Employee Empowerment A Supervisor s Guide https://www.flickr.com/photos/lincolnian/223547716/ Some rights reserved, Written by Steven Ouellette Lead Project Consultant Office for Performance Improvement Rev 150429
Table of Contents Note... 1 Defining Empowerment... 1 The Components of Empowerment... 2 Tools... 2 Knowledge... 2 Accountability... 2 Responsibility... 2 Authority (within the span of control)... 3 Overlap of the Components... 3 Importance of Empowerment... 3 Empowerment in Strategic Planning... 4 Planning for Improvement... 5 Deploying Improvements in Empowerment... 5 How to Read the EEI Report... 5 Creating a Plan to Improve Empowerment... 7 General Advice... 7 Addressing Empowerment Tactically... 8 Addressing Empowerment Strategically... 9 Creating a Local Plan of Action... 9 Using a Classification Tree... 10 When No Classification Tree is Available... 20 Special Topics... 22 What if I don t have anything at all on my report?... 22 Notes on Neither Agree Nor Disagree... 22 Why Not Morale or Engagement?... 22 The Empowerment Inventory is Just the First Step... 22 Flow Chart to Create an Empowerment Plan... 23 Tools for Specific Empowerment Barriers... 25 Conclusions... 27
Note This document assumes some familiarity with the terms as they are used in Business or Service Performance Excellence. You may want to read these articles if you are not: Introduction - Business Performance Excellence - 2012.pdf (124.37 KB) Hoshin Kanri - Business Performance Excellence - 2012.pdf (1.01 MB) Defining Empowerment The word empowerment is one of those terms that a lot of people use in so many different ways that it has almost ceased to have meaning. Yet the word does convey something important, and we frequently see it as part of the Business or Service Performance Excellence deployment. So let s examine what the word means, why it is important, and how we can measure it. Empowerment generically means to give power to someone. You might have been empowered by someone early in your life who showed you how to learn, and thus opened to you the power of education. Specifically in the context of business or institutions, we are referring to one of the basic functions of management. A CEO or a Chancellor is ultimately responsible for the efficient and effective functioning of their organization, but in a larger organization that individual can only do so much and has to rely on others to do their jobs too. Therefore, part of what managers have to do is properly give up part of their responsibilities to others at the level to where it makes sense. Those that don t are said to be micromanaging, or taking away from people that report to them the decisions and actions necessary to do their job. So when we refer to empowerment we are simply talking about giving individuals the power to do the job for which they were hired. Empowerment is really only the first and most basic requirement. Other emotions associated with working here, such as morale or engagement, have to be built on actually being able to do the job. That sounds well and good, but specifically what does that mean? It is management s responsibility to provide certain things to an individual before they can really expect that they will be able to do their job. We use the following model to represent these obligations: 1
Tools Authority within the span of control Knowledge Empowerment Responsibility Accountability Let s define these terms and discuss them. The Components of Empowerment Tools If you have the tools for the job, you possess the equipment, software, materials, systems, and processes required to meet the needs of your clients, and to perform your job as you understand your responsibilities. This doesn t necessarily mean that you have the snazziest new toys it just means that you have what is needed to do the job in the time allotted and with a high level of quality. Knowledge If you have the knowledge needed, you have the education, information, training, and skill sets that would allow you to meet the needs of your clients and perform your job well, and you are clear on exactly who your clients are. Knowledge is obtained on and off the job and in this usage is relevant to your job function. By the way, you might be surprised at how frequently people in organizations don t know who their customers are or what they want. Accountability If you have the appropriate accountability, you understand what you are accountable for, whether there are means by which you can request and obtain those resources necessary for you to be successful, and whether you believe the organization is behaving in a way consistent with this philosophy. Accountability does not mean you get yelled at or fired if you don t accomplish some objective. It does mean that a discussion is started (hopefully soon after it is clear the objective cannot be attained) about what you need from your manager to successfully fulfil that part of your job or, failing that, what higher-level metrics will need to be adjusted to account for the shortfall. Responsibility If you have accepted responsibility, you are absolutely clear on what your daily, monthly, and annual goals and objectives are, you understand your role in the organization, and you know how to achieve your goals. 2
