17 January 2012 | Sebastian Bartosik

In order to get the best out of 
your procurement team, you first 
need to empower them.

All the books that 
describe the concept of empowerment might easily fill 
the shelves of a small library. It 
is one of those frequently discussed and widely commented on ideas, which attracts much attention and fires emotions. Its popularity comes from the fact that the concept of empowerment is equally valid in many contexts and can be approached from many different angles, varying from liberty rights 
to equal rights for women. 

In the business environment, the concept has been thoroughly analysed and elaborated on in many opinion-setting publications. In fact, a great number of leading global organisations claim to live by empowerment principles. In reality, talking does not mean walking and referring to does not mean understanding. In fact, blue chip organisations often have difficulty achieving this proclaimed status as a result of their size, multi-layered structures, geographic spread or culturally diverse employee base.

Notwithstanding the above, the problem with empowerment is its concept evades easy interpretation and definition. Depending on the culture, history, business practice and philosophy, people understand empowerment differently. The other determinants of recognising empowerment also include a person’s level in an organisation, 
their role and responsibility, age and education 
or nationality.

Having considered the factors that may distort the picture, the question is what is the most common and universal understanding of the empowerment concept?

First, the empowerment of employees should 
be considered a process in which objectives are defined individually by each organisation in consideration of all the above. Second, empowerment seems to be mainly about the transformation of how people feel, behave, act and think. It is then about the process of change, where an internal change is of the same importance as the external one. It is about the change of belief in one’s own competences and abilities to make decisions, solve problems and address issues.

That said, the empowerment process requires creating an encouraging environment in which an individual is allowed to formulate and test their own judgment and in which the reward and recognition is available for all, without prejudice. 

Internal change

Translating internal and external change principles into the procurement environment is not straightforward. There are, however, certain elements that could be considered for every modern procurement organisation to help make an internal change, such as:

Training

Regardless of the cultural diversity of the organisation or the level of education of its employees, the development of the knowledge level is always desired. With procurement, it might be important that the training plan is split into a pre-defined programme for the function on one 
side (to ensure that competences of the team and common language within the team are improved) and personalised development plans for each individual on the other (to address each person’s specific requirements).

Access to knowledge

Full access to knowledge should be granted to all the team members in the form of memberships to world-class organisations, internal knowledge sharing through training sessions with internal facilitators, workshops and transfer of ideas.

Coaching and mentoring

The virtue of sharing and opening doors for succession is a symbol of a mature organisation, in which the employees do not feel threatened or intimidated by management. To reach this level of maturity, continuous guidance is required, especially for newly appointed individuals and those expanding their responsibilities. There also needs to be transparency around the succession planning process, in which the most valuable individuals undergo a controlled process of grooming.

Reward and recognition

For a positive internal change of any person, a fair review and adequate recognition is critical because it encourages acting and taking initiative.

External change

In parallel to the internal change process, one needs to consider the external process that leads to empowerment. The question that shall be asked is what the company might do to help employees change themselves and apply these changes in their daily business. The initiatives to consider would be:

Structure changes

From multilayer, hierarchical and vertically-orientated structures to simple, flat and lean models, where the decision-making responsibility is clearly defined. The selection of the most appropriate and successful organisational structure may be completely different, depending on the type of business, location and culture. In hierarchical societies, there are different expectations to those in the more modern Western countries. Yet, in most cases, the most successful way to improve the feeling of person’s subjectivity is by bringing the ultimate decision makers structurally closer.  

Documented roles and responsibilities

Each organisation should have clarity and transparency around job titles, equal grading and aligned job descriptions. These elements are the prerequisites for trust within the organisation.

Delegation of responsibility

There needs to be a defined process how the responsibility is shared top-down with an emphasis on allocating as much of the process ownership to the bottom layer in the structure. It is about an attitude shift, meaning the manager is to offer service and support to his or her team, who is authorised to act and deliver, rather than a manager who is trying to deliver alone and uses the team for support by constantly defining the requirements to ensure his or her delivery. 

Participation

Individuals need free access to participate in all procurement processes including audits, vendor evaluation and negotiations to enable them to contribute and to test their skills in different environments and challenges, and so on.

Communication

Structured and maintained communication between all layers, areas and task groups belonging to the procurement organisation is key.

The empowerment concept may seem to be even more complicated when one attempts to measure the outcomes of the changes and the benefits for the organisation. Having considered the listed initiatives and recommendations associated with the internal and external changes and having understood the challenges that may arise along with them, the concept of empowerment may seem simply to be a cost-generating dream.

If there are so many difficulties, then why 
should companies – and especially the 
procurement function – consider doing it? Why is the concept of empowerment often indicated as the only path to the success of modern organisations? Often in the business world, where access to equipment, standards, knowledge, customers, raw materials, even human assets is comparable for all players, the real difference is about the work environment, which companies must create in order to obtain the best out of people and to ignite their full potential.

The implementation of these internal and external changes activates the fields which may remain unexplored otherwise, such as invention, ownership, flexibility, integrity, satisfaction and enthusiasm and as a result of all of these, cost reductions in the process. There are different ways to achieve each of these outcomes, while the concept of empowerment is a critically important bowl in which they all meet and mix.

How to plan and measure the benefits of such changes? Which performance indicators would demonstrate the expected outcomes most precisely? Depending on the selected route and change process, the most obvious consideration would 
be around headcount costs as a result of a 
restructuring process.

Furthermore, it could be around the monetary value of savings, to the number of saving initiatives, around the number of optimisation projects, then ranging from an increase of the best practice implementations, drop in the deviations from the governance standards, to the increase of automation of processes, and so on. The nature of the empowerment changes means it is often challenging to calculate the immediate profits of the process, but it is worth it.

So do not wait, empower. Turn the procurement team into a bunch of happy, motivated people and gain the competitive advantage.

☛ Sebastian Bartosik is head of procurement at Mondi’s South Africa division.