Chapter 9: Empowerment and Quality

Chapter 9: Empowerment and the Quality Imperative

• Empowerment is the expansion of employee knowledge, tasks, and decision-making responsibilities.
• Employee participation positively impacts business success, rarely having a negative or neutral effect.
• Employee ownership combined with participation motivates employees.
• Questions to diagnose the need for empowerment include:
  • Do people seem uninterested in their work?
  • Are absenteeism or turnover rates too high?
  • Do people lack loyalty and team spirit?
  • Is there a lack of communication among individuals and groups?
  • Is there a low level of pride?
  • Are costs too high because of waste and inefficiency?
  • Does the quality of product or service need improvement?
• Empowerment is driven by efforts to enhance performance.
• In a global economy, the path to success is challenging.
• Strong management is needed to overcome significant obstacles.
• Employees' attention and effort address smaller obstacles.
• Jack Welch, General Electric CEO, stressed the importance of strong leaders who are:
  • High energy individuals
  • Able to energize others
  • Capable of making tough decisions
  • Skilled in executing strategy
• Welch reformed General Electric practices and culture by:
  • Eliminating bureaucratic management
  • Launching the workout process
  • Sharing ideas across the company
  • Rewarding innovation and implementation
  • Borrowing ideas from other companies
• Principles of an empowered workplace:
  • Trust in employees' ability to achieve organizational goals.
  • Invest in employees as the most important organizational resource.
  • Recognize employee accomplishments.
  • Provide symbolic rewards to acknowledge employee value.
• Decentralize decision-making, placing responsibility as close to the customer as possible.
• View work as a cooperative effort.
  • Encourage teamwork to boost achievement.
• The following table outlines empowered, out-of-control, and unempowered workplace approaches to decision making.
• The following table outlines empowered, out-of-control, and unempowered workplace approaches to various processes.
• Accurate, timely, and complete information is crucial; employees prefer information from immediate supervisors
• Effective leaders are constantly communicating, even when not speaking.
• A closed office door sends a powerful message.
• Leaders should tailor their communication to the audience.
• Employees need to know:
  • The company's grand plan (purpose, values, and success strategies.)
  • Expectations, reasons, and associated consequences of their actions
  • Feedback on performance and recognition for their efforts.
• Effective communication requires a top-down process, ensuring that everyone understands the message
• Leaders are accountable for effective communication.
• To effectively conduct meetings:
  • Conduct meetings only when necessary.
  • Clearly define objectives with an agenda prior to the meeting.
  • Invite participants and provide necessary materials beforehand.
  • Set a time and place suitable for effective and efficient work with all attendees accommodated.
  • Encourage active participation from attendees.
  • Establish clear action steps and responsibilities.
  • Record and distribute meeting minutes.
• Common communication problems include distance, distortion, fear, trust factors, size, complexity, and conflicts
• People matter: Rene McPherson, past president of Dana Corporation, emphasizes employee importance.
• Leadership requires:
  • A vision
  • Demanding standards
  • Detail-oriented attention to small elements
  • Sharing credit for successes
  • Calm and kind demeanor
  • Fixing problems
  • Maintaining optimism
• The struggle to compete in the global marketplace emphasizes the importance of quality.
• Quality products and services are an inherent consumer demand.
• A talented, committed, and empowered workforce is crucial to meeting consumer demands for quality
• Quality management principles include:
  • Participative leadership
  • Continuous process improvement
  • Effective use of groups
• W. Edwards Deming highlighted the importance of participation in restructuring the Japanese economy, and the Deming Prize for exceptional quality control.
  • Teaching statistical quality control tools/techniques to employees who can then improve quality.
  • Management recognizing the importance of employee input to quality process improvement.
• Deming emphasized quality building and cost reduction over time.
• He stressed the importance of creating a strong system and consistency of purpose, the necessity to use statistical measurement to reduce variation issues, and emphasized teamwork between workers and managers.
• The Deming Chain Reaction reveals that better quality leads to decreased costs, improved productivity, market capture, business survival, and increased job opportunities.
• Continuous improvement methods:
  • Create consistency and purpose
  • Establish high standards
  • Eliminate dependence on inspection for quality
  • Reduce supplier numbers
  • Recognize that system issues are frequently the source of defects, not the worker
  • Improve job training
  • Provide higher supervision levels
  • Break down department barriers
  • Eliminate fear by promoting open communication
  • Remove/avoid numerical goals & slogans
  • Use statistical methods for continuous improvement of quality/productivity.
  • Remove obstacles to pride of work
  • Institute programs for employee education and training
  • Ensure management's commitment to quality/productivity
• Classical/behaviorist viewpoints on managing complex environments emphasize embracing the strengths of different perspectives.
• Strong quality improvement/continuous quality improvement philosophies stem from scientific management and human relations principles.
• A balance between these two approaches helps ensure wide acceptance among managers.
• U.S. companies realized that traditional approaches to managing quality were insufficient for achieving world-class quality.
• The total quality management (TQM) model was adopted to address gaps in traditional approaches
• TQM emphasizes building in quality and prevention-based strategies over inspection.
• TQM's success leads to improvements in areas such as:
  • Business productivity
  • Employee relations
  • Productivity gains
  • Improved customer satisfaction
  • Increased market share
  • Enhanced profitability
• Common traits of companies experiencing successful quality initiatives:
  • Prioritize customer needs
  • Incorporate values into company operations
  • Empower and train all employees
  • Integrate quality-focused processes for continuous improvement
• The implicit value system of the quality movement emphasizes the repeating of past processes yielding no change, therefore, if you want to see improvement—a different approach is required.
• Contemporary improvement methods such as Six Sigma, lean manufacturing, checklist procedures, and ISO standards reflect modern approaches to quality enhancement that continue to be relevant today.
• Continuous improvement underscores the importance of accurate data, insightful analysis, creative thinking, reliable measurements of inputs/outputs, and workforce discipline.
• Continuous improvement standards are found in eight areas:
  • Customer focus
  • Leadership
  • Employee Involvement
  • Process-oriented work
  • Systems-focused management
  • Continued improvement
  • Data-driven decision making
  • Mutually beneficial supplier relationships
• Successful initiatives for improved quality performance incorporate:
  • Management commitment
  • Employee support
  • Thorough training
  • Consistent application of principles and practices
  • Positive reinforcement
• Six Sigma quality: Statistical tools for analyzing product defects.
• Lean manufacturing: Approach to improving business performance for quality, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness.
• Checklist procedures: Well conceived, communicated, and executed procedures.
• ISO standards: Voluntary quality standards developed by the International Organization for Standardization.
• ISO standards of performance are set in eight areas:
  • Customer focus
  • Leadership
  • Involvement of people
  • Process approach to work
  • System approach to management
  • Continual improvement
  • Factual approach to decision making
  • Mutually beneficial supplier relationships.

Explore the themes of empowerment and its critical role in enhancing quality within organizations. This quiz will examine employee participation, motivation, and management strategies essential for business success. Understand the signs that indicate a need for empowerment and how these factors contribute to overall performance.