Job responsibilities should be clearly understood and documented between manager and employee, with ongoing monitoring to insure that progress is being made and that there are never surprises. Authority (within the span of control) If you have the correct level of authority, you can achieve those objectives for which you are responsible. Span of control means those areas and decisions required to perform your function; that is, to get your job done. If you have no ability to change something, then you have no span of control over it and certainly can t be held responsible for its performance. Of course in reality, the span of control is a continuum: Who, Me? Influence Impact Control You just want to make sure that you have control or at least the largest impact for things over which you have responsibility. Overlap of the Components These five components are not meant to be exclusive or independent from each other they all overlap. Tools Authority within the span of control Knowledge Responsibility Accountability An issue with responsibility may be with one of authority and tools. Don t be too worried about exactly which word applies we are only trying to have a way to talk about barriers to empowerment, whatever they are. Importance of Empowerment It is important to note that it is the managers responsibility to insure that their direct reports are empowered. If their employees are missing any of the components of empowerment, they cannot expect that the job is going to get done in a high quality way (or at all). From the employee s perspective, a job that is missing any of the components is frustrating and eventually one that they don t want to come to every day. From the manager s perspective, an employee who is 3
missing any of the components cannot be expected to perform the job for which they were hired, so they either need to close those gaps or change the scope of what the job is supposed to accomplish. Dr. W. Edwards Deming talked about removing barriers that rob the...worker of his right to pride of workmanship. To me, this encapsulates the issue about empowerment. How can you take pride in a job when you are held responsible for things that are outside of your control, or a job where you lack the tools to actually do the job? It is often very helpful to give a common vocabulary to both supervisor and employee, and open the discussion with the intent of figuring out how to get the job done using these terms. Measuring Empowerment As with anything else that is important, we need to have a way to measure how well we are doing in empowering our employees. To this end, the Office for Performance Improvement has developed an Employee Empowerment Inventory (EEI). We call it an inventory rather than a survey since it is trying to measure the current state of everyone in the organization. The inventory is usually scheduled to be issued every six months, so that an organization that is working on improving it can track the progress they are making. It takes most people less than ten minutes to fill out the inventory. The inventory is designed to answer whether people believe they can do their job, as well as areas to work on in order to improve their empowerment. The general form of the inventory is as follows: Does the employee feel empowered by their direct supervisor? Which of the five components, if any, is the major barrier to their empowerment? Does the employee have the knowledge necessary to accomplish the job? What is the most important barrier to attaining the knowledge necessary to accomplish the job? Does the employee have the tools necessary to accomplish the job? What is the most important barrier to attaining the tools necessary to accomplish the job? Does the employee have an understanding of the responsibilities necessary to accomplish the job? What is the most important barrier to attaining an understanding of the responsibilities necessary to accomplish the job? Does the employee and others around them have the accountability necessary to accomplish the job? What is the most important barrier to attaining the accountability necessary to accomplish the job? Does the employee have the authority necessary to accomplish the job? What is the most important barrier to attaining the authority necessary to accomplish the job? Beyond the control of the direct supervisor, is the employee empowered? Beyond the control of the direct supervisor, what barriers exist to being empowered? (Optional) What percent of the employee s time is spent in crises or unplanned activities that are not part of their job? (Optional) What percent of the employee s time do they spend in meetings that are a waste of their time? An employee can save their questions and come back to them if necessary. Empowerment in Strategic Planning Once the EEI is administered, management has an understanding of whether their people think they have what they need to get the job done. 4
