empowerment through leadership & motivation in it & ites sector
TRANSCRIPT
Authors:
Aditi Bhattacharya SDMIMD
Gaurav Kar SDMIMD
Sudipta Pan SDMIMD
Empowerment through Leadership & Motivation in IT & ITES Sector
Empowerment through
NOVEMBER 15, 2013
Abstract
Based on Indian mythology, practical experiences on empowerment in India and abroad and
many experiences of different researchers in the field an attempt has been made to describe
the process of empowerment- how with what effects, it can be used in Indian corporations to
accomplish excellence. It can enable them to produce at the lowest cost, with better quality
and at a faster pace than their global competitors.
As we understand, empowerment has two facets, they are Fracturing bureaucracy and trust
building, and creating autonomy and developing self-managed teams. It has been proposed
that theorists should concentrate on the nature of empowerment and its underlying processes
for integrating their theory with management practice. Researchers acknowledges the
propositions that leadership practices which empower subordinates, encompasses, expressing
confidence in subordinates accompanied by high performance expectations, fostering
opportunities for subordinates to participate in decision making and providing autonomy for
bureaucratic constraints. Implications of the stated propositions are providing subordinates
with a certain amount of freedom to facilitate exchange. Superiors can gain by relinquishing
control and trusting their subordinates. Perception of control may be a source of
empowerment to subordinate which enables them to regulate the receipt of supervisory
benefits. This paper revolves round the concept of how earlier the decision making power
was a forte of authoritative people but gradually there was an evolution, both for the benefits
of the company and the employees- by using leadership as a tool of empowerment. We have
restricted the scope study for this paper to Indian IT/ITES sector.
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ContentsEmpowerment through Leadership & Motivation in IT & ITES Sector...........................0
Empowerment through Leadership & Motivation in IT & ITES Sector...........................0
Abstract......................................................................................................................................1
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Objectives...................................................................................................................................3
To Enhance.............................................................................................................................3
To Control..............................................................................................................................3
1. Increased Risk.................................................................................................................3
2. Slowed Decision Making................................................................................................4
Review of literature....................................................................................................................4
Examples of Empowerment...................................................................................................5
Methodology..............................................................................................................................5
Primary Method......................................................................................................................6
Secondary Method..................................................................................................................7
Emergence..................................................................................................................................7
Building Empowering Leadership.............................................................................................7
Empowerment Leadership.........................................................................................................8
Key findings:............................................................................................................................10
Approaches towards Employee Engagement; by leaders........................................................12
Stages in Empowerment:..........................................................................................................14
As Bandura (1977) pointed out:...............................................................................................14
Empowerment from the Organization’s Perspective............................................................15
Implementing an empowerment program:...........................................................................16
Key Findings............................................................................................................................17
Proposed Solution for Every Other Organization................................................................17
Diversity...............................................................................................................................18
XtraMiles..............................................................................................................................18
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Introduction
The term Empowerment lexically means to invest with power i.e., which encourages people
to gain knowledge and skill that will allow them to overcome obstacles in life. Empowerment
unleashes a person’s talent, skills and experience that are already in place but are often
underutilized or wilfully held back due to leader’s insecurity. Creating an environment of
empowerment frees people up to be who they actually are. It may sometime work as a change
strategy for an entire organization. In recent years the topic of empowerment through
leadership has gained much attention among managers because a charismatic leader's
envisioning behaviour influences followers' need for achievement, and the leader's empathic
behaviour stimulates followers' need for affiliation. Followers' need for power is enhanced by
a charismatic leader's empowerment practices. It is further suggested that the behaviours of a
charismatic leader and the enhanced followers' needs promote clearer role perceptions,
improved task performance, greater job satisfaction, stronger collective identity and group
cohesiveness, more organizational citizenship behaviours, and stronger self-leadership among
the followers. The contextual factors which may influence the motivational effects of
charismatic leadership are discussed here, along with the different delicate relationships that a
leader needs to maintain internally and externally with a detail description of stages in
empowerment. To summarize, it can be said that the purpose of the study determines
conditions under which leaders of organization lend hand in the empowerment
implementation and sustain its level as per higher authorities’ prudence.
