Why empowerment doesn't work
Most of us don’t like sudden or rapid change. In organisations this basic human characteristic results in resistance to change. We have all experienced this resistance and perhaps even engaged in it. The dilemma is that we operate in a context where economic pressure, technological development and customer expectations are making rapid change increasingly necessary.
Involving and empowering employees to make the changes themselves is often suggested as the best way to reduce resistance in employees. This is bad advice.
There are three problems with the empowerment approach. First, it’s very, very time consuming when this is precisely what the organisation lacks. Second, the research evidence says employee involvement alone is not sufficient to achieve organisational change. Third, it’s a strategy that works best in a clan type organisational culture where human development and participation are the basis for producing results; it’s mismatched as the primary strategy for organisations whose cultural is hierarchical (like most public sector organisations) or is market driven (like most private sector organisations).
So how do you reduce employee resistance to change? First, implement a cocktail of strategies that will include education, facilitation, negotiation, coercion and participation. The content of the change, the nature of your organisation and the stage of the change process will determine the relative amounts of these ingredients. Second, address the psychology of change, especially the grief process that employees are going through when faced with the loss that necessarily comes with change.
Author: David Waterford
Categories: Leading & Managing, Teams,