Trust, Empowerment, and Training Initiatives

This review examines the erosion of trust that arises, and the subsequent loss of organizational productivity, when appropriate training initiatives do not accompany employee empowerment programs. Examined are articles focusing on the loss of trust from managers if they feel defensive and the loss of trust from employees if they feel they are being taken advantage of. In either of these instances a loss of productivity can result for the organization. Research concludes that it is ultimately up to the organization to ensure that empowerment programs are implemented with appropriate training to ensure that both managers and their subordinates are comfortable with the process and do not feel threatened if they are to realize the performance gains expected from these programs. Success in employee empowerment programs is determined by the level of trust that exists bi-directionally between managers and their employees. A theoretical framework is outlined with employee empowerment as an independent variable, productivity as the dependent variable, and trust examined as an intervening variable with moderating variables on this process including manager training and employee training. Hypotheses are examined concerning if the implementation of training programs for both manager and their subordinates lead to successful employee empowerment programs as measured by increased productivity and a research process is outlined to examine issues of trust in organizations that have successfully and unsuccessfully attempted employee empowerment programs.

What exactly is the relationship between a sense of employee empowerment and productivity and why does it sometimes fail to the extent that both managers and employees feel threatened when it is implemented? Much of the literature written concerning the problems with empowering the workforce concentrates on the issue of trust. Issues of trust can arise on either the management or the employee side of the relationship. Managers can be hesitant to lose the control that they have earned in the workplace, while employees can lose their sense of security by being forced to make decisions they feel they aren’t prepared or authorized to make. Additionally employees may feel they aren’t being compensated to make certain decisions and if employees feel that the commitment of management isn’t genuine, they will often feel less empowered. Management attempting to empower their workers in an unplanned or hesitant manner, where managers aren’t fully committed to the empowerment process, can cause misgivings and actually lead to a loss in productivity rather than the anticipated gain.

Literature Review:
Ford and Fottler, (1995), distinguish between “job content”, the tasks and procedures of a particular job, and “job context”, the reason an organization needs the work performed, maintaining that “content” is easier to confer upon workers and “context” takes training and that empowerment should be awarded incrementally to employees by competent managers who need to question whether they are willing to give up their authority and if they trust their employees enough to empower them. In his 2009 article Pech states that managers fear employee decision making will reduce the power of and need for management positions. Managers can be defensive and invariably hold onto control by enforcing strict terms over employee involvement and that this behavior can be destructive on organizations and productivity by eroding their employees trust causing them to disengaged and unproductive. Pech elaborates through case study that tightly controlled employees feel vulnerable and threatened and disengage from the organization.
Boggs, Carr, Fletcher, and Clarke, (2005), caution that it is illogical for supervisors to empower employees by disempowering themselves suggesting that it is better for managers to promise less empowerment rather than deliver “broken promises”. Stainer & Stainer, (2000), agree that empowerment can increase organizational productivity if managers have confidence in their subordinates but that empowerment can be perceived by employees as a device to manipulate them into performing increased workloads. Employees can be resistant to empowerment for this reason stating that an actual shift in corporate governance must occur for empowerment to be ethical. Miscikowski & Stein, (2006), write that a barrier to empowerment is that it requires subordinates to act outside of their traditional roles and employees have difficulty making quality decisions previously made by managers, writing that tools and training are needed so that employees can access the necessary operational knowledge. Can the introduction of appropriate training programs for both managers and employees overcome issues of trust that often result from the implementation of employee empowerment programs?

The literature illustrates the importance of trust for both managers and subordinates in maintaining or increasing productivity in an organization. Although employee empowerment can be a powerful tool in increasing productivity by giving employees more control, if empowerment is not instituted carefully in a graduated process, then it can lead to a loss of the productivity it seeks to gain. Additionally there may in fact be instances, specifically dependent upon an employee’s position, where subordinate empowerment, or decision making, is inappropriate.

Alternatively, if management is defensive about relinquishing control, or if they fail to trust suitable employees adequately to allow them to self-manage, again trust can be lost and productivity will suffer. Both managers and their employees can develop issues resulting from mistrust of each other and the organization by poorly implemented empowerment programs. Although there are many risks, these studies ultimately support employee empowerment initiatives and indicate that it is up to educated and well trained management to decide how and when to implement these programs in order for an organization to reap the potential rewards.

