Empowerment, a global mantra or a buzz word?

It is striking how often people pursue lives outside work that are full of achievement and responsibility - doing voluntary work, coaching a kids' sports team or developing an absorbing hobby. Yet at work the search for achievement and fulfillment by these same people vanishes. It is as though they leave their commitment and enthusiasm at the office door or factory gate. Listlessness and resigned indifference take over.

This phenomenon prompts a question: is there a way of winning more involvement from employees at work, thereby generating the enthusiasm and commitment they give so unstintingly outside it? If such a way exists, people will do all they can to help their organisation prosper, gaining job satisfaction and self-fulfillment along the way. Everyone benefits.
This is the challenge of empowerment.

Empowerment sounds a seductively easy way to win significant commercial benefits at little or no cost. It can, however, have major implications for the way a business is managed. Some organisations have shown that only a philosophical break with the past can overcome the mistrust and apathy that are the greatest barriers to gaining the workforce's full commitment to the organisation.

In the past, people did what management told them and no more. This approach can no longer be relied on to produce consistently high levels of performance. Not only has there been a change in employees' expectations of how they should be treated, but the business environment is so complex that everyone's active participation in solving business problems is needed.

It is human nature for people to want to feel that they are valued and that they contribute to the success of the enterprise in which they work. Many want to make decisions, devise solutions to problems, exercise their initiative and be held accountable for results. Though they may not be considered 'management material', they are quite capable of taking responsibility for their actions, behaviour and performance at work.

Empowerment is the mix of practices and behaviours that encourages people to realise their ambitions for a meaningful working life. Empowerment is a step which an individual will take only if conditions are right. Managers cannot directly empower anyone: that is a contradiction in terms. They can, however, create the conditions in which people can flourish, and without which 'empowerment' remains a mere management buzzword.