Empowerment

A management practice of sharing information, rewards, and power with employees so that they can take initiative and make decisions to solve problems and improve service and performance. Empowerment is based on the idea that giving employees skills, resources, authority, opportunity, motivation, as well holding them responsible and accountable for outcomes of their actions, will contribute to their competence and satisfaction.

The word empowerment emerged as a rallying cry in the eighties and nineties as corporations utilized the meaning of empowerment to drive service delivery and customer satisfaction. Training programs were created from entry level employees all the way to the C-Suite. Millions of dollars were invested to help break the old mentality of the task manager and the subservient employee.

I remember working in the hospitality industry and being given the ability to resolve customer by offering solutions, ideas, and sometimes even some sort of compensation for service glitches, mechanical failures, or other problems that may have caused a problem with a customer’s stay.  Programs were created that incented and encouraged employees to take the initiative to solve small customer issues. Even large customer issues were often tackled and resolved by employees, without the need or involvement of higher level management. I am not implying for one minute that every issue, problem, or area of opportunity in business was or can be resolved by empowerment of the front line staff, but many issues can be impacted positively at those levels through empowerment, before they escalate to upper management.

What happened to empowerment?