ABSTRACT
You cannot have a discussion of employee performance without men tioning empowerment, the management word of the 1990s. The employees must be brought into the decision-making process and given the resources to make their own decisions. To be quite frank, that is kind of a “no brainer.” With the competitive nature of our workplaces, how could we even think of creating performance requirements without involving the individuals that will make it happen? It may be safe to say, empowerment may be the most over used and misused word in any organization. Many seminars and even gradu ate-level classes today make empowerment the focus of discussion regarding how to do it and what to expect. Even with all this talk about empowerment, the real issue is that usually the management of the organization is not ready to give up the control. It is not the employees’ unwillingness to rise to the challenge. When an initiative that made use of the empowered workforce fails, management justifies the failure under the guise of the employees are not ready to take control of their own destiny. But this very precept is one of the basic principles of adult learning. Employees must be part of the deci sion-making and learning processes that include defining work expectations. Although I’m primarily speaking of training and performance, it really im pacts the entire dynamics of an organization and the relationship between management and the workforce.
