Employee empowerment means involving employees in every step of the production process. Consistently, business literature suggests that some 85% of quality problems have to do with materials and processes, not with employee performance. Therefore, the task is to design equipment and processes that produce the desired quality. This is best one with a high degree of involvement by those who understand the shortcomings of the system. Those dealing with the system on a daily basis understand it better than anyone else. One study indicated that TQM programs that delegate else responsibility for quality to shop-floor employees tend to be twice as likely to succeed as those implemented with ‘top-down’ directives. When nonconformance occurs, the worker is seldom wrong. Either the product was designed wrong, the system that makes the product was design wrong, or the employee was improperly trained. Although the employee may be able to help solve the problem, the employee rarely cause it. Techniques for building employee empowerment include:
1) Building communication networks that include employees;
2) Developing open supportive supervisors;
3) Moving responsibility from both managers and staff to production employees;
4) Building high-morale organization;
5) Creating such formal organization structures as teams and quality circles.
Teams can be built to address a variety of issues. Such teams are often know as quality circles, which is a group of employees who meet regularly to solve work-related problems. The members receive training in group planning, problem solving, and statistical quality control. They generally meet once week (usually after work, but sometimes on company time). Although the members are not rewarded financially they do receive recognition from the firm. Teams with a quality focus have proven to be a cost-effective way to increase productivity as well as quality.