to deliver error and... 

The most important element of any effort to engage and empower the workforce, and drive a company s culture toward world-class lean or safety, is communications. Effective communications are critical because it is through communications that you can gain trust. And only when you gain trust will the culture shift toward the intended direction. The definition of empowerment that I most often use is the downward flow of information. Therefore, what information can be provided to guide a so-so safety program, with minimal employee involvement, into one that other plants will want to benchmark Some of the topics listed below were already mentioned elsewhere in the book, but to fully understand the depth of safety communications available, I will restate your options. 

Employees should be empowered to take part in safety decisions and to participate in the safety management system. Part of this is the establishment of employee authority, safety responsibility, and accountability for all levels. One of the best methods for employee empowerment is a facilitated workshop where management is encouraged to talk to the employees. This should be held in a safe space. The facilitator asks employees to list the things that could be done to improve safety at the plant, and what hampers safety in the workplace. Once a list is compiled, the attendees are asked to list what actions are needed to rectify the identified stumbling blocks and also to assign responsibility for those actions. Once the critical few hazards have been isolated, commitments are made to take action to rectify either the behaviors or conditions to eliminate the listed potential accidents. It is simply a matter of the employees tell us how we can improve safety. ... 

Teams are often used to empower employees. Empowerment is a means of involving every employee in the improvement process. The purpose of this is to make improvement everyone s responsibility. A company which empowers its workers recognizes that they can make improvements faster if everyone who works for the firm is contributing to the improvement efforts. 

Empowerment is often viewed as one step beyond employee involvement. Employee involvement is usually perceived as participation of the employees in some or all of the decision-making process, but without having the authority to make the decision themselves. The difference between employee involvement and employee empowerment is that the empowered employee has more authority or power to make decisions. 

Petersen discusses the concept of limited empowerment versus total empowerment. Limited empowerment suggests we live within some ground rules. We all play with the same rules that make the game fair and safe. Most football rules are, in fact, safety rules, and most teams find them easy to follow. Limited empowerment means management establishes some ground rules for everyone to follow (Petersen, 2001, p. 63). Employees are empowered within this framework to participate in decision making for improving safety performance. 

The ability to make decisions requires information. Therefore, empowerment requires the downward flow of information in an organization. Those who have traditionally been the least empowered in any organization, those performing the hands-on work, can easily make decisions on work... 

In Process Re-engineering, several jobs are combined into one workers make the decisions (given them empowerment) job steps evidence a natural order sequencing there are multiple versions of processes depending on the need work is performed where it makes the most sense checks and controls are reduced reconciliation is minimized an empowered customer service representative is established and hybrid centralized/decentralized organizations are organized. 

From a psychological perspective, empowerment is not holding people accountable to do more. It is feeling empowered or responsible to do more. Employees need to be asked, What will it take to make you feel more empowered or personally responsible for safety around here Seeking frank answers to this question and then actively working toward the changes requested will probably do more to increase employee involvement, commitment, and responsibiUty for safety than an)rthing else. 

NRSl To empower RPF in terms of adequate legal powers to deal with offences against passengers and other rail users, railway employees and railway administration. Legal empowerment of RPF D9... 

Perceptions of personal control (Rotter, 1966), self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977), and optimism (Scheier and Carver, 1985, 1993 Seligman, 1991) strengthen the perception of empowerment. An empowered state is presumed to increase motivation to "make a difference," perhaps by going beyond the call of duty. As I discuss later in this chapter, there is empirical support for this intuitive hypothesis (Bandura, 1986 Barling and Beattie, 1983 Ozer and Bandura, 1990 Phares, 1976). 

Some people already have sufficient self-efficacy, personal control, and optimism when assigned leadership responsibilities. As discussed in Chapter 15, they feel empowered ("1 can make a difference"). Still, these individuals may need some basic training in communication, social recognition, and behavior-change principles. Others may lack one or more of the three person states that facilitate feelings of empowerment. So, in addition to education and training, they need a support system to build their sense of self-efficacy, personal control, and optimism. 

As discussed in Chapter 16, there is no quick fix for increasing perceptions of empowerment. If you ask people to define policies, settings, interactions, and contingencies that influence these three person states, you are on your way to developing action strategies to improve them. This, in turn, increases people s readiness to be empowered. 

This principle was mentioned earlier when reviewing the distinction between stress and distress (Principle 33). When people s sense of self-efficacy ("I can do it"), personal control ("1 am in control"), or optimism ("I expect the best") is increased, they are less apt to experience distress and more likely to feel empowered ("1 can make a difference"). In addition, empowerment increases one s inclination to perform actively caring behaviors. 

Notice that empowerment does not necessarily result from receiving more authority or responsibility. In order to truly feel more empowered, people need to perceive they have the skills, resources, and opportunity to take on the added responsibility (self-efficacy), believe they have personal impact over their new duties (personal control), and expect the best from their efforts to be more responsible (optimism). However, as illustrated in Figure 20.10, what may seem like empowerment to one person might not feel like empowerment to another. 

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