With the development of management employee empowerment has become a popular topic nowadays. It does not mean just passing the part of responsibilities to workers it is the improvement of their skills too. Employee empowerment may be defined as the possibility of workers making their own decisions that are very important for their company as well as for themselves. Employee empowerment presupposes the development of workers’ skills and experience. The manager may teach their employees how to organize the process of working and the managers make their work easier by dividing their duties among employees. Nevertheless, there are advantages and disadvantages to this process.
Employee empowerment allows for improving customer service. Employees that are able to make decisions themselves may help those workers who do not have such experience making the process quicker and helping to resolve problems. It saves customer’s time as far as he/she does not have to wait till the manager solves this problem. When the workers are empowered they are more motivated in their work and they have a sense of ownership. They feel that they play an important role in the company and this self-confidence makes their work better. The results of the work will be better if employees are satisfied with their work (Anderson, n.d.). A participatory work environment results in better productivity and workers’ responsibility (Kokemuller, n.d.). Employee empowerment provides more freedom to workers allowing them to make decisions themselves. It inspires them to improve their skills, train and develop. As a result, productivity is increased and the results are much better. When the employees are responsible for the results of their work, the company’s success or failure is their fault that is why they do all their best to achieve the best results (Anderson, n.d.).
One of the main disadvantages of employee empowerment is chaos as far as every employee is empowered to make decisions and the manager is not able to control every decision. As a result, the line of managerial responsibilities has become blurred (Anderson, n.d.). The workers start working under their own rules and do not find any necessity to report on their decisions to the governing body of the company that weakens the manager-employee communication. Such actions may cause chaos and it will be difficult to find the guilty of the company’s failure. The managers should be totally sure of their workers as far as one bad decision may destroy the company. Employee empowerment presupposes the ability of the workers to make decisions. It is possible only with proper selection of employees or their training that needs potentially greater dollar investment. When the employees have more responsibilities they want their work to be more paid. It is necessary to allocate money for the realization of employee empowerment.
From the above said, we may conclude that employee empowerment is very popular in present companies. It should be noted that it has advantages as well as disadvantages. If the company has decided to use this method in practice it is necessary to think over every detail as far as one false, step may be the reason for the company’s failure. Nevertheless, if everything is taken into account employee empowerment may have good results. The effectiveness of this method depends on the structure of the company and the professionalism of employees.
Works Cited
Anderson, Arnold. n.d. Pros & Cons of Employee Empowerment. Web. 2012.
Kokemuller, Neil. n.d. The Pros of Empowering Employees. Web. 2012.