By Tricia Paterakos (21-22)

The Empowerment Literature

Empowerment in the workplace is hardly a new concept – in fact, it became so popular in the early 2000s that the 21^st century was referred to as the “empowerment era” (Appelbaum et al., 1999). Studies looking at empowerment have seen it improve job satisfaction (George & Zakkariya, 2018), employee performance (Sigler & Pearson, 2000), and organisational commitment (Hanaysha, 2016). Clearly, empowerment plays a significant role in the organisational context.

Some facets of the empowerment literature that require greater understanding are that of organisational culture and interpersonal relationships. There are promising studies that look at these constructs alongside empowerment; for example, Sinha et al. (2016) identified empowerment as a mediator between organisational culture and outcomes within the workplace like job satisfaction, organisational commitment, innovative behaviour, and turnover intentions. An insightful study surrounding relational empowerment was that of Speer (2000), which introduced the notion that empowerment can take two shapes: intrapersonal and interactional. These studies jointly inspired the qualitative study that asked the question: “how do culture and interpersonal relationships influence empowerment at work?” (Paterakos, 2022).

12 semi-structured interviews were conducted investigating this question, and thematic analysis led to the creation of nine distinct subthemes spanning the themes of culture, interpersonal relationships, and empowerment. The subthemes and proposed connections between themes can be seen in the figure below.

Figure 1: Themes, subthemes, and proposed connections between themes.           

The Findings

Participants identified empowerment as inclusion, trust, and development. The relevant aspects of culture, a concept analysed deductively using the cultural web framework (Johnson et al., 2012), included transparency, inclusive communication, positive acknowledgment, and collective decision-making. Additionally, participants found that when it came to interpersonal relationships, support and belonging were imperative to feelings of empowerment within an organisation.

Finally, there were proposed relationships between the themes investigated within the study. The findings pointed to culture having a direct impact on empowerment, and interpersonal relationships having a moderating effect on this relationship. Culture was seen to play the bigger role, which may come as no surprise given the commonalities between the subthemes of culture and empowerment.

Given these patterns between culture and empowerment, there was a need to explore the aspects of culture that most closely align with the elements of employee empowerment. In Figure 2, the subthemes of empowerment and culture are outlined and there is an exploration of the idea of an empowering culture which includes proposed ideas of how the subthemes of empowerment and the subthemes of culture may intersect.

Figure 2: The exploration of an empowering culture.

Empowering Culture & Relationships

            After drawing out the patterns between the subthemes of culture and empowerment, there was an exploration of what an empowering culture may look like, which was defined by inclusive and transparent communication, a positive approach to employee development, and employees being trusted to make decisions. And, given the role of interpersonal relationships within this study, there was a further need to figure out how an organisation may encourage relationships among employees. Organisations may benefit from focusing on support and belonging, which theoretically, might look like placing value on positive, uplifting communication and prioritising team-building activities outside of the workplace to drive these concepts. In developing and consistently working driving positive relationships among employees, an organisation may assure that employees are being empowered from every source, not just the workplace environment.

So, what can organisations do?

            It is also proposed that organisations take a more personalised approach to empowerment to promote empowerment among employees. This may mean asking employees how they would most feel empowered and providing them that freedom to do the job in the way that works best for them. In fact, understanding each employee’s personal definition of empowerment may be essential to driving empowerment in organisations. This is because studies show the most impactful empowerment initiatives are those that take a tailored approach, keeping in mind what empowerment might mean to the unique organisation (Honold, 1997) and each individual employee (Forrester, 2000). Thoroughly assessing empowerment prior to instituting general definitions of what it means could be the most effective way organisations ensure it works for them.

            With that said, organisations must understand the challenges to making changes specifically meant to raise empowerment given that disempowering structures can be extremely tough to shift (Honold, 1997). In fact, Foster-Fishman and Keys (1995) determine that before an organisation decides to infuse empowerment into their programs they must first figure out if it “fits the need of the system and the system is willing to make the adjustments needed for such a change” (p. 368). Given the challenges these programs pose, as well as the gap that continues to exist between the definition of empowerment among leaders and employees (Appelbaum & Honeggar, 1998), the approach to empowerment is certainly not one-size-fits-all and must be taken with intention.

Looking Forward

While empowerment literature has decreased since its peak in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, there is a need to understand its role in the current workplace landscape. Given the significant changes to workplace models in recent years, mainly due to the Coronavirus pandemic (Kniffin et al., 2020), the facets of empowerment most important to employees may be shifting. Thus, these findings may be even more important given that they represent the employee experience in the modern day, which may differ from the perceptions of employees in the beginning of the 21^st century. 

