n this module we consider developing a knowledgeable workforce, empowering our employees, strategic leadership, and cross-functional collaboration. As a leader, discuss the benefits and potential pitfalls of an empowered workforce. Share a time in your career in which you have seen how empowering has created positive results in the workplace or, as an alternative, empowering has created more conflict. Consider the following short video with your initial post.
In this video, Empower your employees, professor Dr. Daisy Lovelace explains that empowered employees have positive experiences and, as a result, produce positive results.
Be sure to submit a substantive initial discussion post by Thursday at 11:59 p.m. MT and to reply to 2 or more peers with substantive responses by Sunday at 11:59 p.m. MT. A substantive initial discussion post completely answers the question presented and may add a thoughtful question pertaining to the topic. When replying to peer initial posts, discuss whether you agree with their actions, ask an inquisitive question, and recommend at least one alternative action based on the required readings, your own research, and personal experience. Substantive replies to your peers add to a discussion. Simply stating, “I agree” or “great response” is not substantive.
bTHIS IS JUST 2 RESPONSE TO TWO LEARNERS BASED ON THE OTHER ASSIGNMENT YOU COMPLETED FOR ME.
LEARNER ONE:
Throughout my leadership, I have struggle to balance between helping and supporting my team and enabling and dis-empowering them. When I have a new team due to a job or position change, I find myself working really hard to ensure that the team knows I’m committed and supportive. After a period of time, I begin to notice that employees are coming to me with issues easily handled by that individual. I find that I have to make a shift, and hopefully I do this in time. I take an honest approach and tell them that I want them to have more autonomy and that I trust their judgement.
As the employees begin to feel more empowered, it seems their engagement improves. Nurses will take it upon themselves to reorganize a storage space or create something for the patients. And while I know this is the ultimate goal for my leadership, I still tend to take on everything in an attempt to show that I’m a hard worker. To the employees, this translates as micromanaging or results in laziness or both.
However, in my experience, empowerment without boundaries is problematic. Sometimes when a nurse take initiative to reorganize a storage closet, for example, other nurses or techs become frustrated. Either they struggle with any changes or their workflow has been negatively impacted. This typically results in the employee complaining to me and a conversation regard who is “allowed” to do what. I suppose managing a team of nurses is quite different than managing a creative team or a corporate team where everyone has a personal workspace. I would imagine that those in other service industries such as food and hospitality also struggle with similar issues.
What I’ve learned from these situations is to empower nurses and techs to feel they can make changes to the workspace but also coach them to make sure those impacted are consulted. Empowering employees means that they would come to you for advice, not directives (Weiss, W.H. (2020).
Weiss, W. H. (2020). Building morale, motivating and empowering employees. Supervision, 81(2), 5–8.
LEARNER TWO:
Greater autonomy in the workplace is certainly a positive, as it leads to greater employee engagement and more ownership over projects and investment in the overall business success. Empowering employees to make greater decisions can increase productivity and the ability to solve smaller problems without interference from managers. One aspect necessary for greater employee empowerment is the need for more specialized training. While it can be empowering to make decisions, it can become a huge time suck if managers have to go back and fix problems that arise from employees making ill-informed decisions or not having the proper training and guidance before acting. With proper training and preparation, empowered employees can feel a greater connection to and a larger stake in the organization that can produce better results (Hamlin, 2016).
I currently work as an HR manager for a health system in a large university hospital. I am in favor of empowering employees so that management isn’t brought in to every small decision throughout the day, eating into our time to focus on larger needs. One caveat to empowerment is that it can take more time for employees to come to a decision on their own without a decisive answer from someone in a leadership role. While this isn’t always an issue, it can slow down production on larger projects and extend our timelines when rolling out new resources within the hospital system. One thing I try and do as a manager is to encourage my team to meet and come to some level of agreement before looping me in and I can then weigh in once they have made the initial decisions and steps toward resolution.
Jaime Devine
Hamlin, K. (2016, October 26). The Pro & Cons of empowerment in an organization. Small Business Chronicle. Retrieved from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/pro-cons-empowerment-organization-13397.html
AMJKan hour ago
This is what you wrote for me: According to Dr. Daisy, the middle manager in the organization tries to impact by empowering employees from a middle-level perspective. By deploying strategies such as personal leadership and empowering teams, middle managers can influence and persuade strategies employees could use in the workforce. Despite middle managers linking the top management and operating managers, they have a responsibility to work toward ensuring the productivity of the organization. Empowering could encourage employees’ productivity by authorizing them to make specific decisions on how to perform their duties other than having the manager provide every direction on how they should perform. While empowering employees, the organization is likely to be positively or negatively impacted during the implementation stage. Some of the benefits attributed to employees’ empowerment include improving employees’ general productivity towards work, and employees can make informed decisions about the resources needed in the corporate interest. Employee morale is increased since tension and pressure existing from supervisors are eliminated. Additionally, employees feel satisfied with the experience gained in the job environment. Employees get to determine their limits which is like not to be attained when not empowered; this reducesemployees’ tendency to quit (Cletus et al., 2018). Managers’ and supervisors’ responsibilities are reduced since employees can perform all daily routines. Thus, managers can formulate essential company strategies and network the teams. My personal experience as a middle manager is an organization I previously worked with; employee empowerment is an important tool that should be adopted but still needs to be controlled. Despite it being attributed to the benefits discussed above, we still need to control the level of empowerment to ensure effectiveness and efficiency. Some of the challenges likely to be reported are a blurred chain of command since the hierarchy of management is not streamlined to ensure all decisions from top management are not undertaken. With inadequate training of employees, the values of the business andindividual employee is likely to clash since every individual works in their interest. References Dr. Daisy Lovelace. (n.d.). Retrieved May 3, 2022, from https://www.linkedin.com/learning/leading-from-the-middle Cletus, H. E., Mahmood, N. A., Umar, A., & Ibrahim, A. D. (2018). Prospects and challenges of workplace diversity in modern-day organizations: A critical review. HOLISTIC–Journal of Business and Public Administration, 9(2), 35-52.