Importance of Technology in Empowerment

In today’s world, technology can be found embedded into every field of daily life. Be it for organizational operations or common diurnal practices of a consumer. Moreover, in the last decade, technology has undergone several upgrades and changes that have made it more diverse, inclusive, accessible, affordable, and reliable. And, with so many new advancements in technology, there is an obvious increase in the complexity of the interconnected processes that can be adopted by any enterprise or user. Besides, this overarching phenomenon of digital transformation and technology use has led to several challenges as well. So, before we delve into the importance of technology in empowerment, let’s deep dive into what empowerment is and what these empowerment challenges are as of today.

What is Empowerment?

Empowerment can be considered an umbrella term that is used to define the process of providing a certain degree of leadership and autonomy to people. It respects the principles of equality and provides the people as a part of a community the right to self-determination which enables each individual to represent their interests, ideas, and actions in a manner that is self-reliable. This allows the people in communities to claim responsibility for their actions, utilize the resources of the community, perform their duties as members of society, and also in claiming their basic rights. While there exist an array of theories and legal maxims that detail what empowerment entails, the three most common key pillars of empowerment can be understood as follows:

• Self-empowerment: This is realized through individual actions that are central to one’s self-belief, values, and core principles allowing each individual to enjoy a sense of unhinged equality and freedom of all kinds. As most literature suggests, self-empowerment begins with the self but not in a vacuum. It also involves respecting others’ ability for self-empowerment as well.
• Mutual-empowerment: This form of empowerment is pivotal, especially in societies that are united toward meeting a common goal or are heavily reliant on each other to perform tasks and reach set milestones. It may require strong interpersonal communication and the ability to assist each other in overcoming their shortcomings within a community or society.
• Social empowerment: This is one of the highest levels of empowerment in the world today. It involves leveraging social actions taken by both, individuals and groups to ensure the larger society and community can integrate its innate values, beliefs, and forms of expression freely, without any form of discriminatory practice or social injustice. Any movement that results in social action or regulates a social outcome toward the betterment of society is a form of social empowerment.

Empowerment in a Workplace

Since we’ve already discussed the role of empowerment within an umbrella society, we can now channel the same for an enterprise. At the very base, empowerment at any organization or workplace will consider the society or community to be the business or organization to which the individuals are committed to. However, it is a much more intricate and much newer concept in this era of interconnected businesses. A few of these intricacies have been discussed in the paragraphs below:

• Individual Empowerment: This is when workplaces allow employees a degree of ownership over their job role. It is crucial for high job satisfaction, reducing stress and burnout, and facilitating individual growth and employee development within the organizational hierarchy.
• Interpersonal Empowerment: This occurs when the work culture at a business allows transparent communication and the allowance to build each other up. It builds high levels of trust among the employees and results in an improved work environment. Rewarding employees with certain recognitions can also be used as an example of interpersonal empowerment.
• Managerial Empowerment: This occurs when senior leadership members allow their employees the liberty to operate with enough freedom and allow risk-taking in face of obstacles. Keeping close track of the daily and monthly goals and the performance of employees can also be considered a form of managerial empowerment.
• Organizational Empowerment: While businesses strive to maximize profits and revenues while cutting down on costs, they should never compromise on the standard of working conditions or employee benefits to achieve the same. This encourages high collaboration and high productivity with several improvements in the overall credibility of the organizational culture.

It is also integral to note that these four levels aren’t the only way to categorize empowerment initiatives in a workplace. There are several variants to do so. However, with the advent of technology in workplaces, technology in empowering employees and organizations has gradually grown in stature and importance. So where does technology come in? Let’s find out!

Using Technology to Empower

Millions of enterprises have been built around technology in some aspect or the other. While a few of them fail to realize the role of technology in empowerment, they do understand the ability of technology to make business processes easier and the necessity to remain empowered at all levels of the organization. In the same regard, here are a few of the crucial uses of technology in empowering people, communities, employees as well as businesses:

Backend Process and Performance Monitoring

One of the most common ways in which technology empowers organizations is by the creation of dedicated backend systems to track and manage project pipelines, daily performances, and supply-chain operations. For instance, with a robust HRMS in place, any company can create a work culture that is remote, scalable, and effectively more reliable in the long run. These tech-backed consoles or dashboards can help list tasks, report task completions, communicate blockers, track performance or project delivery routes, et al.

Horizontal or Matrix Model Restructuring

Traditionally, organizations are hierarchical and have a team of senior management professionals, a board of directors, and CXO-level employees that form the core team of employees. This is especially true for large-scale organizations. However, transforming into a more linear matrix model in terms of daily business operations can empower employees even at the lower levels to develop, grow and reach new heights while staying loyal to the enterprise at large. It helps build inter-employee connections, and trust among the top brass and ensures a happier, safer, and more productive work environment for all.

Social Media Recognition and Growth

Today, social media channels accrue more traffic than conventional marketing methods. Allowing employees certain tasks to share their insights, testimonials and stories adds to the overall value of the organization at large and also empowers the people who form the core of the organization. It makes the business appear more credible and trustworthy with a humanized face at the front end.

Developing Human-centric Products and Services

It is integral for companies to realize that technology should be built around people and not the other way around. In other words, developing technology with people at its core is much more effective than hiring talents around every new technology an organization adopts. This not only empowers the long-serving and loyal employees but also allows the organization to understand which technologies in empowerment are compatible with the enterprise in the long run.

Promotion of High ESG Standards

ESG or Environmental, Social and Governance standards refer to a set of rules and regulations that any tech-backed enterprise must follow to reduce material risks, waste emissions, and pollution, as well as promote a diverse yet inclusive workplace culture that thrives for decades. Besides, nowadays investors are more likely to invest in such ESG-compliant organizations rather than in new technology that may prove to be hazardous to society at large.

Tech-backed Corporate Social Responsibility

Merely empowering employees using technology isn’t enough in today’s world. There is an increased need to protect, preserve and improve the larger society as well. While marginalized communities remain excluded from top ranks at reputed organizations, wage gaps keep rising, the only shining light is the recent rise in the number of women founders and CXO-level employees. Ensuring that an enterprise also assists the immediate society it is instituted in and the vulnerable sections also proves to be a way forward for any business to grow in today’s increasingly aware world of consumers. Another way out is collaborating with NGOs and Social Organisations that cannot afford the initial cost of technologies to equip them with such new-age technologies that can help increase their output tenfold.

To Conclude

While technologies such as the television, the world wide web, long-distance communication, mobile systems, microchip technology, surveillance, and satellite systems have been influencing lives over the years; newer innovations such as cloud architecture, edge computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, neural networking, data sciences, data mining, and blockchain have continued to evolve how technology is perceived by the common mass and utilized by developers, businesses and consumers alike. To know more and further incorporate such empowerment technologies into a business model, reach out to a top-end IT consulting firm such as Focaloid Technologies today.