Employee empowerment practices and performance of commercial banks in Kenya
Abstract
Employee empowerment is a philosophy associated with real benefits for an
organization. The banking sector is Human Capital Intensive since it relies heavily on
its employees to offer services to its clients. Employee empowerment is a crucial
Human Resource Management practice since it leads to the organization’s
competitiveness, success, uniqueness and most importantly its growth. One of the
ways to achieve this is by empowering employees. The objective of the study was to
establish the relationship between employee empowerment practices and performance
of commercial banks in Kenya. The research adopted a descriptive cross-sectional
survey. The research targeted all the 43 Commercial Banks licensed to operate in
Kenya. Primary data was used and was collected using a semi-structured
questionnaire. The questionnaire was administered through the drop and pick later
procedure and the respondents were human resource managers or anybody else in
charge of the HR function. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics namely,
frequencies, percentages, mean scores and standard deviations. The findings were that
there are empowerment policies in all commercial banks in Kenya and these policies
enable the employees in their individual career planning and developments. There was
a positive correlation between employee empowerment practices and organizational
performance. The study concluded that the employees of the commercial banks are
made aware of their responsibilities, trained, and empowered with management roles
such as participation in policy making and the freedom to make decisions within their
jurisdiction. It also concluded that the banks encourage high productivity and
innovativeness from the employees. The study recommends that empowerment
practices be embraced whereby management can actively involve the employees in
roles that will develop their skills and also adopt employee performance evaluation
strategies. The study also recommends that banks should occasionally conduct
customer satisfaction surveys so as to establish how best they can serve their clients
and also conduct employee satisfaction surveys so as to establish ways in which the
banks can provide the best working conditions for their employees to improve their
productivity and that of the bank