Comments on: Employee “Empowerment” and Corporate Culture

By: Dchestnut

Dchestnut — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The notion that companies only care about what pleases customers and the bottom line is about to change. Although in it’s infancy, new concept called Income
Reengineering idealizes a complete “large scale” transformation from the
old industrial age wage-based compensation infrastructure to a new
compensation model called the Empowered Employee Compensation Model
(EECM). The EECM strongly emphasizes and accents employee empowerment by
replacing traditional wage-based compensation with ten (10) new income
streams, which are anchored in productivity and ownership based
principles as well as collaborative financial benefits. This new compensation will naturally motivate employees to go out of their way to please customers and help the corporate bottom line because it helps their bottom line in terms of productivity and ownership based compensation. You can learn more about this at http://www.incomereengineering.com

By: Moonbunnychan

Moonbunnychan — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 05:44:00 +0000

I’ve noticed quite a terrible side effect of the “make the customer happy no matter what’, in that I’ve noticed my customers at the store I’ve worked at the past 10 years getting more and more demanding and ridiculous. They now just expect me to break the rules and get uppity when I won’t or can’t. It’s like we’re training people that the fastest and best way to get what they want is to throw a tantrum like a child.

By: decius

decius — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 17:30:00 +0000

Who is responsible for the employees’ wide discretion, if not the employee? “Use your own discretion” does not provide any guidance at all.

‘Empowerment’, used in the real sense and not the buzzword sense, is a policy that permits front-line employees to decide that policy is stupid and deviate from policy at their own discretion. They are responsible for all of their deviations and lacks of deviation.

By: Barney

Barney — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 07:38:00 +0000

I don’t see why that has to be true if the rules state that employees have wide ranging discretion to make their own decisions.

By: Village Idiot

Village Idiot — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 22:54:00 +0000

And on top of all that, you’re also “empowered” to piss in a cup so they can peek into your body/private life as well.

It’s a classic Catch-22 (for civilians), and I bet some folks think it’s funny. For now.

By: decius

decius — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 17:39:00 +0000

If you want a job where you can follow rules and not be blamed for what happens, you don’t want a job where you are empowered. Company policy can only cover some percentage of cases, and a policy that covers 99.9% of cases is ten times as complicated as one that covers 99% of cases.

By: Barney

Barney — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 16:51:00 +0000

Why not rewrite the rules so the need to break them doesn’t arise? Perhaps specify the expected usual behavior but state that employees can choose to do something different when the judge it to be appropriate, all as part of the rules.

Some employees might not be comfortable breaking the rules, even if management has communicated that they should be prepared to, and if an employee does break the rules then they could be at risk of taking the blame for anything that goes wrong, and perhaps disciplinary action.

By: Guest

Guest — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 12:16:00 +0000

The Home Depot sign is written as if the audience is employees, but the audience is actually both customers and employees. So it conflates two different things: customer service expectations, which benefit the customer and the company but not necessarily the employee, and empowerment of the employee, which benefits the employee and the customer but not necessarily the company.

I worked in a retail environment known for having very demanding and entitled customers. Our company paid very little but there were so many highly skilled people in need of jobs that even the part-time cashiers were almost all university-educated and had additional expertise in our field (such as management experience in another retailer in the same field). We put up with the hard hours, low wages and difficult customers because we were empowered in a way I’ve rarely seen in retail.

We were never, ever reprimanded for making a customer happy. Creative solutions, even if they were expensive, were encouraged. We were also empowered to stop dealing with customers who crossed the line and became abusive, which did wonders for our emotional health. The thrill of solving a customer’s difficult problem was very satisfying, and motivated me much more than pay or perks could have done.

While this did help the company immensely in creating a reputation for excellent service, it was a serious perk to us at the store level, too–unlike so many retail employees, we were recognized as high-functioning adults.

By: Empowerment (Don’t Just Point!), The Failed Meritocracy, A Pregnant Lady in Charge? « Miscellany, Etc.

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 04:28:23 +0000

[…] Neat blurb about employee empowerment and how it’s been completely reframed to mesh with employer needs–definitely something to think about as we consider how we want to keep restructuring our culture. You know, I had to take this (completely insulting to my intelligence) course called “Success and Study Skills.” Maybe it’s because community colleges often train students in a more vocational capacity, but it was incredible to what extent the workaholic, corporate culture was present in the textbook. The author kept exhorting the value of finding a career you were happy with, since you’d have to go to work 50 weeks per year. How does that sound at all reasonable? How can a person be happy when they spend the majority of their productive years helping someone else have a comfortable life while they’re barely getting by? What’s so horrible about the European model, with way more vacation time? It’s not like we need to spend as much time doing work to be productive, the rate of productivity in modern times has been through the roof! […]

By: Empowerment versus Amazon? | Social Proof

Empowerment versus Amazon? | Social Proof — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 13:45:52 +0000

[…] might be tempted to think that empowering your front-line staff might be the answer to the threat of Amazon, but understand that front-line staff could give away […]

By: Gilbert Pinfold

Gilbert Pinfold — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 01:30:00 +0000

There is an interesting contradiction building in the corporate world between this idea of limited discretion to exercise initiative in customer service and the ongoing infantilization of the workforce.

The latter comes from contemporary ‘best practice’ of procedurizing every last aspect of a job; leaving nothing to supposedly subjective notions such as commonsense. Industrial relations law has become a kind of game: Where does it say in the ‘standards and behaviours’ manual that I can’t pick my nose? This loophole is duly fixed and the lawyers suggest also inserting ‘scratch ass’, ‘rub balls’ and ‘eat earwax’ among the prohibitions; and so it goes on until the belly-button lint incident…

Into this over-regulated environment, some employers try to inject ‘empowerment’. Its a recipe for confusion and further alienation.

By: guest

guest — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 01:00:00 +0000

This was later in the article, though it should have been front and center:
“Therefore, while supporting employee engagement as a driver of
higher production, Dr. Juniper believes that management concern for
employee wellbeing significantly enhances the former theory when
combined with the latter.”

The thing of the entire article though is that it too is completely written around increased productivity.

By: guest

guest — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 00:57:00 +0000

“Dr. Bridget Juniper, writing for the May 2012 issue of
Occupational Health, is a passionate advocate of the importance of
employee wellbeing versus employee engagement. Dr. Juniper is convinced
that this focus will improve workplace performance.”

http://www.mykelly.us/eprise/main/web/us/mykelly/en/careertips_july2012_wellbeing

As if it’s an either/or choice.

By: Trilby

Trilby — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 23:54:00 +0000

This is why workers are often referred to as “wage slaves”.

By: decius

decius — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 21:39:00 +0000

You never have to submit to a search by your (potentially former) employer. If they try to, when you decide to quit, goad them into a false arrest and prosecute them.

There are companies that actually care about their people, and don’t pull that kind of shit.