Sometimes empowerment will be addressed in the strategic plan. This implies that the gap between where you are and where you want to be is going to require special activities outside of the usual day-to-day work. Other times, a supervisor may use the information to make improvements in their area. Ultimately, we would like to have everyone be able to answer that they are fully empowered to do their job. Planning for Improvement In the strategic planning process, empowerment has a special status. If it turns out that an organization has a high proportion of employees who report that they are not empowered to do their job, it is going to be difficult to get much done in other areas of strategic improvement that are required to achieve the organizations long-term objectives. If people do not think they have what is necessary to do their jobs, how effective can they be at making big improvements in other areas? In such cases, it is likely that improving employee empowerment will end up being a strategic intent across the organization. It is deployed somewhat differently than other initiatives, however. Deploying Improvements in Empowerment As an organization deploys to achieve a breakthrough improvement in empowerment, there may be organization-wide activities that need to be undertaken. This implies that there may be things that everyone in the organization needs to work on, regardless of whether it is the most important aspect towards empowerment in each manager s respective area. If this is the case, it will be identified and given resources in the overall strategic planning stage. However, unlike many other things that an organization might choose to improve, empowerment is granted by each and every supervisor, so when it shows up in a strategic plan, each supervisor ends up with an objective around empowerment., A supervisor only has span of control over their direct reports, so these objectives are written around only that supervisor s direct reports empowerment. However, by deploying this to each level of management, we actually do make sure that each manager is held responsible for empowering their employees, since they in turn hold them responsible for empowering their direct reports, all the way through the organization. How to Read the Employee Empowerment Inventory Report Once and EEI has been administered to an organization, a report is available to all supervisors. We can tell a lot of information at a quick glance. Once you log into the report, you will see that you can specify some reporting parameters. You can look at your report or the report of a manager that reports directly to you by selecting from a drop-down list. The report is aware of reporting structures as defined by the organization prior to the release of the inventory. 5
You can also choose to view the results for direct and indirect reports as well as continuing, non-continuing, and both types of employees. Once you have selected these two items, hit the Refresh Report button to get the results. Some of these options may be grayed out if they are not available to you. Next you will find a table of contents. The check boxes hide or reveal the information so it only shows what you need. 6
Each of the line items also acts as a hyperlink, so you can click on it to go there. If you click on Overall Response and Empowerment Rate it will take you straight to the results for the Overall Empowerment question. You will see text that describes the empowerment and response rate, as well as a graph that shows how many employees selected each level of agreement with the Overall Empowerment question. Targets for response rate and empowerment are set by the organization s leadership. Common targets for response rate tend to be high 95% since a low response rate is the sign of other problems in the workplace. Common targets for empowerment tend to be 90 or 95%. At this point we know where we are with respect to empowerment, but what do we do if we want to improve it? Creating a Plan to Improve Empowerment There is a flow diagram describing how to create a plan to improve empowerment further down in this document. Let s walks through how to think about finding what to work on. General Advice Can Empowerment Actually Be Changed? Managers do wonder if it really is possible to change their employees feelings of empowerment. When the Office of Information Technology first performed its empowerment inventory, only 64.1% of the continuing employees agreed 7
that they felt empowered. Over time, and with some hard work by the supervisors and employees, that empowerment rate has improved significantly: Use the Vocabulary One thing that seems to help is using the vocabulary of empowerment when you speak to your employees during normal day-to-day operations. If you are discussing a new job responsibility, you might go through the five components to make sure that the employee feels they have the tools, knowledge, accountability, responsibility, and authority to get the job done. You might also add empowerment to a standing meeting s agenda. Each week you might review the definition of empowerment, and then focus on one of the components. For example, you might ask if your employees have any barriers to getting the job done in the area of tools. By using the vocabulary, you are opening your employees up to discussing the issues they feel are barriers to their job. Addressing Empowerment Tactically An organization may find that it has met its overall empowerment and response rate targets. This is great news, but it doesn t necessarily mean that every supervisor has met the target. You may find that you have areas that need to be improved. You can create a local plan of action to do this, which we will go through below. 8