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Objectives
Empowerment has become a buzzword in today's business environment. Empowerment
generally refers to the management practice of giving employees the authority to make
decisions regarding their work, as opposed to a traditional environment in which the boss
gives orders. While contemporary business theory often argues that the empowerment style
of leadership is more productive, like all leadership styles, it has its benefits and drawbacks.
To Enhance
1. Increased Productivity and Morale
Empowering your employees to make decisions on their own can increase productivity.
When employees don't have to wait for approval from a manager or supervisor, workflow
doesn't slow down or stop. Employees solve their own problems, and move on to the next
task. Being able to make decisions and devise innovative solutions increases employee
satisfaction as well. Empowered employees feel as if their contributions matter; when the
company trusts them to make decisions, morale increases, and as a result, so does
productivity.
2. Improved Quality
Giving your employees the training, tools and guidance to make independent decisions often
encourages them to produce quality work and helps your business meet its goals. In fact, a
1999 study of Canadian hospitals conducted by the University of Alberta found that a culture
of employee empowerment and ownership is a key to reaching quality improvement goals
and maintaining quality standards. When properly trained employees are empowered to solve
problems, take risks or be creative in their approach to work, they are more likely to assume
ownership of the tasks. Whether the job is caring for ill patients, developing an entire product
line or simply selling movie tickets, empowered employees often feel as if they have a stake
in the organization and their work and strive to consistently produce quality results.
To Control
1. Increased Risk
While empowering employees can increase morale, productivity and quality, it also has its
drawbacks. Without proper training and a set of guidelines, empowerment can lead to chaos.
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It doesn't make sense to have each employee operate under his own set of values and goals.
Employees need guidance in the mission, vision and values of the organization so that their
decisions fall in line with company goals and don't cause harm. Empowering organizations
need to be comfortable with a certain amount of risk, both in terms of security -- empowered
employees often have access to information that could damage the company if leaked -- and
in terms of loss due to entrepreneurial failure.
2. Slowed Decision Making
In some situations, empowering employees can slow down important processes, particularly
during times of major change or instability. In a 2006 study conducted at the University of
Texas, "A Contextual Examination of New Venture Performance: Entrepreneur Leadership
Behaviour, Top Management Team Heterogeneity and Environmental Dynamism,"
researchers found that companies that need to make rapid decisions are better suited by a
directive leader, who can make a quick decision about the work that needs to be done, and by
whom. An empowering leadership style works best in an environment that is stable, where
the goals are already established and employees can explore options and try new and
innovative solutions.
Review of literature
Empowerment is the process of enabling or authorizing an individual to think, behave, take
action, and control work and decision making in autonomous ways. It is the state of feeling
self-empowered to take control of one's own destiny.
When thinking about empowerment in human relations terms, try to avoid thinking of it as
something that one individual does for another. This is one of the problems organizations
have experienced with the concept of empowerment. People think that someone, usually the
manager, has to bestow empowerment on the people who report to him.
Consequently, the reporting staff members wait for the bestowing of empowerment, and the
manager asks why people won't act in empowered ways. This led to a general unhappiness,
mostly undeserved, with the concept of empowerment in many organizations.
Think of empowerment, instead, as the process of an individual enabling himself to take
action and control work and decision making in autonomous ways. Empowerment comes
from the individual.
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The organization has the responsibility to create a work environment which helps foster the
ability and desire of employees to act in empowered ways. The work organization has the
responsibility to remove barriers that limit the ability of staff to act in empowered ways.
Examples of Empowerment
These are examples of empowerment in action.
The manager of the Human Resources department added weeks to the process of hiring new
employees by requiring his supposedly empowered staff members to obtain his signature on
every document related to the hiring of a new employee. When the time problem was brought
to his attention, he fostered empowerment by telling employees they no longer needed his
signature unless the hire involved extraordinary circumstances.
