The Beginning Of Employee Empowerment

Delegation: The Beginning of Employee Empowerment
In times of hyper competition, differentiation, price wars and disruptive innovation, companies expect more from their employees. Even the employees demand more than just salary from the employers. The underlying question is, how can employers make 1+1 count 11?
Employee Empowerment is one solution to this question. But if all companies know it, why don’t they all leverage its power? Why is it that while few companies count their employees as strategic assets, while others face issues of low productivity and high turnover? Why do some companies have a strong pipeline of competitive employees, while others struggle to find right people for right jobs?
The following article attempts uncover one of the most important elements of Employee Empowerment, Delegation! Delegation, put in simple terms, means an act of passing over authority by one party to another for an agreed purpose. But in a cut-throat competitive environment, delegation is not so simple. Rather it is an art very few have mastered. The article discusses two most important aspects of delegation, Trust & Timing!
Trust
“Trust is not a matter of technique, but of character; we are trusted because of our way of being, not because of our polished exteriors or our expertly crafted communications.” Marsha Sinetar
To trust the intentions of people to do the right thing, make the right decision, and make choices that might not be exactly ideal helps a lot in gaining trust of the employees. When they receive clear expectations from their manager, they relax and trust him. They focus their energy on accomplishing, not on wondering, worrying, and second-guessing. It is trust that forms the foundation for effective communication, employee retention, and employee motivation and contribution of discretionary energy, the extra effort that people voluntarily invest in work. When trust exists in an organization or in a relationship, almost everything else is easier and more comfortable to achieve. There can be various ways in which a leader can build trust among the employees. Hiring and promoting people, who are capable of forming positive, trusting interpersonal relationships with people who report to them is one such way since the supervisor's relationship with reporting employees is the fundamental building block of trust. Keeping staff members truthfully informed, expecting supervisors to act with integrity and keep commitment, protecting the interest of all employees in a work group, displaying competence in supervisory and other work tasks, listening with respect and full attention and exhibiting empathy and sensitivity to the needs of staff members and setting high expectations and acting as if you believe staff members are capable of living up to them are some more steps which can be taken towards enhancing the level of trust among employees. However, one has to be patient because trust is built and maintained by many small actions over time. Also trust each other again and again. When the trust level gets high enough, people transcend apparent limits, discovering new and awesome abilities for which they were previously unaware.

Timing

When to Delegate is another very crucial question employers must ask themselves before delegating. Timing is important because not all tasks under all situations can be delegated. The first key aspect of delegation that employers must be aware of is the concept of Learning Curve. The managers who have been performing a particular task have achieved certain level of expertise by experience and familiarity of the task. Hence, when the same task is delegated to the employees for the first time, the performance naturally dips. The employee must be given the opportunity to learn and achieve the same level of expertise.

The decision of when to delegate can be taken by the Empowerment Decision Grid.

Empowerment Grid

The figure above is an employee empowerment grid with criticality of decision on the x-axis and urgency of completion on y-axis. There can be four levels of empowerment according to the stated variables:

I. When the task is less critical and less urgent, the leader can empower the employees to the maximum so that they try their best in applying their skills and learn how to progress with the tasks.
II. In the next scenario, where the criticality is high while urgency is low, a leader can adopt structured empowerment wherein he takes up the role of a directive and supportive leader and helps employees achieve the set goals in the right manner.
III. When the urgency is high and criticality is low, participatory empowerment can be adopted in which employees are given a chance to participate in the decision making process and take chances with what they think should be the course of action. Risks can be taken here due to the low level of criticality.
IV. In the last scenario, when criticality and urgency both are high, a leader should take hold of all the decision making and act as a role model for other employees to learn while they see how their leader behaves and acts in a particular situation.
Conclusion
After discussion on when to delegate tasks and with what degree of empowerment, next consideration is ‘what’ to be delegated. While delegating, leaders should not just delegate the drudge work, but some of the interesting work too like the important meetings, the committee memberships that influence product development and decision making, and the projects that people and customers notice to name some. This helps employees grow and develop new skills. The leader’s plate is less full so that he can concentrate on contribution.

One needs to take care though that increasing the level of employee involvement is situational. The degree of employee empowerment will depend on the person's skills and experience, their knowledge of the factors that affect their job and decision making, and the degree to which they understand how their job is connected to other processes within the organization.

Whenever possible, when delegating work, the leader should try and give the person a whole task to do while simultaneously making sure that the staff person understands exactly what his supervisor wants him to do. The leader should ask questions, watch the work performed or have the employee give feedback to make sure that instructions are well understood. The key to successful delegation is to always build a feedback loop and a timeline into the process. The supervisor must also share any "preconceived picture" he has of the anticipated outcome of the process. One can also determine, in advance, how to thank and reward the staff person for his/her successful completion of the task or project delegated. Successful delegation of authority as a leadership style takes time and energy, but it's worth it to develop higher degree of employee involvement and employee empowerment. Therefore, the right kind of trust combined with the correct timing of delegation of work is the key to effective and fruitful employee empowerment in an organization that’ll definitely make 1+1 count 11.

References:
• Top 10 Principles of Employee Empowerment by Susan M. Heathfield
Retrieved from http://humanresources.about.com/od/managementandleadership/tp/empowerment.htm • The Learning Curve
Retrieved from
http://www.flashcardlearner.com/articles/the-learning-curve/