Addressing Empowerment Strategically At other times, an organization might find that it needs to address empowerment strategically. In this case, it should show up in the strategic plan and significant resources will be devoted to addressing the barriers. As a supervisor, you may find that you need to support the organization s focus in areas that are unrelated to your particular barriers. For example, your organization might be focusing on barriers to Responsibility while in your area, the issue is Tools. This just means that you will be planning to support the efforts around Responsibility, just like everyone else, but may also have a local plan associated with Tools. (Responsibility has priority though, so your obligation to the organization s plan might mean you don t have any resources left to work on your local plan at least not yet.) The organization s plan will be created at the upper level of the organization and deployed down to everyone. The remainder of this document will be about creating a local plan to improve empowerment. (Although when it comes down to it, the exact same process is followed at the top level of the organization.) Creating a Local Plan of Action Empowerment is affected by the actions of each manager, and one manager may have a different challenge than another manager, and this will be reflected in their personal strategic plan. The reports that are available on the OPI Client Data Portal (opiclientdata.colorado.edu) give guidance as to what a particular manager can work on to improve his direct reports empowerment. While there is an overwhelming amount of information on this report, the good news is that an individual only has to view a small fraction to come up with a plan of action. Here is how I would go about coming up with a plan for improving empowerment in my area. First, let s take a look at the overall level of empowerment. Perhaps I see something like this: 9
This is equivalent to 57.2% agreeing that they are empowered (for our purposes, an individual must Agree or Strongly Agree to the Overall Empowerment question in order to be classified as empowered ). If my organization s goal is, say, 95%, I probably have to do something very differently than I have before, and that implies that I have a strategic effort ahead of me. But what do I need to improve in order to have the largest effect on empowerment? Using a Classification Tree 1 Sometimes (depending on how many employees directly or indirectly report to you) you may have a Classification Tree diagram on your report. This gives you really helpful information in knowing where to start. Often we find that the most common barrier is not the one that is preventing empowerment. How can this be? Let s make up a scenario to illustrate this. For the following discussion I am going to make up some data and graphs that are not in the supervisor report I am just using them to illustrate the point: you will see you don t need them to come to the right conclusions. For example, here is the % Empowered graph for 57.2% empowered, 42.8% not empowered: 1 These classification trees are a graphic result of statistical tests of all the response questions against the Overall Empowerment question to determine which answers to which questions are most strongly associated with empowerment. We will go through how to read them below. If you are interested in learning more about how classification trees are made, check out this link: http://cran.rproject.org/web/packages/partykit/vignettes/ctree.pdf. Don t worry, you don t need to know this to use the results! 10
We might also see that everyone says that Tools is a barrier to their empowerment: This is obviously something to fix, but is it the first thing to fix in order to improve empowerment? Well, some people are empowered and some people are not, so obviously Tools is not what determines your feeling of empowerment to do the job. If we look at Authority, we find that a lot fewer people claim it as a barrier: 11
But if I were to color in the % empowered bars with those who also said that they were also not empowered, I might see this: So almost everyone who felt that they were lacking in empowerment also said that lack of authority was a barrier. Even though fewer people chose that as a barrier, it is the one that has the strongest relationship back to empowerment, and so I would work there. Of course in real life, it is rarely that simple, so we use a tool called a classification tree to understand what might be a complex story about why people feel a lack of empowerment. Going back to our supervisor output on the client data portal, we see the following tree diagram: 12
Once you learn how to read these, they tell you some very useful information in an easy-to-read format (I promise!). The online report has an explanation of the different abbreviations you see in the chart. Glancing at the diagram, it looks like the upside-down branching of a tree. At the bottom are boxes that show the probability of being empowered for people who fell into that category. The boxes fill up with dark as you have a higher chance of being empowered. Looking across those boxes, we see a range of 0% empowered (the first box) to around 90% empowered (the box on the right). We like to see this, since it implies that the manager has a strong ability to improve empowerment. And even better, there is a path to 90% empowerment. For example, the third box shows 29 people (n=29) of whom about 48% are empowered (how high the dark grey is on the scale). Let s start at the top. The tree algorithm goes through all the questions on the inventory in order to determine what has the strongest relationship to how people answered the Overall Empowerment question. Take a look at the next graph. The question at the very top of the tree is the one that most explains how people answered the empowerment question. In this case, it was the question asking if they agreed that they have the authority, within my span of control, to accomplish my job. If they answered that they Neither Agreed Nor Disagreed, Disagreed, or Strongly Disagreed (represented by the branch labeled N) then they were far less likely to say that they were empowered than if they Agreed or Strongly Agreed. 13