John empowered himself to discuss the career objectives he wished to pursue with his
supervisor. He told his supervisor, frankly, that if the opportunities were not available in his
current company, he would move on to another company.
Mary took charge of her career by fuelling her sense of empowerment when she developed
a career path plan, met with her manager to ask for her assistance to achieve it, and set goals
for its accomplishment in her performance development plan.
The company's management style involved sharing the goals, sharing each employee's
expectations and framework with the employee, and then, getting out of the way while
employees were empowered to set goals, accomplish their objectives, and determine how to
do their jobs.
Empowerment is a desirable management and organizational style that enables employees to
practice autonomy, control their own jobs, and use their skills and abilities to benefit both
their organization and themselves.
Methodology
Primary method Secondary method
Sending questionnaire to Employees of
IT/ITES Organizations
Literature Review
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Primary Method
Information that is obtained directly from first-hand sources by means of surveys,
observation or experimentation. It is data that has not been previously published and is
derived from a new or original research study and collected at the source. For this particular
paper, we are confining our research to IT/ITES sector. In order to decipher first-hand
information we circulated a questionnaire to some employees of different IT/ITES
organizations.
Secondary Method
Secondary data is data collected by someone other than the user. Common sources of
secondary data for social science include censuses, organisational records and data collected
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through qualitative methodologies or qualitative research. We gathered secondary
information from business magazines, journals, data bases.
Emergence
Empowerment is a trust-based process of assigning authority to make decisions within one’s
area of operations without having to get approval from higher-ups. It differs from delegated
authority. People are encouraged to use their initiative and are not only given authority but
also the necessary resources. Empowerment is a continuous process & not a once-a-while
approach.
Over the past decade, employee empowerment has emerged as a popular managerial concept,
not to mention the focus of numerous scholarly studies, many of which conclude that
empowerment has the potential to offer substantial benefits including enhanced
organizational performance for e.g. by promoting problem solving and learning as well as
greater employee well-being.
Building Empowering Leadership
Empowering leadership can be built for empowering people as well as liberating
organisations.
Efforts may be made to develop leaders who understand the strengths and weaknesses of
people & support them so that they proper utilisation of all their talents & skills. In
conjunction with empathy they are also required to have situational sensitivity to prevent any
physical or social disabilities which hampers employee performance. The empowering
leadership can facilitate the process of liberating an organisation by developing
organisational structures which necessitate collective involvement in decision making. An
empowered leader can cause a basic shift in the nature of control & authority in
organisational settings. The liberated organisation is based on the assumption that people
work in a system negotiated order involving conflicting power. This involves confrontation
of differences which may occur between two equally empowered groups or individuals. The
differences can be managed to accomplish functional outcomes. However, if there are less
equal people or groups, they are likely to resort to negative tactics to express their
displeasure.
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Empowerment Leadership
It has been proposed that theorists should concentrate on the nature of empowerment & its
underlying process for integrating their theory with management practice. Neilson observes
that empowerment strategically necessitates the assignment of resources to subordinates and
the enhancement of their self-worth. It indicates the relevance of establishing linkage
between leadership practices and empowerment which is of special interest for at least two
reasons. Firstly, the practice of empowering subordinates forms a major factor in
organisational effectiveness. Secondly, power and effectiveness increase when superiors
share power and control with their subordinates. Notwithstanding the organisational
relevance of empowerment for the management, there is not much effort to analyse the
relationship between leadership practices and empowerment.
Few things leaders can do to build an environment that empowers people:
1. Give power to those who have demonstrated the capacity to handle the responsibility.
2. Create a favourable environment in which people are encouraged to grow their skills.
3. Don’t second-guess others’ decisions and ideas unless it’s absolutely necessary. This only
undermines their confidence and keeps them from sharing future ideas with you.
4. Give people discretion and autonomy over their tasks and resources.
Successful leaders and managers today are willing to exercise their leadership in such a way
that their people are empowered to make decisions, share information, and try new things.
