Empowerment is a term regarding a business management style where managers give staff members the power to make certain decisions within boundaries.
This is a definition of empowerment:
Empowerment is the process of enabling or authorizing an employee to think, behave, and take action, and control work and decision-making in autonomous way with the job tasks that have been given to them.
What does empowerment actually look like in the workplace and what are the benefits of giving it to employees?
To sum it up it is the state of feeling self-empowered to take control of one’s employment responsibilities.
Empowerment if truly implemented properly will build relationships between business owners, their managers and team members as it spreads the responsibility of ownership for the business among all team players.
The concept of empowerment is not entirely new, for years businesses have engaged in what is called “participation management.” Empowerment carries this idea a step beyond that concept by not only allowing team members to participate in decision-making but they also are empowered to make decisions on their own without seeking approval from higher management within certain boundaries of their job position.
Empowerment allows for the whole team to contribute in moving the business forward successfully. By eliciting everyone’s input regarding new projects or making the office fun and more efficient you’re likely to pick up ideas that may not have been thought of if it were just the owner or manager running the show alone.
Empowerment creates synergy, which is: Two or more people working together to achieve a greater effect than individuals can by themselves. This is what happens when you have an empowered work team
“The vision is really about empowering workers, giving them all the information about what is going on so they can do a lot more than they’ve done in the past.” ~ Bill Gates
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