Not Very Empowered Still, even those who agreed that they had the authority were not all empowered. Take a look at the next graph. Following the >N branch on the orange arrow, we see another circle representing the I have the Tools necessary to accomplish my job question. How someone answers this question further explains whether they were about 59% likely to say that they were empowered (answering less than Neither Agree Nor Disagree and going down the yellow path) or about 90% likely to say that they were empowered ( Agree or stronger on the green path). Using the same approach, you can follow the branch on the left to see what leads to a complete lack of empowerment (the red path): Neither Agree Nor Disagree on Authority, and then on Responsibility. When we get to the last branch, which barrier people selected routed them to either the 0% or 18% empowerment box. You can see the abbreviation Acc and Auth on the branch leading to 0%. That means that for the final branch, those who selected Accountability and Authority for the Overall Barrier were completely disempowered. 14
Completely Disempowered 59% Empowered 90% Empowered So if I am this supervisor and I want to improve empowerment, I am looking to prune the tree and make it so that my employees can say that they have the Authority and Tools to do the job. We would predict that if I do that, I would go from 57.2% empowered to about 90% empowered (the orange and then the green path). The key here is that the supervisor does not have to work on improving everything in order to get a large boost to their empowerment rate working on only these two areas is predicted to have a huge benefit in how empowered their employees feel. Of course at this point, I want to learn more about what my people are saying in terms of Authority and Tools so I can come up with a plan. To do so, I go back to the Table of Contents at the top of the report and check all the items that have to do with Authority and Tools. Let s click on Authority Empowerment Barrier next, since it is our biggest factor. Here is the first graph we see: 15
Only about 64.5% agree or strongly agree that they have the authority they need to do their job. Scrolling down, we see the reasons that the employees have selected as their main barrier to having this authority: 16
Now this is potentially very helpful. The most common barrier to having sufficient authority is the question that starts Multiple parties must be consulted. While we want our employees to seek the input of others when it is required, this appears to be a case where the authority has not been defined well enough to know who is supposed to be making these decisions. This actually is probably what is behind the second most common answer starting with Others have authority to make decisions and the one that starts, I do not have the authority. Possibly authority definition is behind the one that starts, I have the authority to make decisions yet as well. In these cases, defining who has the authority to make decisions, who needs to be consulted, and who needs to be informed of the decision might be helpful in improving empowerment. Some OPI clients have made an abbreviated RACI matrix, with the type of decision across the top and the individuals names down the side. At the intersection, they place an R for the person who is responsible to make the decision, a C for those who should be consulted for input, but are not the decision-makers, and an I for those who need to be informed of the decision once it is made. Others have found that simply updating job descriptions is enough to define the boundaries of authority. Sometimes it is also useful to see if there is a difference between those who were empowered and those who were not. The next graph shows the same question about the barrier to authority, but the answers are filtered only to those whom were not empowered: 17
We see a slightly different story. We might now consider the response I have the authority to make decisions yet to be something that might merit our attention sooner rather than later. There are additional clues as to what to work on in the cross tabulation tables below these charts. Cross tabulations take how people answered two different questions, or the same question at different times, and count the number of answers that falls into each combination of answers. Let s take a look at the following crosstab it might be useful. It shows how people answered the Overall Empowerment question and how they answered the Authority barrier question: 18
