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Empowerment — Letting people do what they are paid for

by Geof Cox Published in Management Scotland magazine, Issue 3, January 1995.

Empowerment - the word is ugly and unliked, but is one of the most powerful and most feared ideas in current management practice. It releases the creative energies of all of the workforce, but it implies that managers give up control. A comment from an operations manager in a multinational company sums up the fear:

“Let factory workers take decisions on their work? I couldn't trust them. They just don't have the experience . “

He is missing the point. For many issues that concern the day to day, the workers do have the right experience, and better experience than the managers—they are closer to the job that needs to be done. An old expression is “if you want to know how to sweep the floor better, ask the person with the broom.” This is the whole purpose of empowerment—allowing the person pushing the broom to make improvements to her or his operation without having to put in a request in triplicate and wait for a committee to decide. In effect, empowerment means allowing people to do the jobs that they are paid for.

Leave your brains at the gate

The policies and procedures of most organisations cause staff to leave their brains at the gate, and to slavishly follow processes and procedures that have been unchanged for years, despite changes in technology and working practices.

For example, some service providers are often mere automatons—their training programme systematically training out thinking and initiative in the name of `customer care':

`One cold February in Derbyshire, I was stranded due to snowdrifts. At the local hotel (about 60 bedrooms and a member of a national chain) the receptionist provided a room for the night, but couldn't confirm a booking for the next night. She had been trained to use the computer for all forward reservations and the computer reservations system was not operating. Later that night I found there was one other guest staying at the hotel over the weekend, and that the Manager had laid off all the staff to save cost—the in-house procedure had caused an intelligent person to miss the connection between staff layoffs and free rooms.'

`At a hotel on Royal Deeside course participants found flasks of coffee and hot water to make tea or coffee whenever they wish. The six tea bags provided soon disappeared. We contacted room service, and a young, enthusiastic and intelligent porter arrived with a saucer with six more tea bags. “Can you bring us more than six?” “No. I can only bring six. That is what I was told on my training. But I can come as many times as you need—just call me.” After promising him indemnity from any action of his boss, we negotiated with him to bring us the box of tea bags. `

What happens when you empower people

Compare these stories with others where the staff member has felt empowered to improve her or his own environment. The hotel industry again:

`A barman in a hotel in Stratford-upon-Avon keeps a card index of frequent guests' drink preferences so that he could offer a more personalised service..'

`A reservations clerk recorded the names of foreign guests phonetically, so she could use the correct pronunciation if that person returned—the hotel chain subsequently adopted the practice for all its hotels and added it to the computer system, a great example of a system working to help service.'

Processes and procedures should help deliver service. They should draw guide-lines and boundaries, not try to legislate for every occurrence. Worthington Industries (probably one of the few profitable steel companies in the world working without government subsidy) has a one sentence policy manual: “Treat your customers, suppliers and colleagues as you would like to be treated yourself.”

Jan Carlzon achieved empowerment with SAS Airlines in the mid 1980s. He said “We do not try to be 1000% better at anything. We seek to be 1% better at 1000 things”. Front line staff made decisions that dealt with the customer who was standing in front of them. Customers were treated as people and as individuals, not as irritants that get in the way of a smoothly operating system. No longer did staff have to get permission from an unseen supervisor or manager to do something that was common sense, but was not expressly written down as a procedure.

Carlzon knew that Philip Crosby (author of Quality is Free) was right when he pointed out that 85% of all problems in an organisation can be sorted out at the first line of supervision they encounter.

Managers need to be empowered first

The key to unlock the door of empowerment is in the hands of senior management. They need to empower their subordinates—their managers. No longer should managers have to justify their spending on a line by line basis when they have an agreed budget. This action, and others like it, shows a lack of trust—and that lack of trust will manifest itself throughout the organisation in controls and bureaucratic procedures. A recent study of 4000 US managers found only 46% felt that they gave their best at work, so there is plenty of scope for improvement.

The manager's task is to give strategic direction—not to interfere with the day to day running. Other staff are responsible for getting the job done and making operating improvements to keep the organisation competitive.

This way both managers and staff do not interfere with each other. They each do the jobs that they are paid to do. They are empowered.

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