What empowers us at work?
Did you ever wonder what empowers you at work? We know quite well that situational attributes at work such as management practices (e.g., increasing someone’s decision-making autonomy, providing access to resources) reflect a set of conditions that can empower us at work but may not always do so. This raises the question about our own individual experience of feeling empowered at work.
An individual’s orientation to their work role is considered to be reflected in four cognitions that influence how we feel about the work we do - our sense of psychological empowerment: meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact.
Meaning – How meaningful is the work you do to you personally? Meaning at work reflects the degree of purpose we feel at work in relation to our own beliefs, values, and behaviours.
Competence – How much confidence do you have in your abilities to do your work? Competence (which is sometimes considered a synonym for self-efficacy) reflects an individual’s belief about their capabilities to perform work-related activities. It’s the degree of personal mastery we experience when we carry out work-related tasks.
Self-determination – How much independence and freedom do you have in how you do your work? Self-determination is the degree to which we feel a sense of choice in initiating and carrying out work-related actions, such as deciding on the work methods we use, our pace at work, and the effort we put into our tasks.
Impact – How much can you influence what happens in your work/team/ department? Impact reflects our sense of influence. It’s the degree to which we feel we can influence strategic or operative outcomes at work.
These four individual cognitions reflect an active orientation about our work role and context in which our role is embedded. Importantly, psychological empowerment is not a specific personality trait generalizable across different situations, it’s a set of specific cognitions that are shaped by the work environment. Thus, psychological empowerment can be considered as a cognitive, subjective, and motivational process related to our work role and the tasks we carry out at work.
Psychological Empowerment: Antecedents and Consequences
The question someone could ask now is does it matter? Do these cognitions about my work and my work role matter? Short answer: Yes, they do – a lot!
Research shows that the degree of how much we feel empowered influences how we feel about our work (i.e., affective reactions), how committed we are to our organisation or workplace (i.e., attitudinal reactions), and how we behave at work (i.e., worker behaviours). A comprehensive body of literature shows that our sense of psychological empowerment at work is positively associated with an increase in performance, innovation, job satisfaction, organisational commitment, and organisational citizenship behaviour and negatively associated with job strain and turnover intentions. Thus, psychological empowerment can act as a motivational factor that contributes to positive emotional reactions at work, reduces the likelihood of individuals to leave their organisation, and prompts to behave in a way that fosters the achievement of common organisational goals.
Now, we have explored how psychological empowerment contributes to a lot of different organisational outcomes – so we know it does matter! What we haven’t explored yet is the factors that drive psychological empowerment in the first place. What do we need as individuals to perceive a strong sense of empowerment at work? Thankfully, research is already exploring this question and can provide us with some answers.
A key role to maintain and foster our sense of empowerment at work are the psychosocial and organizational factors at work, which can be sub-divided into structural and managerial empowerment practices, leadership, social support and organisational trust, and work design. Structural and managerial empowerment practices encompass learning opportunities within the organisation, access to information and organisational support and the extent to which management provides workers with such opportunities. In terms of leadership, workers sense of empowerment is influenced by how leaders behave in a way that is viewed as positive and the quality of the relationship between a leader and their followers. Particularly, transformational (e.g., expressing confidence in someone’s competences) and empowering leadership practices (e.g., teach workers on how to solve problems) are considered to be an important driver for one’s sense of psychological empowerment. Social support and organisational trust refer to the degree to which we feel supported by the organisation and the level of interpersonal trust between workers and their supervisor. This category is closely related to structural and managerial empowerment practices; however, the key difference is the focus: rather than emphasizing access to managerial empowerment practices, the focus here is on employees’ perceptions about the actual support provided by the organization. Lastly, work design encompasses the work characteristics of the work content and the degree of role clarity we perceive in our work. For example, high work demands, a lack of role clarity, and limited job control have been associated with lower psychological empowerment in workers.
Let’s do a little reflective exercise
Grab a pen and a piece of paper and put it in front of you (alternatively, you can use a Word document or OneNote). Draw four horizontal lines and put the number 1 at the beginning of each line and the number 10 at the end of each line. If you want, you can put the number 5 in the middle of each line. The four lines represent the elements of psychological empowerment: Meaning, Competence, Self-determination, and Impact. On this scale from 1 to 10, where do you see yourself on each of the elements? You can use the reflective questions from earlier as a guide:
How meaningful is the work you do to you personally?
How much confidence do you have in your abilities to do your work?
How much independence and freedom do you have in how you do your work?
How much can you influence what happens in your work/team/ department?
Thinking about your current work role: Are you happy with each of the scale scores? Do you remember when the last time was you felt meaning/confident/independent/influential at work? Was there a time at work some of the scores were higher or lower? What was different during this time? If you identified a score you want to improve, what can you do to move slightly higher (e.g., from 5 to 6)?
Reflecting on this little exercise, what have you learned about yourself and your level of psychological empowerment?
This activity is also very suitable when you are in a managerial position and want to reflect with each team member on their level of psychological empowerment.
Wrap up
To summarise, we can say:
Meaning, Competence, Self-Determination and Impact represent the four components – the essence – of psychological empowerment at work.
Psychological empowerment does not only influence our mental well-being at work, but also influences our performance, creativity, and level of commitment to the workplace.
Psychological empowerment is influenced through structural and managerial empowerment practices, leadership behaviours, social support and organisational trust, and elements of work design.
References:
Llorente-Alonso, M., García-Ael, C., & Topa, G. (2024). A meta-analysis of psychological empowerment: Antecedents, organizational outcomes, and moderating variables. Current Psychology, 43(2), 1759–1784. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04369-8
Schermuly, C. C., Creon, L., Gerlach, P., Graßmann, C., & Koch, J. (2022). Leadership Styles and Psychological Empowerment: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 29(1), 73–95. https://doi.org/10.1177/15480518211067751
Seibert, S. E., Wang, G., & Courtright, S. H. (2011). Antecedents and Consequences of Psychological and Team Empowerment in Organizations: A Meta-Analytic Review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(5), 981–1003. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022676
Spreitzer, G. M. (1995). Psychological, Empowerment in the Workplace: Dimensions, Measurement and Validation. Academy of Management Journal, 38(5), 1442–1465. https://doi.org/10.2307/256865
Spreitzer, G. M., Kizilos, M. A., & Nason, S. W. (1997). A dimensional analysis of the relationship between psychological empowerment and effectiveness, satisfaction, and strain. Journal of Management, 23(5), 679–704. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0149-2063(97)90021-0