For example, the yellow highlight shows that 18 people strongly agreed that they were empowered AND that they did not have any barriers related to Authority. We can see why Authority came out on top a strong majority of those who were not empowered (the red highlighted row sums: 15+35+30=80 people) also said that they had a barrier of some sort in Authority (the blue highlighted sums: 2+3+1+2+5+5+3+15+11+1+3+3+3+7+4=68). So I am feeling pretty confident that if I address the Authority issues raised: the ones about multiple parties, others have authority, and maybe the one about overturning decisions, that I will have a big impact on empowerment. These all seem to be best addressed by making sure everyone knows what decisions they are and are not responsible for, so I might propose that to my team and see what input they have on the idea. I will use the same approach in understanding the Tools branch on the tree, and there I might find that that the processes have not been created and that systems to do the job are inadequate. Perhaps you and your employees decide that implementing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) would be the best answer to these barriers. (Refer to Tools for Specific Empowerment Barriers on page 25 for more ideas on how to deal with identified barriers.) Using all this information, as well as talking with my direct and indirect reports, I might create a strategic plan for myself that looks like this in regards to empowerment: Strategic Intent: Achieve a breakthrough improvement in employee empowerment o Strategic Objective: Increase empowerment of my employees form 57.2% to 90% minimum by End of Year 201X Focal Point: Eliminate Authority as a barrier to my employees empowerment Sub-Focal Point: Eliminate Multiple parties and Other have authority response on empowerment inventory by clarifying roles and responsibilities with a RACI matrix. Focal Point: Eliminate Tools as a barrier to my employees empowerment 19
Sub-Focal Point: Eliminate Process have not been created and Systems are inadequate responses on empowerment inventory by creating and implementing standard operating procedures. Check Point: Maintain or slightly improve response for Knowledge at x% Check Point: Maintain or slightly improve response for Accountability at x% Check Point: Maintain or slightly improve response for Responsibility at x% When No Classification Tree is Available A classification tree only works well if you have a relatively large number of direct reports, and even then the results can be ambiguous or not helpful. In such instances, I can again look at the Data Portal output for guidance. I am going to look at the greatest barrier identified, filtered by those who were not empowered. Perhaps I see something like this: It seems that most of the people who were not empowered identified a lack of authority as the biggest barrier to them achieving empowerment. As we did with the classification tree, I can get some further detail within Authority in order to target my improvement efforts in the most beneficial way. I ll look at which barriers within Authority my non-empowered employees identified: 20
In this case, we ended up in about the same place as we did using the classification tree. This does not always happen! The tree is more powerful in figuring out what to work on in order to get the biggest effect on empowerment, and if present will give you much better direction than the bar charts. So what I end up with is something like this (using short descriptions) in my strategic plan: Strategic Intent: Achieve a breakthrough improvement in employee empowerment o Strategic Objective: Increase empowerment of my employees form 68.8% to 95% minimum by End of Year 2015 Focal Point: Eliminate Authority as a barrier to my employees empowerment Sub-Focal Point: Eliminate Multiple parties and Other have authority response on the empowerment inventory. Check Point: Maintain or slightly improve response for Tools at x% Check Point: Maintain or slightly improve response for Knowledge at x% Check Point: Maintain or slightly improve response for Accountability at x% Check Point: Maintain or slightly improve response for Responsibility at x% 21
Special Topics What if I don t have anything at all on my report? In certain circumstances, a supervisor may not have a report to view, even if their employees answered the inventory. Before the report is displayed, it has to pass some checks to make sure that an individual s answers cannot be derived by looking at the reports in different ways, and that a supervisor has at least 5 direct reports. This is done to assure all employees that their responses will remain confidential. If you don t see a report, it will be for one of these reasons, and it will say so. Still, what can you do as a supervisor to improve empowerment? Your results will roll up to your direct supervisor, so you and your direct supervisor might work on the issues identified there, as well as any organization-wide strategic effort. Notes on Neither Agree Nor Disagree The Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree scale we use in the inventory is an example of what is called a Likert item 2. It is actually recording three different things: How much agreement, if it is present How much disagreement, if it is present How many fall into the category Neither Agree Nor Disagree That last category is complex. It is difficult to know why people answer Neither Agree Nor Disagree. It is not always a statement of neutrality, rather it might be that they sometimes agree and other times do not, or maybe they don t feel they have enough information to judge, or perhaps they are using that as a polite way to disagree, or they are unwilling to commit to agreement or disagreement fearing repercussions. When managers find answers in this category, they often have a more difficult time trying to discern what to fix to make it better. That is why the three-level and fivelevel tree diagrams