Your Fast Guide to Eight key steps to ‘Perfect Empowerment’ 1. Link to a vision Link empowerment to the organization’s vision and values. Unless empowerment is seem as underpinning the organization’s vision, employees may view it as a ‘management fad’ or miss the context of its introduction. Empowerment must become part of the organization’s values so that it is perceived to be linked intrinsically to organizational success. Harvester Restaurants has tied its empowerment process very firmly to its missions and values. All employees attend a one day training seminar where they explore what the mission and values mean to them. 2. Lead by example The manner of leading the process is critical: empowerment must be seen to come from the top. Whilst this may seem to contradict what empowerment is about, leaders can provide a vision for the future and give support and encouragement which are so vital to creating the environment where people take charge of their own destiny. In addition, the empowerment process should encourage champions who can in turn lead the process should encourage champions who can in turn lead the process throughout all parts of the organization. Bill Hewlett, founder of Hewlett-Packard has set the tone for his organization by proclaiming in words and deeds the importance of the individual, who will do a good and creative job if given the right environment. 3. Communicate in abundance Communication and involvement are key. Jack Welch at GE in the US says ‘Communication is an attitude, an environment’. The better the quality of information an individual receives, the better he or she can perform in the job. Through involving employees in regular communication and feedback sessions organizations can encourage empowerment. Welch describes communication as a ‘constant interactive process aimed at consensus’. 4. Review organizational structure Organizational structures can be strait-jackets or enablers. Successful empowerment calls for changes to take place in the structure so that individuals become closer to the point of decisions, and bureaucracy can be discarded through smaller chains of control. Tom Peters says 55 per cent of an organization’s success is down to structure. However, don’t fall into the common trap of assuming that all you need to do is create a new organization and empowerment will somehow happen. 5. Strengthen teamwork Empowerment requires support. Empowering teamwork is one of the strongest mechanisms for providing an environment to take initiatives and occasionally make mistakes, but also learn from these. Empowerment can happen without teamwork, although teams often provide a supportive environment for the individual and generate more powerful results. Stamco, a small timber merchants, have encouraged teams to decide their own informal disciplinary actions and working hours as a natural extension of a culture of ownership of issues, and for employees to ask for what they want without close supervision. 6. Encourage personal development People need help and encouragement to build their confidence in making their own decisions. This means not only providing training and coaching people to take on wider roles, but also demonstrating trust and respect for the individual. At a British Energy power station the annual maintenance shutdown is now run by a cross-functional team from all levels. Such a change needed management commitment, training and fact-finding visits. It has paid off handsomely. The time out of service has been early halved, lost generation capacity cut and huge sums saved. 7. Make customer service a focus An end result of empowerment is very often an increased level of service to the customer. Therefore, employees at the front line and all those with internal customers should be encouraged to take responsibility for satisfying the customer. 8. Measure progress and recognise and reward success Before beginning the process of empowerment, an organization needs to establish measures of success and to help these measures to be understood and agreed with each person. It needs to establish how it will recognise success in individuals and teams in terms of money and in other ways.

Source:  Extracted from ‘Perfect Empowerment’ by Sarah Cook. ‘Perfect Empowerment’ is available from our eBooks Store

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