Employee Empowerment By: Nick McCarty & Isaiah Thomason Article: “Employee Empowerment: An Apprenticeship Model” by John Fox

Definition  Empowerment: sharing varying degrees of power with lower-level employees to better serve the customer.

Benefits  Improved employer satisfaction.  By being shared, organizational power can grow.  Employees to perform better.  Increases trust in the organization.  Reduces Turnover rates.

Complications  Giving up control can be threatening to some managers.  Managers may not want to share power with someone they look down upon.  Managers fear losing their own place and special privileges in the system.

Empowerment Process  Determining the skill level of the employee  Providing for employee training as needed  Coaching tasks with which the employee has some skills but is lacking experience or motivation  Supporting tasks where the employee knows what to do but is still lacking confidence in their abilities  Delegating tasks where the employee is motivated and fully capable.

Statistics  Motorola  Estimated $30 return on every $1 spent on employees  Of the 40 best companies to work for, according to the Graziadio Business Report, only in six did employee empowerment not play a key role in their success (Pepperdine University)

Statistics (Cont.)

Important People Saying Important Things  “The best executive is the one who has the sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” – Theodore Roosevelt  "As a society we know the best way to organize people is freeing them to organize themselves. Why should it be any different in business?" - Petzinger

Questions?