Employee Empowerment

By: Nick McCarty &

Isaiah Thomason

Article: “Employee Empowerment: An Apprenticeship Model” by John Fox

Definition

Empowerment: sharing varying degrees of power with lower-level employees to better serve the customer.

Benefits

Improved employer satisfaction. By being shared, organizational power

can grow. Employees to perform better. Increases trust in the organization. Reduces Turnover rates.

Complications

Giving up control can be threatening to some managers.

Managers may not want to share power with someone they look down upon.

Managers fear losing their own place and special privileges in the system.

Empowerment Process

Determining the skill level of the employee Providing for employee training as needed Coaching tasks with which the employee has

some skills but is lacking experience or motivation

Supporting tasks where the employee knows what to do but is still lacking confidence in their abilities

Delegating tasks where the employee is motivated and fully capable.

Statistics

MotorolaEstimated $30 return on every $1 spent on

employeesOf the 40 best companies to work for,

according to the Graziadio Business Report, only in six did employee empowerment not play a key role in their success (Pepperdine University)

Statistics (Cont.)

Statistics (Cont.)

Statistics (Cont.)

Important People Saying Important Things

“The best executive is the one who has the sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” – Theodore Roosevelt

"As a society we know the best way to organize people is freeing them to organize themselves.  Why should it be any different in business?" - Petzinger

Questions?