Organizations are driven by people. These people called employees work individually and in teams to support the growth of organizations.
While organizations believe talented people will make the work of business growth easy, we have seen that this does not happen. Infact, there is a challenge of employee turnover.
Talented people leave organizations for various reasons. The chief of them being lack or inadequate empowerment.
Employee Empowerment, according to Hollenbeck et al in their book; Fundamentals for Human Resource Management, means “giving employees responsibility and commitment to make decisions regarding all aspects of product development or customer service.”
This means that employees should always at times be given the free will to bring up new ideas towards developing an organization in a more independent way.
The authors found out that the level of employee commitment is largely determined by employee empowerment.
Committing oneself to a particular organization can demand a lot to be required as it will involve the emotions and psychology of an individual towards how they allow them to affect their attitude towards work.
This workplace commitment can include: Organizational Commitment and Individual Commitment.
Organizational Commitment– This is seen as the rate at which the employee relates with the organization in terms of the values and goals that the organization seeks to uphold. This can occur when employees ensures that they put to use all they have to develop the organization. This can include the knowledge they have gathered and how they can use such knowledge to drive their commitment towards the organization.
Individual Commitment– This is reflected in the way and manner an individual channels their emotions and psychology towards building a lifestyle of commitment, both personally and collectively. The essence of this form of commitment is to instill the spirit of oneness and togetherness towards making positive efforts to develop the organization at large.
This strategy of empowerment is useful to organizations, and it can in turn boost the capacity of employees to effectively commit themselves to working better to bring about improved benefits for the organization. The commitment of employees can at the same time be reduced when the leaders in the organization do not give room for trust in the employees, which will hinder their growth and productivity.
When leaders, supervisors and executives, commit to the employees at large, some activities, without stringent supervision, the employees can therefore be motivated, as they feel to be trusted to perform adequately and effectively.
Little wonder why organizations of today, knowing that employees are largely knowledgeable and are prone to learning more, have ensured that they empower them in many ways. These can include; effective training on some certain skills, improving their welfare both financially and health wise, the area of roundtable discussion with the executives and board of directors, they also provide empowerment and stimulate the drive in the employees to improve their efforts on the job.
Finally, there is a huge synergy that exists between the level of improved commitment of employees and the empowerment opportunities available to them. It is therefore important that organizations leverage on this fact to maintain a good and effective workforce commitment towards sustaining and maintaining the organization’s goals, aims and objectives.
