Empowerment is recognizing and releasing into the organization the power that people already have in their wealth of useful knowledge and internal motivation.
Personnel Empowerment
Empowerment is recognizing and
releasing into the organization the power that people already have in their
wealth of useful knowledge and internal motivation. Understanding the concept
of power is a prerequisite to the comprehension of the contours of empowerment.
Primarily, the term ‘Power’ refers to an individual’s capacity to influence the
behavior and attitudes of others. This usually also results in the ability to
influence events, decisions and possessions. It can be used productively or
destructively. Empowerment means giving or restoring a person or a group more
power. Oxford Dictionary describes the word empower to mean endowing with the
ability or power required for a purpose or task. Empowerment could be
facilitated by providing people the access to information and resources and ability
to share their views to impact their own as well as organization’s future.
Only the people, through
education, coalition building, community organizing, resource development, or
advocacy assistance, might be able to achieve empowerment for themselves. A
mediator, who can work with the lower power person or group to help them
represent themselves more effectively, can also achieve it. The word
empowerment also refers to authorization and permission to operate on one’s own
accord to a reasonable extent in certain situations without having to get
approval from anyone else. It is sometimes described that empowerment seeks to
restore in employees a sense of their own value and strength and their own
capacity to handle life’s problems. Management writer Tom Peters considered
empowerment as a necessary condition to improve zest, creativity and automatic
symbiosis with the customers. Empowerment involves giving employees a greater
degree of control in organizational operations through management’s
participation.
Personnel Empowerment is a trust-based
relationship. It can be described as a way of working together that is
fundamentally different from the traditional notion of top-down command and
external control. It is a condition that entails vesting greater degrees of
self-determination, responsibility and trust in all employees so as to support
and liberate people rather than diminish their range of thought and action.
Paradoxically, in an empowered workplace, people tend to feel both freedom and
self-control. Thus, empowerment leads to a situation in which employees’
commitment and engagement would be released to such an extent that even an
ordinary personnel achieves extraordinary performance.
Tags : Human Resources Management - Employee Empowerment & Seperations
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