Business Studies | Creating a Business

Empowerment and Team working!

Empowerment involves redesigning employee’s jobs to allow them greater control over their working lives. Empowerment gives employees the opportunity to decide how to carry out their duties and how to organise their work.

Empowerment can make work more interesting as it offers opportunities to meet a number of individual needs. Empowered workers can propose and implement new methods of working as they bring a new perspective to decision-making. They may spend a part of their working lives considering the problems they face and proposing solutions.

Vauxhall Motors operated empowerment teams at its Luton plant. In 1998, one team proved productivity by designing a swing chair to improve access to cars on the production line. Using the chair made it easier for employees to move in and out of the cars when adding components and improved productivity.

Empowerment would receive the approval of Maslow and Hertzberg. It provides motivators, as well as offering employees the opportunity to fulfil higher needs.

Employees require training if they are to be empowered. They are unlikely to have the skills necessary to schedule tasks, solve problems, recruit new employees and introduce new working practices. It takes time to implement empowerment and teething problems are common.

Team working

Team working exists when an organisation breaks down its production processes into large units instead of relying upon the use of the division of labour. Teams are then given responsibility for completing the large units of work. Team members carry out a variety of duties including planning, problem solving and target-setting.

A number of different team types operate within businesses:

-         Production teams – many production lines have been organised into distinct elements called cells. Each of these cells is staffed by teams whose members are multi-skilled. They monitor product quality and ensure that production targets are met.

-         Quality circle teams – these are small teams designed to propose solutions to existing problems and to suggest improvements in production methods. The teams contain members drawn from all levels within the organisation.

-         Management teams – increasingly, managers see themselves as complementary teams establishing the organisations objectives and overseeing their achievement.

There has been a major trend in businesses towards team working over recent years. Team Working is a major part of the so-called Japanese approach to production and its benefits have been extolled by major companies such as Honda and John Lewis.

Team working offers employees the opportunity to meet their social needs, as identified by Maslow; Hertzberg identified relationships with fellow workers as a hygiene factor. However, much of the motivational force arising from team working comes with the change in job design that usually accompanies it. Team working requires jobs to be redesigned, offering employees the chance to fulfil some of the higher needs identified by Maslow such as esteem needs. Similarly, team working offers some of the motivators, for example – achievement.

This is an example which can be used in team working

The style of leadership – Some managers are content to give employees greater freedom in organising their working liven in an attempt to motivate them. Others prefer to retain control and rely on monetary techniques of motivation.