Bells & Whistles » Top Ten Ways to Make Employee Empowerment Fail

Top Ten Ways to Make Employee Empowerment Fail

Recruiting by Numbers: Wednesday, August 15th, 2007

Managers don’t really understand what empowerment means.
Managers fail to establish boundaries for empowerment.
Managers have defined the decision making authority and boundaries with staff, but then micromanage the work of employees.
Second guess the decisions of employees you have given the authority to make a decision.
Failure to provide a strategic framework, in which decisions have a compass and success measurements, imperils the opportunity for empowered behavior.
Managers fail to provide the information and access to information, training, and learning opportunities needed for staff to make good decisions.
Managers abdicate all responsibility and accountability for decision making.
Allow barriers to impede the ability of staff members to practice empowered behavior. The work organization has the responsibility to remove barriers that limit the ability of staff to act in empowered ways.
When employees feel under-compensated, under-titled for the responsibilities they take on, under-noticed, under-praised, and under-appreciated, don’t expect results from employee empowerment.
Employees often believe that “someone,” usually the manager, has to bestow empowerment upon the people who report to him.

Susan M. Heathfield, About.com

Comment by Michael Byrne, August 16, 2007 at 12:49 pm

Amitai

You raised some great points number nine especially recognising people’s contribution and expressing to emplyees their contribution is so important and often not done. I really second your comments on having a strategy then employees can know when success has occured. Many manager I feel do not understand the differnce between stragy and tactics and often feel that their input is required at a tactical level when in fact this is as you say micro management.
Comment by Amitai Givertz, August 17, 2007 at 7:15 am

Michael, two points in reply:

1. Much as I would like to take credit for these ten items they are a distillation of a more complete explanation by Susan Heathfiield who is prolific in our output of good stuff - not that I agree with all of it! You can read the entire article by clicking through on the About.com link.

2. Item nine is a killer for sure. As I read these items I’m wondering how many of the ten could happen independently of the other nine?

For me these items are symptomatic of a single problem - management lacking confidence in their own abilities and being willing to assume accountability for their reports’ failures and shortcomings. Surely those are some of the very things to leverage when empowering the workforce, helping people and organizations realize their potential.