Most employees (future leaders) see the value in finding empowerment and are willing to
take on the responsibilities that come with it. If future leaders have the wisdom to learn from
the experience of present leaders, and if present leaders have the wisdom to build an
environment that empowers people, both will share in the benefits.
According to a study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, research shows that nearly 75 percent of
all organizational change programs fail because they don’t create the necessary groundswell
of support among employees. When organizational leadership employs a three-phase
Organizational Change Management Life Cycle methodology and techniques to address the
stages of change, change management initiatives stand a much greater chance for success.
Before examining the Organizational Change Management Life Cycle, it’s important to
consider the three organizational elements that both drive and are affected by change:
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Processes – Business processes, including maps, policies and procedures, and business
rules, which are redesigned or realigned for new customers, or provide improved service
to existing customers.
Technology – Driven by process, technology ensures greater organizational efficiency in
implementing change.
People – Those responsible for developing and implementing new processes, and
specifying and using new technology.
These elements are closely linked to the three stages of the Change Management Life Cycle:
identify the change, engage the people, and implement the change. From the outset of any
change management initiative, people must recognize and buy into the need for change.
Leaders must recognize that an organization cannot successfully adopt change unless its
people understand and support the reasons for creating the change.
According to a study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, research shows that nearly 75 percent of
all organizational change programs fail because they don’t create the necessary groundswell
of support among employees. When organizational leadership employs a three-phase
Organizational Change Management Life Cycle methodology and techniques to address the
stages of change, change management initiatives stand a much greater chance for success.
Internal relationships (with subordinates) External relationships (with bottlers)
1) Leading the team by involving all-shared ownership and decisions.
2) Communication
3) Leader Support
4) Developing followers
1) Having clear goal and deliverables.
2) Communication
3) Collaboration
Before examining the Organizational Change Management Life Cycle, it’s important to
consider the three organizational elements that both drive and are affected by change:
Processes – Business processes, including maps, policies and procedures, and business
rules, which are redesigned or realigned for new customers, or provide improved service
to existing customers.
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Technology – Driven by process, technology ensures greater organizational efficiency in
implementing change.
People – Those responsible for developing and implementing new processes, and
specifying and using new technology.
These elements are closely linked to the three stages of the Change Management Life Cycle:
identify the change, engage the people, and implement the change. From the outset of any
change management initiative, people must recognize and buy into the need for change.
Leaders must recognize that an organization cannot successfully adopt change unless its
people understand and support the reasons for creating the change.
Key findings: Themes emerged from managing internal and external relationships
a. Managing relationship with subordinates:
a. Leading the team by involving all-shared ownership and decisions (empowerment)
Empowered team, shared information, valued everyone’s contribution.
Empowerment. Leader becomes facilitator.
b. Communication
Listening
Being honest
Clarity and transparency
c. Leader Support
Empathy and emotional support
Supporting subordinates in their times of need- even when he has committed a
mistake
d. Developing followers
Effective leaders develop their subordinates by assessing their competencies,
setting goals, engaging them in decision making, providing on-the-job coaching,
and helping with career development.
b. Managing relationship with Bottlers:
a. Having clear ultimate goal and deliverables
Agreeing on mutual goals first-to have a quality relationship with strategic
partners outside the organization
Managing the boundary of responsibilities
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b. Communication
Building trust
Frequent communication (and negotiation, if necessary)
c. Collaboration
Involve them in decision-making
Think of solutions together
If we consider empowerment in terms of this relative dynamic, it becomes the process by
which a leader or manager shares his or her power with subordinates. Power, in this context,
is interpreted as the possession of formal authority or control over organisational resources.
The emphasis is primarily on the nation of sharing authority. Burke’s (1986) position is
representative: “To empower, implies the granting of power- delegation of authority”. The
Merriam Webster’s Dictionary similarly describes the verb to empower as “to authorize or
delegate or give legal power to someone.” In the management literature, this idea of
delegation and the decentralization of decision-making power is central to the empowerment
notion (Burke, 1986; House in Press; Kanter, 1983). As a result, we find that most of the
management literature on empowerment deals with participative management techniques
such as management objectives, quality circles, and goal setting by subordinates as the means
of sharing power or delegating authority.
