We explain what empowerment is in the business area, what problems it responds to and what are its advantages.
In a company, empowerment gives more autonomy to workers.What is the empowerment?
The term "Empowerment”, From English power (“Power”) could be translated into Spanish as “empowerment”, a very fashionable word in times of struggle for social demands on egalitarianism, more or less equivalent to “empowerment” or “empowerment”. However, in the area of business, this expression refers to a totally different meaning.
In business administration, the Empowerment o Organizational empowerment is a trend in the management of Human Resources that proposes the empowerment of subordinates and workers. Its objective is to break the traditional scheme of vertical leadership, in which one boss assumes the reins of everything and the others are limited to carrying out his orders.
A company that empowers its workers, on the other hand, gives them autonomy, decision-making capacity, authority and leadership. In this way, they can solve work problems creatively, flexibly and autonomous, without having to count on the constant approval of their superiors.
It is not about abolishing the hierarchy of business or to do without bosses, but to build more creative, productive and higher quality workers and subordinates, in a business model decentralized and debureaucratized. It is a commitment to agility and diversity, instead of centralization of can who does the processes, since all changes must be approved by a superior.
Problems of traditional companies
The corporate world is chasing the right formula to increase productivity Y cost effectiveness, without diminishing quality and human talent in the process. Empowerment arises as a response to the main problems that traditional companies must face in terms of human resources, which are:
- The "burnout" of the workers.Dealing with repetitive and unimportant work, following orders and decisions of another without ever feeling that the work performed has a link with one's life, leads to a situation of low productivity and very low commitment known as "burnout"(From the English" scorched ").
- The bureaucratization of the processes. Something particularly present in organizations public or semi-public, is the slowing down of the processes. Simple and agile things that could be done in no time weatherThey take forever because of formal demands, middle rungs, and forms of bureaucracy that are not only unproductive, but also provide a false sense of control.
- The urgent does not give time to the important. As simple as it sounds: there is no time. The processes accumulate waiting for their resolution and the workers accumulate significant doses of frustration, which eventually affect their commitment to work, because in the absence of real solutions, detachment is a way of not suffering from work.
- Verticality and invisibility. For both mistakes and successes, the traditional bosses are the only visible face of the teams, and absolutely everything falls on them, since their authority in the team is unquestionable. This upright and inflexible model builds workers Lacking confidence, confused about their performance and living solving problems that someone else creates.
- Lack of promotion prospects. Since the charges are distributed in organization charts Very vertical and very strict, moving up in the company becomes an impossible mission, which requires the departure of an intermediate link so that one from below can take their place. This also undermines the feeling of belonging of the employees.
Advantages of empowerment
Organizational empowerment involves a series of significant changes in the way things are done in the company, which has the following benefits:
- High worker commitment. People like to create, solve, devise, and be recognized for it. When this happens, workers feel considered, respected and taken into account, which keeps them highly motivated.
- Productivity improvements. Contrary to popular belief, a looser and more flexible structure often makes it possible to better adapt to the problems and manage processes more efficiently than a stagnant, heavy and rigid one.
- Training employee constant. Not only through formal studies and courses an employee grows in a company, but also as he assumes new responsibilities with success, thus learning to do much more than what is strictly required in his position, and opening up prospects for promotion.
- Decision making efficient. Since management positions are not usually there supervising the process in person, an advantage of empowerment is to give workers a voice so that they can contribute to business management, instead of feeling imprisoned in a project that others manage on their behalf. whim.