This paper created with assistance of professional writers of supreme essay service provides the research regarding the issues concerning the meaning and aims of empowerment of employees, explains the importance of empowerment to improve the quality of the customer's service; defines principles of successful empowerment and shows that empowerment is associated with theories of motivation.
Empowerment is considered as the transfer of the functions of a director to other governing employees to achieve specific objectives. It is used to improve and optimize the workforce of the chief manager. The essence of this concept lies in the fact that employees, while working on a specific problem, understand the situation better than the leader. accordingly, for employees from the customer's service, it is easier to find a solution and solve the existing problem (Macey & Schneider 2008).
One of the goals of empowerment is to into the decision-making process all the people working in the company, not just those, who hold the executive powers, as well as to endow the responsibilities and resources that provide real leadership among the area, where the person is particularly competent. With the help of giving employees the authority, the organization's decision-making process goes to the lowest possible level in the organizational hierarchy. Empowerment enables organizations to make their structure more flat, as well as to control and guide the staff by fewer managers. Many companies have found that empowering employees across the organization has a significant impact on their work, so that the quality of products and services to consumers increases (Kinlaw, 1995).
The studies found that more than 40% of the largest U.S. corporations use the methods of employees’ engagement and, in particular, to a greater or lesser extent empower them with decision-making powers.
In the management theory, the empowerment has the following main objectives:
- to release time for one, who is delegating the powers;
- to increase the motivation of those, who are empowered;
- to increase the confidence in the working team;
- to check on the executive staff;
- to improve the quality of services (Kinlaw, 1995).
The consumers are interested in the level of the provided service. In this case, it does not matter how they get the order, whether the customer is knocking at the door of the office or calling by the phone.
It is essential to turn to the practical side of the studied issues. Suppose that we use to deliver the truck, which has departed. It's a beautiful car. The drivers have a radio or mobile phone, so we can contact them and provide the additional guidance. Here, the following questions can arise. Has the driver the right to issue the credit report? Or may they call on behalf of a client and ask if there are other essential consumer items? Have we provided the drivers with the company's promotional materials, which they would be able to distribute to all during the stops along the way? Does our company have a computerized database that enables employees, at the request of consumers, to instantly determine the availability and cost of the spare parts?
In general, all of our previous questions boil down to one simple question: is the company's staff endowed with powers and whether they have an access to the equipment, which allows the consumer to maintain the proper level of his/her needs? Here, the industry, in which the company operates, does not matter.
One of the factors to achieve the substantial success is the implementation of operations that allow meeting the demands of consumers as they become available. We all love to get desired without any effort on their part. The ensuring of the fulfillment of this condition will help the business to go into growth, despite the competition.
The talented and empowered employees are the major component of the corporate success. The main feature of successful teams among the companies driven by the knowledge is that these teams are endowed with a considerable power and authority to make the crucial decisions.
The pivotal thing is that the employees’ empowerment changes the mentality of managers and gives them more time to work on broader issues, as well as the establishment of the corporate vision and cultivation of new forms of work and new businesses. The prudent and efficient division of responsibilities between the strategic leaders, aimed at finding and seizing opportunities, and the authorized (empowered) subordinates, engaged in daily business operations, creates a well-managed and balanced enterprise with a substantial potential for the further sustainable growth (Macey & Schneider 2008).
Thus, the empowerment means to guarantee the authority to do whatever is necessary to meet the demands of consumers and trust subordinates the ability to make the right choice without waiting for the consent of the head manager.
In order to make the empowerment realized in practice, managers need to implement three major initiatives:
1. To determine the readiness and capabilities of each employee to cope with the proposed powers;
2. To identify and create organizational conditions for giving the authority (powers) to workers;
3. To increase the confidence of subordinates by convincing them that their efforts to achieve essential goals will be successful.
A substantial amount of businesses has already realized that steps; however, in order to satisfy consumers, they must first satisfy their own employees. They found that if the level of employees' satisfaction is increased, the degree of customer satisfaction and loyalty to the organization increases proportionally. If employees are satisfied with their working conditions and performed tasks, they continue to work in the company for a long time. Over the longer work term, employees acquaint better with customers and their requirements, have the ability to correct mistakes. This increases their productivity, and the quality of service increases alike (MacLeod & Clarke 2009).
Customers of these companies are becoming more loyal, in result of which the company can rely on the implementation of repeat business with them, consumers are willing to report problems associated with the service, so that workers could remove them. As a consequence, both sides benefit from these relationships as they see that costs are reduced, and the maintenance is improved, which leads to a new cycle of the higher customer satisfaction. Empowerment provides a higher level of the satisfaction of employees (Jenkins, 1988).
Empowerment is primarily crucial, because it increases the efficiency of the organization. A lot of researches showed that it can distinguish four types of relationships among the company's staff that combine to a large extent correlated with higher profits:
1) Employees feel that they are given the every day opportunity to do what they can do the best;
2) They are confident that their views are considered;
3) They feel that the rest of employees, with whom they work, strive to achieve the highest quality;
4) They feel a direct connection between their work and the mission of the company.
To conclude it must be said that empowerment is a logical extension of the concept of attracting workers such as the workers' participation in decision- making. In some companies, empowerment is used as a general term to describe all aspects that lead to the greater involvement of employees in decision-making. However, empowerment is not the equivalent of a conventional engagement. It reflects a high degree of the involvement, in terms of which employees make their own decisions and are responsible for the consequences.
It also must be noted that empowering of employees with the responsibility for the results of their work not only leads to the increased motivation, but also improves the customer service and enhances the overall atmosphere, and therefore, has a positive effect on the quality, efficiency and speed of decision-making.
Although empowerment is not acceptable for all aspects of the organizational activity, it is particularly useful for the quality improvement. The general quality requires real changes of the way, in which people do their work, and is based on the deep understanding of the nature of current systems. Only employees, who perform daily operations of the system, achieve a level of understanding, which helps to explain why so many managers believe that employee empowerment is the vital and unseparated part of increasing the quality among the customer services.