This manner of treating the notion of empowerment from a management practice perspective
is so common that often employee participation is simply equated with empowerment (Likert,
1961, 1967; McGregor, 1960). However, because this line of reasoning does not adequately
address the nature of empowerment as experienced by subordinates, it raises important
questions. For example, does the sharing of authority and resources with subordinates
automatically empower them? Through what psychological mechanisms do participate and
resource sharing techniques faster an empowering experience among subordinates? Are
participation and the sharing of organisational resources the only techniques for
empowerment? Are the effects of an empowering experience the same as the effects of
delegation, participation, and resource sharing?
Empowerment as a Motivational Construct. In the psychology literature, power and control
are used as motivational and/or expectancy belief states that are internal or individuals. For
instance, individuals are assumed to have a need for power (McClelland, 1975) where power
connotes an internal urge to influence and control other people. A related but more inclusive
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disposition to control and cop with life events also has been proposed by several
psychologists who dealt with the issues of primary/secondary control (Rothbaum, Weisz, &
Snyder, 1982), internal/external locus of control ( Rotter, 1966), and learned helplessness
(Abramson, Garber, & Seligman, 1980). Individuals’ power needs are met when they
perceive that they have power or when they believe they can adequately cope with events,
situations, and/or the people they confront. On the other hand, individuals’ power needs are
frustrated when they feel powerless or when they believe that they are unable to cope with the
physical and social demands of environment.
To conceptualize empowerment in motivational terms, we prefer to use Bandura’s self-
efficacy Notion (1986). Translated in terms of Bandura’s model, empowerment refers to a
process whereby an individual’s belief in his or her self-efficacy is enhanced. To empower
means either to strengthen this belief or to weaken one’s belief in personal powerlessness.
Personal efficacy is sometimes postulated to stem from internal need-states such as the
intrinsic need for self-determination (Deci, 1975), the competence motive (White, 1959), the
need for power (McClelland, 1975), and the need for self-actualization (Maslow, 1954).
However, we prefer not to adopt the content or need theory approach to explain the
phenomenon of empowerment. We assume that everyone has an internal need for self-
determination and a need to control and cope with environmental demands. Differences in the
strength of this need among individuals can be explained by analysing the underlying
motivational process. We therefore follow the process theory approach to empowerment as a
motivational phenomena by relating it to expectancy (Lawler, 1973) and self-efficacy
theories (Bandura, 1977, 1986).
Approaches towards Employee Engagement; by leaders
As leaders, why do we spend so much time trying to fix our employees’ circumstances? If
we’re listening to conventional management wisdom, we probably believe (or hope) that a
stress-free, obstacle-free working environment will magically turn everyone into happy,
productive employees. Traditional employee satisfaction surveys make three assumptions that
just don’t hold water.
Wrong assumption #1: Every employee response is equally important.
Wrong assumption #2: Every employee opinion is credible.
Wrong assumption #3: Engagement alone drives results.
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These assumptions are artefacts of the old employee engagement approach – the one that
strives to create a magical workplace where there are no challenges to overcome and
everyone is happy. It is time we admit it – this just isn’t working.
Employ quid pro quo- Employees have gotten into the habit of making requests.
Maybe they want flex hours or a bigger office or a free lunch every Wednesday. You,
as a manager, also need to get in the habit of making requests. In response to the next
employee who makes a request, turn the tables and ask, “What are you willing to do
to get that?”
Foster “Yes” culture-Companies are not democracies. We do not vote on decisions.
There are people who get paid to make decisions and people who get paid to
implement those decisions. Buy-in is not optional. Once a decision has been made,
employees should use their expertise to manage the risks and make it work.