are available you might find that certain questions are uniquely related to this category compared to the agreement or disagreement ones. Why Not Morale or Engagement? Years ago, we used to design and execute surveys that tested what the morale of a manager s employees were, and ways of improving that morale. Nowadays there are survey instruments designed to test engagement on the job. The problem was that many things outside the control of the manager affect morale and engagement the economy, the state of the organization, whether they argued with their spouse or boss that morning, and so on. And while the feeling of empowerment is probably affected by similar things, the actual components of empowerment should be fully within the control of management at some level, and thus can be targeted for improvement. Once empowerment is achieved, the organization can then focus on the more difficult, but more rewarding, concepts of morale and engagement. After all, a job should be about more than just getting work done, but if I can t even do that, I am not likely to have high morale or be engaged! The Empowerment Inventory is Just the First Step The results of this inventory are not intended to tell a supervisor exactly what to do to improve empowerment. The environment of every supervisor is unique, and there is no realistic way to capture this in an inventory. The results are only the first step on a journey that involves you and your reports. The next step is to engage your reports in a discussion about empowerment and its components. 2 A Likert item (/ˈlɪkərt/) is a question type that is commonly used in surveys. You can learn more here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/likert_scale 22
Analytically, we try to give you information that helps to narrow the questions you need to ask of your folks. If you were to ask, What can I do to empower you? you might get a lot of feedback in all sorts of different directions, and end up being overwhelmed by things to work on. Instead, the report guides you to ask something like, I see that as a group we have identified Multiple parties must be consulted in order to make any decision related to accomplishing my job as a barrier. Regardless of whether you feel empowered or not, what barriers are you encountering in this area? This is more likely to result in a focused list of things you can address first. The inventory results are not a substitute for your experience and intelligence though! Using the reports and your knowledge, we hope you will be able to find the most efficient way to improve the empowerment of your personnel. Also keep in mind we are trying to identify systemic barriers to empowerment, so it doesn t really matter if only one person has selected a barrier that one person may well be representing something that all the employees experience. Again, that is why getting additional input from your employees is so important. Flow Chart to Create an Empowerment Plan A more general flow chart walks you through other situations you might encounter: 23
Yes 24
Tools for Specific Empowerment Barriers You might find the following information helpful as you look for ways to address specific issues in the report. Component Barrier Tool / Approach N/A A low response rate is often due to one of the following factors: Fear in the workplace. For one reason or Low Response Rate another, people fear retribution if they answer the inventory. Here the best approach is to have a clear message that no retribution will be tolerated, and to have each supervisor encourage responding I do not have the skill set to accomplish Identify needed professional development and training my job I do not have access to the training I need to accomplish my job Identify needed professional development and training, make sure resources are set aside to do this Knowledge I do not know who my customers are Define who spends money on our products and services, or who benefits by the things we do I do not have insight into my organization's strategic direction This is typically fixed by communicating and deploying the strategic plan throughout the organization. I do not know where my unit fits into my organization's goals This is typically fixed by communicating and deploying the strategic plan throughout the organization. The systems available to do my job are Identify which systems are inadequate. What is inadequate needed to make them adequate? Can anything short Tools Responsibility I do not have the necessary employees or teammates to accomplish my job My personal hardware is inadequate to accomplish my job I do not have access to the other resources necessary to do my job Processes necessary to do my job have not been created I do not have insight into my performance goals and objectives I do not understand my job responsibilities of complete replacement help? What job functions are missing? Is it possible to get these functions without additional hires, perhaps through cross-training? If not, what specifically is needed in a new employee or teammate? Identify what specifically is needed. Identify specifically what is needed. This is typically either a lack of standard operating procedures or workflow/work instructions. If you would like to learn more about standard operating procedures, OPI can help you with some resources. This typically points to an issue in the performance evaluation system or job description. OPI has resources to help improve the performance goal setting process. This typically points to an issue in the performance evaluation system or job description. OPI has resources to help improve the performance goal setting process. 25
