Organisations do not have to fully utilise Empowerment to achieve successful results.

Organisations do not have to fully utilise Empowerment to achieve successful results.

Author Neil Cogdell

20th April 2004

Summary

An issue facing organisations post downsizing and delayering is how to maintain successful operations with a reduction in staff. Empowerment is one process widely used to achieve this. In order to prove empowerment does not have to be fully applied three organisations will be discussed and their successful application of empowerment will be shown.

Change in the business world has led to a number of companies examining their organisational structure. In order to remain competitive in the changing business world companies must change on an internal and external scale.

In order to compete and reduce costs companies are transferring business units abroad, or investigating the use of outsourcing, whilst also calculating the savings to be made by delayering, the removal of management layers, or downsizing and reducing personnel and operational activities.

Human resources team works to improve customer ser...

Ritz Carlton Hotel in Şişli district of Istanbul...

The Ritz Carlton Millenia, Singapore

These changes, without job enlargement and involvement on the part of the remaining employees, would leave organisations vulnerable as each have an effect on the communication and effective management of the business. Empowerment is seen by many as a technique to bridge this void by increasing involvement and commitment on the part of the employees.

Henry Stimson, US Secretary of War during world war two said "The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him". This is the basis of empowerment, trusting staff to act efficiently and in line with business objectives.

Empowering staff is ultimately giving them more control over their effectiveness or staff working under them, an empowered manager has responsibility and more control over various Human Resource (HR) issues such as recruitment, appraisals, discipline and wage levels. Empowered staff have more freedom to make decisions and find the optimum resolution without having...