Stop trying to create a perfect workplace- There will always be change, conflict,
challenges, disagreements, discomfort and frustration in the workplace. And that’s
good news! As it turns out, humans can’t be happy and engaged without struggle and
strife. Without obstacles and mistakes, we never feel a sense of accomplishment or
grow on a personal or professional level. So, instead of removing all these healthy
hurdles for your employees empower them to make the leap.
Stages in Empowerment:
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As Bandura (1977) pointed out:
The strength of people’s conviction in their own effectiveness is likely to affect whether they
would even try to cope with given situations… They get involved in activities and behave
assuredly when they judge themselves capable of handling situations that would otherwise be
intimidating… Efficacy expectations determine how much effort people will expend and how
long they will persist in the face of obstacles and aversive experiences.
Finally, one’s personal competence expectations are affected by one’s emotional arousal
state. Emotional arousal states that result from stress, fear, anxiety, depression, and so forth,
both on and off the job, can lower self-efficacy expectations. Individuals are more likely to
feel competent when they are no experiencing strong aversive arousal. Empowerment
technique’s and strategies that provide emotional support for subordinates and that create a
supportive and trusting group atmosphere ((Nielsen, 1986) can be more effective in
strengthening self-efficacy beliefs. An example of such behaviour is found in Kidder’s Soul
of a New Machine (1981) in which a Data General Manager, Tom West, provided effective
emotional and group support that ensured the completion of an extremely difficult computer
project. On many occasions’ employees’ stress, anxiety, and tension on the job can be
reduced by managers clearly defining employees’ roles, reducing information overload, and
offering them technical assistance to accomplish job tasks. The impact that depression and
self-doubt have on subordinates as a result of their failure on the job could be lessened by
their attributing this failure to external and unstable factors such as task difficulty, inadequate
support systems, and so forth, rather than attributing it to their efforts or abilities (Weiner,
1985). These techniques assist in the empowering process by reducing the negative effects of
aversive emotional arousal on the development of self-efficacy beliefs.
Empowerment from the Organization’s Perspective
Empowerment calls for organizations to
1. be more decentralized
2. to share more information,
3. to have in place a system of contingent rewards,
4. to be team-based, and
5. to align itself with its goals and values.
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Decentralization distributes decision-making as close to the action as appropriate. This means
giving employees the authority to make timely decisions. Individual empowerment cannot
occur within a highly centralized system of control because such systems reserve decision-
making power for the few who occupy the centre, thus inhibiting individual initiative. People
are not motivated to change when they don't have authority to do anything with what they
have learned.
Information sharing is empowering. Hoarding knowledge and withholding it is a way to
maintain control. Employees need information about the organization’s mission and goals,
information needed to meet team objectives, and information about their individual
performance. In empowering organizations, information is no longer the property of
individuals, but now belongs to the entire group. As information is more openly shared, the
organization will begin to function less on the basis of opinion and bias and more on the basis
of facts. Systems must be in place to enable access to both general information about the
organization and also specific information about the performance of their particular
department or team.
Contingent rewards are difficult to design. Empowerment works best when a reward system
distinguishes between employees based on performance. Empowering organizations reward
employees who make decisions that contribute to the accomplishment of the organization's
purpose and goals. Make sure that what is rewarded reflects goals of the organization. To
automatically punish failure inhibits empowerment. It is better to reward employees for
attempting new ideas, even ones that fail. Paige Leavitt, of the American Productivity and
Quality Centre in Houston, explains how they use rewards to encourage empowerment: “We
try to foster an atmosphere that has a lot of respect for people who make a contribution. We
don't expect success every time a person suggests or tries something, otherwise they won't
want to try new things. If you've come up with a good idea and your supervisor sends you a
thank-you note or gives you a pat on the back—that does more than anything that we can do
in an employee newsletter or a public venue. [Schweitzer, C. (2004) Light-bulb leadership:
Creating a culture where innovation is in. (Association Management 56(8), 31-42.)]
Teams develop when individuals move outside themselves and become concerned with the
success of all other members. This means that employees become concerned, not only with
the success of their immediate responsibility, but also with success of the other members of
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the team. Then the group becomes a unit where the development of one member increases
the power of the team.