Issues resulting from a lack of trust, the intervening variable, can thwart the successful implementation of employee empowerment programs, the independent variable, to the extent that productivity, the dependent variable, can be substantially diminished instead of improved as a result of these programs. Training of managers when implementing these programs, so that they are not threatened by diminished responsibilities is necessary and is the first moderating variable. Managers are ultimately responsible for implementing these programs and they need to recognize which employees to train, how to train them and in what functional capacities, and also they need to be aware that they are still ultimately responsible for the performance of their employees. Employee training, the second moderating variable, needs to be initiated by managers in a deliberate manner. Employees need to be selected by their managers and trained incrementally and appropriately in order to preserve their trust in the organization. Only employees who are willing to accept control of certain decision-making processes, who wish to assume these responsibilities, and are comfortable in these roles should be selected for empowerment so that subordinates are assured that they are not being taken advantage of. Employees who are forced to make decisions they feel are inappropriate for their positions or are not adequately prepared to make, can become disengaged from the organization and productivity will suffer.

These moderating variables, and their influence on the intervening variable, ultimately explain why many employee empowerment programs are unsuccessful. Appropriate training programs can not only but can also work to decrease the lack of trust between management and employees but can also work to increase the levels of trust management and employees have in an organization:

1. Organizations that do not provide appropriate training for their managers when implementing employee empowerment programs will have decreased productivity due to trust issues that arise between managers and employees.

2. Organizations that do not provide appropriate training for their employees when implementing empowerment programs will have a decrease in productivity due to trust issues arising between employees and the organization.

3..Organizations that do provide appropriate training for both managers and employees will have successful employee empowerment programs that will result in increased productivity.


The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between employee empowerment training programs and increased organizational productivity, and if training both managers and employees will result in more successful programs than training one group or the other. In order to test the hypotheses above, a correlational cross-sectional study will be designed to survey the levels of trust between management and employees. It will be necessary to design a scalable survey of trust levels between employees and managers in both an organization that has been successful at implementing an empowerment program and an organization that has attempted, but not been successful in implementing, an empowerment program. To avoid negative or positive bias related to their previous participation in empowerment programs the study participants will be informed that the study is concentrating on levels of trust between management and subordinates within the organization. Managers and their employee participants will be assured of the anonymity of their individual responses to the survey, data collected will consolidated and reported to the organization and then made available to the participants. In addition to the qualitative data retrieved from the survey, quantitative data will be gathered indicating the amount of time that employees and managers have spent in training programs, before, during, and after, the implementation of empowerment programs. As the field study will consist of the survey administered in two or more separate non-contrived settings, organizations identified as having highly empowered employees vs. organizations identified as having less empowered employees, a minimum amount of interference in the operations of the organization will be necessary. Preferably, the records of training programs corresponding with the implementation of employee empowerment programs examined will be available for the successful and the unsuccessful organizations. If records of training programs are unavailable, the amount of time spent in training can be included into the survey as a scalable and quantifiable response.

Optimally the settings selected should be similar in nature including the work produced by the organization, the work performed by the individuals, the size of the organization, the sample size, and the manager to employee ratio, to minimize the effect of other variables. For example, if the successful organizations surveyed are medium sized airlines, then the unsuccessful organizations should be medium sized airlines as well. If flight attendants are surveyed within the first organization, then flight attendants will need to be surveyed in any additional organizations. Additionally, the organizations selected should be surveyed at a relatively equivalent time period after the implementation or attempted implementation of the employee empowerment program. As an incidental deliverable, additional survey questions will be formulated to test the level of trust in the organization. These questions will assess the workers perceived value as contributors to the organization’s success. To avoid introducing any additional variables that may affect the results of the study, productivity the dependent variable, will be measured by self-evaluation of subordinates in the amount of decision-making control they currently have in the organization and self-evaluation by managers of the amount of decision-making control they confer upon employees. The responses of managers in this instance will be compared to the responses of subordinates within each organization to see if empowerment exists and then compared across organizations to determine which organizations fare better.


References:

Boggs, L., Carr S. C., Fletcher, R. B. & Clarke, D. C. (2005), Pseudoparticipation in
communication networks: the social psychology of broken promises. The Journal of Social Psychology, 145(5), 621-624. Retrieved from Business Source Premier database.

Ford, R. C. & Fottler, M. D. (1995), Empowerment: a matter of degree. Academy of
Management Executive, 9(3), 21-29. Retrieved from Business Source Premier database.

Miscikowski, D. K. & Stein, E. W. (2006), Empowering employees to pull the quality trigger.
Quality Progress, 39(10), 43-48. Retrieved from ABI/INFORM Global database.

Pech, R. J. (2009), Delegating and devolving power: a case study of engaged employees. Journal
of Business Strategy, 30(1), 27-31. Retrieved from ABI/INFORM Global database.

Stainer, A. & Stainer, L. (2000), Empowerment and strategic change: an ethical perspective.
Strategic Change, 9(5), 287-296. Retrieved from Business Source Premier database.