Introduction
Employee empowerment influences the competitive advantage of an organization. According to Tampi et al. (2022), employee empowerment refers to how organizations deal with things they require to succeed. It takes the form of providing employees with the necessary training and authority in work, recognizing employees frequently to enhance their confidence and engagement, providing opportunities for them to grow through new roles, additional responsibilities, and autonomy, and allowing employees to air their voices regarding matters that surround their work such as soliciting and responding to their feedback. The human resources department, together with the firm’s top leadership, is responsible for empowering employees. Various benefits result from empowering employees. Some benefits include enhanced motivation, improved creativity, greater trust in leadership, and a more robust bottom line. Notably, this discussion focuses on employee empowerment can be a source of competitive advantage and evaluates various models that can be applied to empower employees.
Employee empowerment and competitive advantage
Employee empowerment contributes to an organization’s competitive advantage through innovation. Innovation refers to the mechanisms of developing new ideas for doing things and accomplishing tasks. Innovation drives competition among firms in the market and is a significant source of competitive advantage. Traditionally, innovation was associated with an organization’s research and development efforts. However, this is not the case anymore, as innovative ideas are more likely to originate from any part of the organization, including employees at the bottom of the pyramid (Ntwiga et al., 2021). As a result, the empowerment of employees to innovate and contribute to the organization’s overall innovation is a source of competitive advantage. When employees can contribute their ideas to the company, they feel empowered, and their gross contribution can immensely lead to overall company success.
Employee empowerment enhances organizational competitive advantage due to the changing industrial landscape. According to Hamawandy (2021), employee empowerment has become a source of competitive advantage due to considering human capital as the most important asset a given firm owns. As a result, innovation-driven companies and customer-centric organizations have discovered that competitors cannot copy the competitive advantage held in people. All other sources of competitive advantage, such as technology and production process, can be copied. However, it is impossible to copy and match a highly empowered workforce, thus, sourcing a competitive advantage from employee empowerment.
Competitive advantages require time to build and sustain in any organization. The same case applies to employee empowerment. According to Ahmad et al. (2021), competitive advantage comes in providing higher prices justified with additional benefits or taking the form of lower prices to create value. One undisputed way of attaining competitive advantage is by producing high-quality services and products. Most organizations commit to producing quality products in the modern business world, even in non-competitive sectors. However, for an organization to achieve high-quality products, it must get things right from the beginning of production to the end rather than waiting until the end to inspect and resolve quality issues. Notably, this is where the importance of employee empowerment comes in. The best way to get things right throughout the production processes is through people who perform their best to control all activities (Makridis & Han, 2021). Problems mainly occur when employees are limited in how to act to implement the required changes. However, with empowerment, employees are not limited in their operations and fully take control of them, leading to quality products that generate a competitive advantage for an organization.
Organizations require an alignment that allows them to take full advantage of their abilities. However, it is impossible to take full advantage of unmotivated employees. On the contrary, motivated employees are empowered to contribute to organizational success. Therefore, achieving empowerment of employees entails developing and incorporating ways to motivate workers in the organization. One unique way of attaining this crucial aspect is through creating policies that ensure human resources are utilized fully for maximized results. Organizations should ensure they promote and motivate their workers from within to achieve sustainable employee empowerment. For instance, they can conduct period job rotations to ensure employees develop and obtain a holistic perspective toward the organization (Zainal & Salloum, 2021). Further, the organization should employ new workers to positions internally as a means to motivate workers. The resultant effect will be a motivated workforce that will ensure the organization’s objectives are met, including attaining a competitive advantage.
Employee empowerment contributes to competitive advantage due to its unique and distinct advantages regarding employee productivity, commitment, and satisfaction. According to Safari et al. (2020), this occurs because when employees are empowered, they tend to align their professional growth goals with the organization’s objective. As a result, employees take ownership of attaining organizational goals since it is a way of also attaining their professional goals. One primary organizational objective pursued by almost all organizations is obtaining a competitive position in the operation market. It thus becomes easier to work towards its achievement because it falls within employees’ professional growth. Solid and focused teams contribute to competitive advantage because the teams are responsible for developing products internally that are later delivered to the market for competitive advantage as sales are made. Focused teams are built by empowering employees to self-organize into their work teams and select their preferred leader. Essentially, this establishes an association between employee empowerment and achieving competitive advantage.
Employee empowerment often allows organizations to develop a culture that enhances the creation and sustenance of competitive advantages. Competitive advantage building is anchored on quality products, adaptation, process improvement, and production process inspection to achieve peak performance and excellence in production. Notably, this becomes an organizational culture when employees are empowered because they get excited, derive more energy, and take more pride in the products produced (Dahou & Hacini, 2018). Thus, organizations are responsible for empowering employees by discarding barriers that hinder the empowerment of workers in maintaining the culture. The overall results of this quality culture include higher sales and motivated employees, true competitive advantage, and greater customer loyalty.
Employee empowerment models
Empowerment triangle model
One of the most common models of empowering employees is the empowerment triangle model developed in the 1990s by Eichinger Robert (Larson & Larson, 2020). The model forms a triangle because of its three primary forming elements. They include a coach referred to as the rescuer, and a challenger considered the persecutor, and a creator who is the victim. All these three components are essential in empowering employees sustainably within an organization. Each component is limited by the other two components in the triangle. For instance, a manager cannot empower others to gain complete control over their work unless a clear strategy and vision are created. The empowerment triangle adopts a multi-stakeholder approach whereby all stakeholders, including employees, participate in creating empowerment, creativity, and ideas. The model enhances employee retention and empowers them by making them feel valued and part of the decisions made in the organization.
Volunteer empowerment
The volunteering model of empowerment allows employees to volunteer themselves to perform social work. Notably, this empowerment model derives its relevance from the fact that organizations attract, motivate and retain a new talented workforce when employees are offered an opportunity to engage in social activities through volunteering (Traege & Alfes, 2019). Additionally, employees feel motivated and empowered when contributing to achieving societal goals. They achieve this through various actions, such as accepting pay cuts and making payments to sustainability activities. An organization should use this model as a means of talent management, offering intangible rewards to their workers, recruiting new workforce, and enhancing the sense of fulfillment and meaning for a fit between employee values and those of the company.
Employee governance model
The model is developed because employees are empowered when their contribution is recognized in governance. Thus, employees are allowed to contribute to decision-making processes and take ownership of the decisions made in the organization. By doing so, employees feel empowered to contribute to the organization’s overall success (Su et al., 2018). However, the model requires careful incorporation of employees’ ideas into the overall decision-making process, and that role should not be relegated to them because they may not make the right decisions at times.
Conclusion
Employee empowerment influences the competitive advantage of an organization. It takes the form of providing employees with the training and authority required in work, recognizing employees frequently to enhance their confidence and engagement, providing opportunities for them to grow through new roles, additional responsibilities, and autonomy, and allowing employees to air their voices regarding matters that surround their work such as soliciting and responding to their feedback. Employee empowerment contributes to organizational competitive advantage through enhanced product quality, motivation, and innovativeness. Finally, three models should be considered in employee empowerment. They include the empowerment triangle mode, volunteering model, and employee governance model.
References
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