INTRODUCTION

Empowerment has a broad context and it can be viewed through various dimensions and perspectives. It can be viewed as a set of managerial practices aimed at increasing an employees autonomy and responsibilities thereby enabling them to discharge their job or tasks more effectively and efficiently. Empowerment can also be viewed as an individuals approach to proactive work orientation, thereby increasing the employees performance and efficiency. Employee empowerment activities like self managed teams, total quality management, and quality control circles are implemented with the objective of increasing employee productivity and innovation. Empowerment refers to increasing the spiritual, political, social, educational, gender, or economic strength of individuals and communities. Empowerment is the process of enabling or authorizing an individual to think, behaves, take action, and control work and decision making in autonomous ways. It is the state of feeling self-empowered to take control of one's own destiny. Employee Empowerment is Employee Involvement that matters. It could also be defined as controlled transfer of authority to make decisions and take actions. Successful implementation of empowerment requires change in corporate culture. Empowerment involves actively soliciting input from those closest to the work and giving careful thought to that input. Empowerment refers to increasing the spiritual, political, social, or economic strength of individuals and communities. It often involves the empowered developing confidence in their own capacities. Empowerment is the process of enabling or authorizing an individual to think, behaves, take action, and control work and decision making in autonomous ways. It is the state of feeling self-empowered to take control of one's own destiny. Usually people misunderstand the concept of empowerment as something one does for another. Empowerment, instead, is the process of an individual enabling himself to take action and control work and decision making in autonomous ways. Empowerment comes from the individual. The organization has the responsibility to create a work environment which helps foster the ability and desire of employees to act in empowered ways.

The work organization has the responsibility to remove barriers that limit the ability of staff to act in empowered ways. Employee Empowerment is willingly and knowingly granting ones official power to another or to give up that official power to grant, withhold or withdraw to someone else. Empowerment is using ones power, not to withhold or withdraw, but to grant to another the power that one has worked to obtain. Empowerment is the most difficult concept companies attempt to implement. The problem is that executives don't understand what empowerment is and how it works. Empowerment is allowing employees to do whatever they can--including bending and breaking company rules--to satisfy the customer. Few companies, however, are willing to give their employees that authority--and few employees are willing to accept it because in case of front line employees, who are not much intelligent and can be easily misused by customers and therefore their empowerment maybe exploited. In this survey our attempt is to find out whether the two telecom players in hand are given employee empowerment especially to the customer care executives and the front line employees and how it has affected its performance. Empowerment in the workplace is an often-misunderstood concept. Employee empowerment is a term that many managers and organizations think they understand, but few actually do, and even fewer really put into practice. Many managers feel that by empowering employees, they relinquish the responsibility to lead and control the organization. This is not the case. Empowerment is actually a culmination of many of the ideas and tenets of employee satisfaction that are discussed and analyzed frequently in a variety of books and periodicals focused on the subject. For an organization to practice and foster employee empowerment, the management must trust and communicate with employees. Employee communication is one of the strongest signs of employee empowerment in an organization. Management must be willing to communicate every aspect of the business to its employees in an open and honest manner. This communication may include: elements of the strategic plan, financial performance, key performance indicators and dailydecision making.

Employee empowerment has been described and defined in many ways but is generally accepted as: the process of enabling an employee to think, behave, act, react and control their work in more autonomous ways, as to be in control of ones own destiny. Effective employee empowerment not only has positive implications for employee satisfaction, but also many other organizational facets, such as member service and member retention. Empowering employees leads to organizational encouragement of

entrepreneurial traits and prompts employees to make decisions, take action, and foster their belief that they can take control of their own destinies. This belief leads to self-motivation and a sense of independence that is translated into greater loyalty and extra effort for the organization. Empowered employees come to believe that they control their own success through their efforts and hard work, which in turn benefits the success of the entire institution. The most important factor in effective employee empowerment is bilateral communication. Employee surveys and evaluations show repeatedly that

empowerment and communication rate highest in regard to employee satisfaction in an organization. Companies committed to employee empowerment provide more information in greater detail than the average company. Empowering employees to increase their satisfaction and the organizations performance will require a greater amount of communication than ever thought possible. This will require management to invest in increased amounts of time communicating to employees and allowing for feedback. In addition, it will require that management honestly evaluate the communication styles and methods that are being used in the institution to ensure the most efficient processes possible. Communicating and sharing information accomplishes several objectives that are not only important for the empowerment process, but also for overall employee satisfaction with the organization.

NEED AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY This study will contribute to the growing body of knowledge on employee empowerment. There have been various studies conducted on employee empowerment in various sectors. More specifically, this study is to test the role of employee empowerment for the need of job enrichment. The findings from this study on the impact of empowerment on employee performance in the company will add on to the existing body of literature on employee empowerment. For the company, this study will give them perspectives on whether empowerment influences their employee performance and job enrichment. This information and knowledge will therefore, enable the managers to have a better understanding of their employees perception about empowerment. It will also help managers to better manage their employees to improve their individual and organizational performance. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY The objectives of the study are: 1. To study the need of employee empowerment for the job enrichment. 2. To determine the overall relationship between empowerment and employee performance in the company. 3. To examine the influence of empowerment on employee performance in the job enrichment. 4. To study the various factors related to the employee empowerment. 5. To suggest the company regarding the need of employee empowerment for the enrichment of the job, if any.

SCOPE OF STUDY
The scope of study covered executive and managerial level employees of company. The study is focused on assessing employee empowerment for the need of job enrichment. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY The research process consists of a series of actions that are necessary to carry out the research efficiently and effectively. Sources of data: For the purpose of the study, two kinds of data have been used. 1. Primary data. 2. Secondary data. 1. Primary data: Data is gathered by distributing questionnaire to managers and employees. Questionnaire is a structured one consisting of questions, which are close-ended having fixed response pattern with multiple answers. 2. Secondary data: Secondary data is gathered from the organization records, journals and books. Sample design: A sample design is definite plan determined before data was actually collected for obtaining a sample from given population. In this study, random sampling is used. Tool for data analysis For the analysis of data, bar charts, percentage analysis and tables are used.

Sample size: The sample size taken for survey includes 110 employees. The sample takes in to consideration/constitutes all the executives and non-executives in organization. Sample technique Simple random sampling was the sampling technique used for the study.

LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

1. Time was a constraint in collecting data from a bigger group of respondents. 2. The sample size is only 110 in number and the data collection is at random. 3. Few employees filled their questionnaire in a hurry. So, they could not be relied upon and predominant of subjectivism. 4. The duration of the project is restricted to 45 days only. So, it is not possible to get the feedback from all employees. 5. The details over a period of time will get invalid since there will be a drastic change in employees behavior. 6. Respondents bias may be a limitation.