Effect of Empowerment: Front-Line Employees in the Hotel Industry

An empowered worker is a knowledgeable worker. Thus, the aims of this study were to examine how empowerment is perceived by the front-line hotel employees and secondly, to identify factors affecting empowerment within the industry. Factors such as communication, coaching, participation, training and reward were examined for significant relationship with empowerment, along with whether employee’s sociodemographic characteristics affected their perceptions of empowerment. The findings indicated that except for gender, socio-demographic factors were not a strong influence on the diffusion of empowerment among employees. In order to ensure that the employee’s feels empowered, factors such as communication, coaching, participation, training and reward should be given due attention by the management. Based on the findings, implications to companies are discussed and further research is suggested.