Food-Service-Manual-for-Health-Care-Institutions

• Define limits of what situations employees will be supported to handle and when the
managers need to be involved.
• Share decision-making power.
• Provide rewards and recognition.
• Delegate meaningful work.
• Be accessible to coach, answer questions, discuss action, and provide support.
When employees choose responsibility for becoming involved and managers commit to
encouraging that involvement, employee empowerment is under way.
The remainder of this subsection focuses on the varying levels of empowerment and when
it is appropriate to apply these levels.
Levels of Empowerment
David Bowen and Edward Lawler define three levels of employee empowerment: suggestion
involvement, job involvement, and high involvement. Each level has a place in food service operations
where employee empowerment is a priority. All three can provide a road map for managers
seeking to change a tightly controlled work environment into a highly participative one.
With suggestion involvement, employees are encouraged to contribute ideas through formal
suggestion systems, but there is little change in how day-to-day work is accomplished. Or
employees are encouraged to make recommendations for change, but management usually
retains power to decide whether the recommendations are implemented. Suggestion involvement,
then, is closely related to a control model of management. Managers may use suggestion
involvement as the first step to leading employees to high (or full) involvement, or they may
decide that this level is appropriate for their department based on the organizational culture.
Suggestion involvement may be appropriate to certain tasks or situations, whereas job involvement
or high involvement is better suited to others.
Job involvement takes a large step up from the typical control model. At this level, employees
are involved in job design (how to do their work), they exercise a larger variety of skills,
get more feedback on how the work is proceeding, and are responsible for an identifiable piece
of work. This level of involvement offers more employee enrichment, which in turn leads to
higher motivation, commitment, and quality of work. The job involvement level is where many
organizations begin emphasizing a team approach. Teams are especially important in health
care food service because no one individual is responsible for customer contact from beginning
to end. The complex nature of the work and service delivery make it necessary to increase
emphasis on job completion through teamwork. Also at this level of involvement in employee
empowerment, training becomes more important. With more demand for employee involvement,
managers must ensure that workers have the knowledge and skills to make decisions
effectively. Finally, managers at the job involvement level become more supportive and less
directive in their situational leadership approach.
High involvement derives from employees’ keen sense of how they do their jobs, how their
group or team performs, and how successfully the organization performs as a whole. This level
of involvement thrives in a culture that promotes employee empowerment and participative
management, where information on the organization’s business performance is shared; skill
development in teamwork, problem solving, and business operations is offered; and employee
participation in job-related decisions is promoted. Managers at this level must be highly competent
in participatory management and team-building, coaching, training, and delegation
skills. Strategies of high-involvement empowerment also can be more costly in terms of additional
time taken in hiring employees and in their training and development.
Application of Empowerment to Food Service
Is it appropriate in every situation to empower food service employees to make decisions?
Probably not. Recall that policies and procedures are established to provide consistent and
safe service. For example, it is unwise to authorize employees on a patient tray line to make
Leadership: Managing for Change
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