Presented By

Manish Sumeet Anjali Soniya Shubhanshu Kuldeep

Many organisations have achieved substantial value creation due to their employees sharing wonderful ideas. Toyota is a great example. Toyotas suggestions scheme, operational for decades now, nets almost 20 lakh suggestions per year that is 33 suggestions per employee every year. And 95 percent of these are implemented. That makes about 5,000 improvements per day. Employee suggestions helped cut British Airways cost by 4.5 million pounds. HSBC managed to save up to Rs 50 lakh per annum just by adopting a single useful suggestion made by an employee. British Gas received over 11,000 suggestions, of which 1,100 were implemented and resulted in cost saving of over 10 million pound. In India, Gujarat Narmada Fertilizer Corporation grossed 5,000 suggestions over five years, with savings of Rs. 6.5 million per annum.

WHAT IS EMPOWERMENT
Simply we can say that empowerment means to allow the

person to run his show himself. Empowerment refers to providing at all levels of management the authority and responsibility to make their decision on their own. For example: when father gives money to his son to buy a pair of jeans it is known as delegation,but when father gives clothing allowance to his son to spend on whatever he wants, it is empowerment.

What is Employee Empowerment ?

IMPORTANCE OF EMPOWERMENT
To retain knowledge workers.
To survive in cut throat competition. Leads to human resource development. Leads to flexibility and speed.

ELEMENTS OF EMPOWERMENT
Sense of personal control.
Self sufficiency Meaningfulness Impact choice

APPROACHES TO EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT.

Helping employee achieving

mastery in job. Allowing more control. Providing success role models. Using social reinforcement and persuasion. Giving emotional support.

Pros & Cons

Pros
It leads to greater job satisfaction, motivation, increased

productivity and reduces the costs. It also leads to creativity and innovation since the employees have the authority to act on their own. There is increased efficiency in employees because of increased ownership in their work. Lesser need of supervision and delegation. Focus on quality from the level of manufacturing till actual delivery and service of goods. Employees when empowered become more entrepreneurial and start taking more risks. Greater the risk, greater are the chances to succeed.

Cons
Egotism / arrogance: Worker arrogance can create a big trouble for

the supervisors and the managers. There can be problems in delegating. Employees avoid reporting about their work and feedback can be taken negatively. Security: Since information comes and is shared by all, there are apprehensions about leakage of critical data. Risk: Creativity and innovation demands a greater risk bearing capacity and there are equal chances of success and failure. Workers often lack the expertise to execute are enterprise, which can cost big. Industrial Democracy: Labor unions and workers are empowered and they may misuse the same. Strikes and lock outs become more frequent. Also, labor unions gain insights into management and their functioning and they leak the same.

How to Empower Employees

Participation at the Board Level: Representation of employees at

the board level is known as industrial democracy. This can play an important role in protecting the interests of employees. The representative can put all the problems and issues of the employees in front of management and guide the board members to invest in employee benefit schemes. Participation through Ownership: The other way of ensuring workers participation in organizational decision making is making them shareholders of the company. Inducing them to buy equity shares, advancing loans, giving financial assistance to enable them to buy equity shares are some of the ways to keep them involved in decision-making. Participation through Collective Bargaining: This refers to the participation of workers through collective agreements and by deciding and following certain rules and regulations. This is considered as an ideal way to ensure employee participation in managerial processes. It should be well controlled otherwise each party tries to take an advantage of the other.

Cont..
Participation through Suggestion Schemes: Encouraging your

employees to come up with unique ideas can work wonders especially on matters such as cost cutting, waste management, safety measures, reward system, etc. Developing a full-fledged procedure can add value to the organizational functions and create a healthy environment and work culture. For instance, Satyam is known to have introduced an amazing country-wide suggestion scheme, the Idea Junction. It receives over 5,000 ideas per year from its employees and company accepts almost one-fifth of them. Participation through Complete Control: This is called the system of self management where workers union acts as management. Through elected boards, they acquire full control of the management. In this style, workers directly deal with all aspects of management or industrial issues through their representatives. Participation through Job Enrichment: Expanding the job content and adding additional motivators and rewards to the existing job profile is a fine way to keep workers involved in managerial decision-making. Job enrichment offers freedom to employees to exploit their wisdom and use their judgment while handling day-to-day business problems.

Cont..
Participation through Quality Circles: A quality circle is a

group of five to ten people who are experts in a particular work area. They meet regularly to identify, analyze and solve the problems arising in their area of operation. Anyone, from the organization, who is an expert of that particular field, can become its member. It is an ideal way to identify the problem areas and work upon them to improve working conditions of the organization.