5.1 Empowerment & Questioning Worker empowerment refers to the discretion, trust, and resources given to employees to make decisions on how best to do their work. It has two dimensions: one is organisational which refers to workplace affordances or the means in which workers are supported to make those decisions about their work, and two is the personal referring to individual engagements or how workers choose to participate in their work. Billett (2012) suggests that the interplay between these two dimensions enable but could also hinder workers’ innovation. Empowerment enables workers to respond to situations arising in the course of everyday work, and engage in and learn through activities and circumstances that are new to them. As organisations transform, leading to continual changes in products and business operations, workers increasingly need to be empowered to be able to question i.e. challenge or defend standard practices and ways, in order to meet new and unpredictable challenges. Empowerment is dependent on workers’ engagement, capabilities, and workplace affordances. Unfettered or unbounded “empowerment” may lead to negative outcomes for the organisation and possibly workers. Constraints which seek to prevent or minimise these negative outcomes may inform what constitutes innovation but (empowered) workers sometimes challenge these constraints, which lead to changes and transformations of work practices. Empowerment also concerns the organisation itself. An empowered organisation is able to participate meaningfully in driving industry transformation. SME bosses often complain that they are at the receiving end of policies rather than being part of the discussion or play a meaningful role in the policy-making process. Incorporating a bottom-up perspective may not necessarily compromise the topdown approach of Singapore’s policy making ethos but perhaps improve the quality and take-up rates such that policies will be fit for purpose and find greater traction amongst SMEs.
5.2 Alignment & Reflection On one hand, alignment implies a shared understanding of goals, intentions, and motivations among stakeholders including employees, employers, and government agencies. It involves discussion and negotiation to reach an understanding of each other’s interests, expectations and practices. Our data shows that strong alignment between staff and their employers indicated by a shared understanding of their organisation’s broad mission tend to lead to greater workers’ engagement and commitment to their work.
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