Empowering Broad-Based Action
Step 5: Empowering Broad-Based Action
Employee empowerment has become a popular catch phrase in the past decade. Employee empowerment is commonly defined as increasing an employee’s independence, autonomy, and decision-making capacity (Rukh et al., 2023; Yakut & Kara, 2022; Chikaze & Nyakunuwa, 2022). Many organizations tout promoting employee empowerment, but they do not remove the barriers that prevent true empowerment. Kotter’s fifth step, Empowering Broad-Based Action, gives a solid explanation as to why removing barriers to employee empowerment is so critical to successful change initiatives. There are advantages to empowering employees beyond change initiatives. Rukh et al. (2023) found that empowerment increases employee satisfaction, quality of service, and overall success of the organization. Increased job satisfaction helps reduce turnover which contributes to retention of knowledge and profitability of the organization (Yakut & Kara, 2022). Another factor contributing to employee empowerment is the perceived level of support for employees. In organizations in which there is a high perceived level of support, Yakut and Kara (2022) found that employees are more likely to support change efforts within the organization and have higher levels of commitment to organizational goals.
Kotter (2012) discusses many aspects to the fifth step in his model that will help set the change initiative up for long-term success including removing barriers, providing training, and aligning existing systems. Each of these, if not addressed in a timely and effective manner, can sabotage the employee empowerment efforts and, in the long term, the change initiative. Removing barriers to employee empowerment is a crucial element in this step. Barriers can refer to structural barriers, especially in very hierarchical organizations, as well as personnel barriers, including resistant or problematic middle managers.
In addition to barriers, inadequate, inappropriate (i.e., not relevant topics), and poorly timed training can also impede employee empowerment and negatively impact change initiatives. Frequently, training is viewed as superfluous or a nice-to-have item and is treated as a one-and-done event. To facilitate employee empowerment, managers and employees need to receive both technical training, especially if a new system is involved, and soft skills training. These training programs need to be targeted at helping employees and managers develop the competencies needed to implement the changes and face new challenges as they arise (Chikaze & Nyakunuwa, 2022). The programs also need to be broken into timely sections to ensure employees and managers get the relevant training at the appropriate time and do not suffer from the firehose effect of too much information at once that they will not need until a later time. A crucial soft-skill program that needs to be implemented early in the process and repeated at regular intervals is one on decision-making capacity and strategies. One of my previous employers needed to implement a change for their customer service unit. Unit leaders did a good job of communicating the need for change, creating a sense of urgency, and developing a vision for the change project. Employees were clear about what needed to change, why it needed to change, and how their role would change; however, the change initiative failed to empower the employees to make decisions. Team leaders did not have confidence in their team’s ability to make decisions on their own. They demanded that the deliverables that Learning and Development (L&D) produced to support the project include a decision tree for call center representatives. If a decision needed to be made that did not fall within the options on the decision tree, the representative had to wait for a decision from their team lead. This bogged down the process and increased call times tremendously. When L&D suggested developing a 4-month training program on delegation and decision-making strategies, unit leadership cited the development cost and time needed to develop and implement the program as reasons for not approving the program. After three weeks of team leaders being inundated with basic decisions, unit leadership approved a modified training program for team leads to be able to better delegate and trust their teams. Although the training program was added, the timing of approving and implementing the training program made employees in the unit feel that they still were not truly trusted by management even with an increase in delegated responsibilities.
Empowering employees and allowing them the latitude to be included in the decision-making process not only benefits the organization but also increases buy-in for the change initiative by making employees feel more connected to the success of the organization. According to Chan et al. (2023), empowerment is one of the biggest motivating factors to increasing productivity. While empowerment has a significant role in change initiatives, it has many other positive impacts for an organization. As Christian leaders, we need to focus on lifting others up and empowering others to build their skills (English Standard Version Bible, 2001, Ephesians 4:29).
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