Employee Empowerment and Job Performance in National Polytechnics in Kenya

Abstract

Empowerment has elicited a lot of attention lately as employees’ performance has been found wanting. Some studies that examined performance expectations in learning institutions indicated that employee performance has not been satisfactory. The employees’ mobility has also increased and organisations have problems attracting, recruiting and retaining talented employees. Organisations have therefore realized the importance of workforce empowerment and enshrined the concept in their policies, although they hardly practice the empowerment or practice just a few elements of empowerment. This study investigated the influence of employee empowerment on job performance in National Polytechnics in Kenya. This study is founded on the Kanter's Structural Organizational Empowerment Theory, Socio-Technical Approach, Social-Structural Empowerment Approaches and Job characteristics theory. Employee empowerment in this study was considered as psychological empowerment, structural empowerment, relational empowerment and team empowerment. Job performance was the dependent variable while job characteristics were considered as the moderating variable. The target population consisted of 2993 staff from the ten National Polytechnics in Kenya. The study employed descriptive research design. The researcher used disproportionate stratified sampling in selecting the respondents. The sample size consisted of 337 respondents. Data was collected by use of questionnaires. Validity was established by pretesting and experts’ verification. Inferential and descriptive statistics were used. Regression analysis was employed to establish the influence of employee empowerment on job performance. The questionnaire items were found to be of the required threshold. Qualitative and quantitative analysis were done. Data was presented in frequency tables. The study established that the four dimensions of employee empowerment significantly and positively influence job performance. Relational empowerment had the most contribution to job performance, followed by psychological empowerment, team empowerment and structural empowerment taking the second, third and fourth positions respectively. Job characteristics were found to affect the relation between employee empowerment and job performance. The study would offer literature for further research and contribute to knowledge. It was expected that managers would design programmes of implementing successful empowerment plans upon understanding the influence of each dimension of empowerment. The study concluded that all the empowerment dimensions influence job performance. If psychological, structural, relational and team empowerments are controlled, Job characteristics affect job performance. Both job characteristics and employee empowerment predict job performance. The study recommends that employers and policy makers should focus more on all the dimensions of empowerment as they were found to be effective in job performance. The study recommends that managers and policy makers also focus on the job characteristics in order to achieve high employee job performance. The study’s findings would be useful to the staff, the National Polytechnics management boards, the public and the government in policy making.