To conclude, Paterakos (2022) proposes that culture and interpersonal relationships each have a unique impact on an employee’s experience of empowerment in the workplace. There are still limitations to the research – and questions remain as to whether these proposed findings represent true relationships – but there are promising suggestions and ideas as to how organisations may go about incorporating empowering practices in their workplace environment.

Determining more keenly how empowerment may operate within the unique organisational context and attending more closely to empowering the individual employee may prove more effective in building and maintaining empowerment among employees. And, despite the challenges, focusing on developing a culture and relationships that drive employee empowerment may be well worth the difficulties that go along with it.

References

Appelbaum, S. H., & Honeggar, K. (1998). Empowerment: A contrasting overview of organizations in general and nursing in particular ‐ an examination of organizational factors, managerial behaviors, job design, and structural power. Empowerment in Organizations, 6(2), 29–50. https://doi.org/10.1108/14634449810210715

Appelbaum, S. H., Hébert, D., & Leroux, S. (1999). Empowerment: Power, culture and leadership – a strategy or fad for the millennium? Journal of Workplace Learning, 11(7), 233–254. https://doi.org/10.1108/13665629910291929

Forrester, R. (2000). Empowerment: Rejuvenating a potent idea. Academy of Management , 14(3), 67–80. https://doi.org/10.5465/ame.2000.4468067

Foster-Fishman, P. G., & Keys, C. B. (1995). The inserted pyramid: How a well meaning attempt to initiate employee empowerment ran afoul of the culture of a public bureaucracy. Academy of Management Proceedings, 1995(1), 364–368. https://doi.org/10.5465/ambpp.1995.17536650

George, E., & Zakkariya, K. A. (2018). Perception of empowerment: A psychological perspective. Psychological Empowerment and Job Satisfaction in the Banking Sector, 47–86. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94259-9_3

Hanaysha, J. (2016). Examining the effects of employee empowerment, teamwork, and employee training on organizational commitment. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 229, 298–306. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2016.07.140

Honold, L. (1997). A review of the literature on employee empowerment. Empowerment in Organizations, 5(4), 202–212. https://doi.org/10.1108/14634449710195471

Johnson, G., Scholes, K., & Whittington, R. (2012). Fundamentals of strategy. Pearson Education.

Kniffin, K. M., Narayanan, J., Anseel, F., Antonakis, J., Ashford, S., Bakker, A. B., Bamberger, P., Bapuji, H., Bhave, D. P., Choi, V. K., Creary, S. J., Demerouti, E., Flynn, F., Gelfand, M., Greer, L., Johns, G., Kesebir, S., Klein, P. G., Lee, S. Y., … van Vugt, M. (2020). Covid-19 and the workplace: Implications, issues, and insights for future research and action. American Psychologist. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/gkwme

Paterakos, T. N. (2022). How Culture and Interpersonal Relationships Influence Empowerment in the Workplace (dissertation).

Sigler, T. H., & Pearson, C. M. (2000). Creating an empowering culture: Examining the relationship between organizational culture and perceptions of empowerment. Journal of Quality Management, 5(1), 27–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1084-8568(00)00011-0

Sinha, S., Priyadarshi, P., & Kumar, P. (2016). Organizational culture, innovative behaviour and work related attitude. Journal of Workplace Learning, 28(8), 519–535. https://doi.org/10.1108/jwl-06-2016-0055

Speer, P. W. (2000). Intrapersonal and interactional empowerment: Implications for theory. Journal of Community Psychology, 28(1), 51–61. https://doi.org/10.1002/(sici)1520-6629(200001)28:1<51::aid-jcop6>3.0.co;2-6

By Rubab Nallwala (21-22)

What is happening?

Even in the wake of 50% workforce being run by women, the issue of menstruation management remains amiss in occupational health literature. Existing studies focus on impact of menstruation on productivity, negative work outcomes and eventual socio-economic burden. Even though gynaecological and menstrual conditions like polycystic ovarian syndrome and endometriosis are emerging as a public health issue and impacting those diagnosed during their prime productive years, there is lack of research to explore the workplace management and menstrual needs (Sang et al., 2021). Acker (1990) stresses in her theory of gendered organization that assuming organizations as genderless or gender neutral invariably means women bodies are ignored and work schedules, job roles, evaluations and career progressions will cater to men. Given men dominated workforce before the 21^st Century, the organizational structures and functions were created by men, for men. Since both genders are now equal contributors to the economy, we need radical changes at the grass root level to overcome gendered organization complacency!

