Employee Empowerment

Employee empowerment involves the workforce being provided with a greater degree of flexibility and more freedom to make decisions relating to work. Individuals are allowed to take personal responsibility for improving the way they do their jobs and contribute to the achievement of organizational goals. The four dimensions of empowerment in accordance to Spreitzer’s (1995) study are defined as follows:
i. Meaning: The value one places on the importance on a given job, based on the individual’s own standards and ideals (Thomas and Velthouse, 1990) ii. Competence: The ability or capability of the individual to perform tasks or responsibilities assigned. iii. Self-Determination: The autonomy in which an individual makes decisions about his work. iv. Impact: The degree in which an individual can influence strategic, administrative or operating outcomes at work (Ashforth, 1989).
Empowerment forms according to Lashley (2001) include;
i. Empowerment through participation; this means the delegation of decision-making from management arena, for example, the use of autonomous working groups. ii. Empowerment through involvement, in this case management gain through reflecting on employees’ experiences, ideas, and suggestions, for example team briefings. iii. Empowerment through commitment that leads to increased commitment to goals and employee job satisfaction, for example, profit sharing schemes and job rotation. iv. Empowerment through delayering which