Employee Empowerment in the workplace

 

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Introduction

 “Empowerment is the process of enabling or authorizing an individual to think, behave, take action, and control work and decision-making about their job in autonomous, independent, self-directed ways” (Heathfield, 2019). Organization needs to foster a desirable work environment that encourage employees to act empowered.

An empowered culture is inspired to embark on a challenging journey through self-fulfillment and novelty. In this globalized business world, empowerment comes in to play as a linkage between employee and employer in realizing organizational goals through out of the box thinking and creativity.

The benefits of employee empowerment

Empowered employees are loyal, committed and potentially more productive. When employees are empowered they work toward their goals and drive their own career. And when they provided with the right tools and resources they successfully manage or lead their own projects. Thus the benefits are endless.

Empowered employees,

• Go the extra mile

• Follow best practices

• Be more productive

• Have good communication

• Embrace change

• Have a “can do” attitude

• Provide better customer service

 

                                                    source: Blog.smarp.net

Empowerment and Google

“The empowered culture that Google has created is exactly the kind of culture that creates an excellent customer experience” (Shaw, 2014).

Google recognize that different people will yield in different ideas and act in different ways. Thus they have created many channels for expressions to gather as much inputs as possible from employees. Some of them include,

Google Cafes - “Designed to encourage interactions between employees within and across teams, and to spark conversation about work as well as play” (He, 2013).  

Google Moderator – This is an innovation management tool by Google. Through Moderator “people can discover existing ideas, questions or suggestions, vote for ideas, questions or suggestions and see the aggregate votes to date, create a new series asking for ideas organized by topic, event or meeting” (He, 2013).

TGIF – This is a weekly meeting that enables all employees to pose questions to top management about company issues. The meeting ensures that employees are well informed about common concerns, decisions as well as future directions.

Google Universal Ticketing Systems – It is a method of filling problems pertaining to any company issues and is used to monitor patterns.

Apart from these direct emails are encouraged to any of the company leaders. Another initiation is the Internal Innovation Reviews that include formal meetings where executives present new product ideas to the top management. Both of these initiations ensures that fresh ideas are given life and issues are communicated and solved right at that moment.

Conclusion

These launches assures employees are rightfully kept on track and are inspired on their own to independently create new products and services. As an added advantage, newly hired employees too are assured that they start off right as information is readily available to get accustomed to the new environment.

 

References

 

Heathfield, S. (2019). What Do Empowered Employees Look Like?. [online] The Balance Careers. Available at: https://www.thebalancecareers.com/empowerment-in-action-how-to-empower-your-employees-1918102 [Accessed 1 May. 2021].

He, L. (2013). Google's Secrets Of Innovation: Empowering Its Employees. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurahe/2013/03/29/googles-secrets-of-innovation-empowering-its-employees/#2e5e32ce57e7 [Accessed 1 May. 2021].

Shaw, C. (2014). What We Can Learn from Google’s Empowered Culture |. [online] Beyondphilosophy.com. Available at: https://beyondphilosophy.com/can-learn-googles-empowered-culture/ [Accessed 1 May. 2021].