What did we do?

I aim to bring the voices of those living with the diagnosis rather than those who diagnose and audit it on economic and societal terms. The current study explored PCOD/S and endometriosis management and workplace experiences of five women who are currently employed. A qualitative exploration via semi-structured interview based on Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis research method was conducted (J. A. Smith & Osborn, 2008). This method is designed to help psychologists and researchers to bring to the forefront the lived experiences of participants’ and provide an interpretive analysis of these narrations leading to collation of themes that help tell their stories. The findings yielded three interesting themes.

What did we uncover?

Firstly, those with the diagnosis have to undergo multiple issues resulting from their diagnosis. The prominent and long-standing symptoms include co-morbid illness like type-2 diabetes, thyroid, followed by excessive fatigue, pain, weight gain, acne, facial hair growth and psychological issues like anxiety and depression (Soliman et al., 2017; Sang et al., 2021). The implication of these symptoms is manifold, given they not only hamper their daily lives it also impacts their quality of work, productivity and eventually their self-esteem and confidence. Changes in physical appearances led to being stigmatized for not being the ‘ideal women’, fatigue and pain add to lower working ability, making these participants question their professionalism. Hence, it was found that the management of these symptoms can be challenging and impact their professionalism, and career trajectories as the impact has social, physical, and psychological implications.

Secondly, given their symptoms there is insufficient accommodation in workplace for management of their condition. It was found that the inflexible schedules and rigid work hours, coupled with micro-management of their bio-breaks led them to either claim extra sick leaves or change their employment type from full-time to part-time or even independent working (Kujanpää et al., 2022). Furthermore, given the economical burden of management of their diagnosis, it was found that there is lack of inclusive medical coverage that could be a catalyst to helping these leaky bodies manage their diagnosis and work in a better balance. Furthermore, the fact that managerial or employer support was lacking, it further aggravated the leaky bodies burden. Though they tried to seek help for their diagnosis and management, they were rather not support and asked to get through it, as all those who have periods go through some level of pain and we need to not ‘dramatize it’.

Finally, the third finding encapsulated the navigation of gender-equality paradox. The assumption of gender equality being a façade was amplified by these leaky bodies lived experiences. It was found that these leaky bodies pushed themselves to work and tried concealing their diagnosis or its symptoms to not further the stereotypes of ‘weaker gender’. They believed they are highly dispensable not only due to the gender, but further stigmatized due to their invisible but debilitative illness. It was found that they felt psychological unsafe as they feared breach of confidentiality while disclosing their diagnosis, and hence would rather prefer to not seek support or ask for accommodations at workplace.

What do we suggest?

The complexities of the diagnosis and fact that it impacts 1 in 10 women, we require planned policies at individual, organizational and national level. Firstly, we need to re-design gendered organization to adapt to these leaky bodies. The impact of the pandemic forced us to adapt our ways around flexible and hybrid work conditions, the same can be adapted for those who need to manage their health and employment. Secondly, inclusive medical coverage can further improve management of diagnosis as the employee will feel safe and comfortable, given their needs and well-being is taken care of. It has shown that organization that cater to employee needs and accommodate them, improve turnover, productivity, and organizational commitment (). Thirdly, sensitivity training should be mandated to ensure support for such diagnosis which will foster better psychological safe work environment and help these women disclose without fear and seek support when required. Finally, trade unions can play a vital role by ensuring they push for support for such invisible and stigmatized illnesses. They can become cornerstone for brining about policy changes in support of it (Richards et al., 2015).

What does it mean for psychology?

As organisational psychologists, we are interested in working towards brining employee well-being, reduce stigmatization at workplace and bring about better representation and psychological safe environments. Hence, this study is indicative of how we can work to create inclusive employee assistant programmes and policy changes via brining the voices of leaky bodies to the stakeholders. Having been diagnosed with PCOD and endometriosis myself, I have realised through the narration of these participants that this is not a cry for help but a demand for providing equal playing grounds to ensure we all reach our career ambitions and employment goals. As psychologist through such evidence-based research and piloting of programmes, we can help create blueprints for balanced organizations.     

Summary

In conclusion, gynaecological health conditions can notably impact work outcomes and the quality of life of those diagnosed and managing it at the workplace. The absence of discussion around such a pressing issue and dismissed understanding of gender inequality at work further undermines the health, financial standings, and overall work-life balance of these leaky bodies. This study becomes a cornerstone for building future research and adaption of employee accommodative practices and policies to support the leaky bodies, which eventually is the other half responsible for running the economy, organisations, and society.