Component Barrier Tool / Approach My performance goals do not align with my job responsibilities This typically points to an issue in the performance evaluation system or job description. OPI has resources to help improve the performance goal Accountability Authority I do not understand how my goals and responsibilities fit into my organization's strategy I do not know the optimal way to achieve the goals and objectives my management team has given me I am not held accountable for my job goals and responsibilities I can't accomplish my job because others are not held accountable for their goals and responsibilities I am held accountable for responsibilities outside of my span of control I am held accountable for goals and responsibilities that I was never informed of throughout the year I am not regularly given feedback on whether I am meeting my job goals and responsibilities I cannot achieve the objectives I am held accountable for because I do not have the necessary resources I do not have the authority to make the decisions necessary to do my job I have the authority to make decisions yet my decisions are consistently overturned by others setting process. This is typically fixed by communicating and deploying the strategic plan throughout the organization. Often this comes back to knowing how to approach objectives. Continuous improvement requirements call for daily management. Breakthrough improvements might be around problem elimination, where you would use the problem-solving strategy, or control of the variation or average of a process, where the quality improvement process is useful. In some cases involving product or service design, it may involve a design process like Advanced Quality Planning. OPI has resources for all of these approaches. Good news: people are comfortable reporting this. This typically points to an issue in the performance evaluation system or job description. OPI has resources to help improve the performance goal setting process. This is usually a misunderstanding with someone. Communicating job responsibilities (and what people are not responsible for) is helpful here. One tool that is useful is a RACI matrix. This typically points to an issue in the performance evaluation system or job description. OPI has resources to help improve the performance goal setting process. This typically points to an issue in the performance evaluation system or job description. OPI has resources to help improve the performance goal setting process. This has to do with setting up more frequent meetings between managers and their employees. Once a week or once a month face-to-face meetings are helpful. Either identify and procure the needed resources, or modify performance requirements to remove the accountability. Either they are correct, and they need more positional authority to do their job, or these decisions are not part of their job and they need to know, or these decisions need to be allocated elsewhere. This results in a conflict of understanding who is empowered to make the decision. Communicating job responsibilities (and what people are not responsible for) is helpful here. One tool that is useful is a RACI matrix. 26
Component Barrier Tool / Approach Others have authority to make decisions about items that are necessary to accomplish my goals and responsibilities This results in a conflict of understanding who is empowered to make the decision. Communicating job responsibilities (and what people are not responsible for) is helpful here. One tool that is useful is a RACI Multiple parties must be consulted in order to make any decision related to accomplishing my job matrix. We want people to seek advice when it is appropriate, but we don t want them to feel like they must consult everyone. Communicating job responsibilities (and what people are not responsible for) is helpful here. One tool that is useful is a RACI matrix. Conclusions The Employee Empowerment Inventory can tell a supervisor if their employees feel like they can do the job for which they were hired. But more importantly, it is designed to give a supervisor the ability to prioritize their activities to improve empowerment in order to get the biggest gains as fast as possible. Keep in mind that the inventory and the report are only information it is up to the supervisor to use this information along with their experience and knowledge of their reports, to make a plan and hold themselves responsible for executing it. Can this be effective? In the example we used above, an organization created a strategic plan to improve empowerment, among other things, and invested a lot of time and effort so that each supervisor created their own plan and were held accountable for following that plan. Over the course of two and a half years, the response rate went from 64% to 96%. It took a lot of work by a lot of people, but the results are really gratifying. I think most supervisors that you might ask about the changes would tell you that the work environment is better. There is still work do, but at least people mostly 27
feel that they can do the basic job. This frees up time and effort to move the work to the next level where employees have an emotional connection to their job and its success. 28