Essence of Empowerment

The Essence of Empowerment


Empowerment is certainly not a new idea within the business arena. In fact, its concept has been around since the 1960's when American car manufacturers suddenly realized that they were losing their butts to the Japanese producers. An extensive and extremely well-funded investigation for answers to the recurrent question, how do I get more out of my employees while simultaneously lowering my costs, did produce some implementable and constructive results. The topic I have chosen to investigate is the application of employee empowerment and how to get the most out of this HR "buzzword." Within my scope of discussions are topics that include effective implementation, the role of the organization, and incentives to achieve and sustain actuation.
Employee empowerment, in its most basic definition, is effective delegation. The new twist that upper management has been trying desperately to achieve, is to involve the lowest level of...