Employee empowerment in services: a framework for analysis

Employee empowerment is said to benefit all organisations. The fast moving global economy requires that organisations learn and adapt to change quickly, and employees have a key role to play here. This is particularly true in modern service organisations. The empowered employee is said to respond more quickly to customer service requests, act to rectify complaints and be more engaged in service encounters. A more reflective approach suggests there are different managerial perceptions of empowerment, resulting in empowerment being introduced in different service organisations in different ways, and presenting different benefits to managers and working experiences for the empowered. This paper suggests that a framework of analysis needs to be developed which goes beyond the more simplistic claims which tend to discuss empowerment as that which is labelled empowerment. The success or failure of an initiative which claims to be empowering will be determined by the experience of being empowered.