Alignment with the common purpose is a must. To empower people in an unaligned
organization can be counterproductive. If people do not share a common vision, and do not
share common goals, empowering people will increase organizational stress and make it
impossible to maintain coherence and direction. An organizational commitment to
empowerment would be foolish if leaders did not share the same visions and goals.
Empowered organizations must structure processes, goals, people, and reward systems
aligned with each other.
Implementing an empowerment program:
There is a direct relationship between empowerment and organizational vitality. It is about
the probability of change, of keeping up in a changing world. People learn best when they see
a relationship between their life and the concepts being taught. Without sensing an
organizational commitment to fully implement empowerment, these concepts will be very
difficult to implement. Only when people have authorization to dissent with the leader do
new ideas have a chance to appear. Empowerment is the key to organizational vitality.
Key Findings
As per our study reveals 52.94% of the employees gave a good rating about the role of
their company in encouraging them to voice out their opinions in decision making.
Whereas 41.18% gave a positive response regarding their company acknowledging their
new ideas
As evident from the study 41.18% of the employees also find their immediate superior to
be empowering.
55.88% of the sample highly considered the overall empowerment structure of their
organization
Prominent suggestions that evolved from the study are:
1. “Key points for company to be in parallel with employee in long run-
a. Company policy
b. Motivation and
c. Free voice.”
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2. “Immediate superior should courage an employee to bring up decision making ideas from
team point of view and new ideas (if any) should be allowed to percolate through the
management if is in the current domain or scope of new project.”
Proposed Solution for Every Other Organization
Elicitation of a near to ideal empowered organization
WORK – AND YOUR LIFE
Coming to Work . . . Because You Want a dynamic and vibrant work environment ensures
that HCLites walk in every morning – well, most mornings – with a smile, and leave at the
end of the day feeling valued and enriched.
In fact, our “Employees First” philosophy is aimed at placing every employee at the forefront
of transformation, empowering them with knowledge, resources and infrastructure in a
workplace that nurtures innovation.
At the same time, we believe that helping employees find work-life continuity, advancing
their social and cultural aspirations and providing them an opportunity to connect with each
other reduces stress, builds team spirit and optimizes performance.
From embracing diversity to offering “miles” that can earn you recognition and rewards,
HCL Technologies provides its employees a workplace that is more than just a place to work.
Here is a snapshot of various initiatives designed to enthuse and inspire HCL employees:
Diversity
HCL Technologies works hard to create a supportive environment for employees with diverse
backgrounds. Accordingly, the company reaches out to a diverse talent pool of different
nationalities, cultures social background and work experiences. Team leaders are equipped
with skills to work across the globe in virtual teams. Affinity networks and Employee First
Councils help the company reach out to employees from diverse backgrounds. The networks
ensure that diverse perspectives are included in all business operations.
XtraMiles
XtraMiles is a unique program that offers peers, team members and managers to recognize
employees for outstanding effort. XtraMiles provides a platform to say “thanks” and helps
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strengthen a culture of employee appreciation. For every XtraMiles that employees walk in
their professional life at HCL, they stand a chance to earn a “mile.” Accumulation of these
points not only offers recognition but entitles them to earn rewards.
Genie
“Genie” is a personal shopper and assistant that specializes in giving employees the gift of
time. This facility is an all-purpose coordinator, entertainment guide, errand runner and
personal assistant that can manage routine tasks, such as paying utility bills.
Women’s Network
Women are altering the face of the corporate world – and the face of HCL. Whether nurturing
their families at home or leading transformation on the job, women executives offer special
value. To help them meet the particular challenges they sometimes face, a peer network of
HCL women executives provides support, advocates for a gender-neutral work environment
and drives policy changes, through initiatives such as “Women Connect.”
Mitr
Mitr (Hindi for your “friend”) is a specialist team of personal advisors who help employees
prepare for challenges and tackle them more effectively. Mitr’s support, information and
advice is completely free and confidential, and just a phone call away.
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