Learning for and through work has been often reduced as the acquisition of skills and knowledge. However, novel demands and challenges at work often necessitate the promotion of worker's professional identity and subjectivity. This is not always possible within the work organisations, where the organisational culture and narrow work roles may restrict wider dialogue needed for personal changes. We thus need procedures and programmes, which could promote individual empowerment outside the organisational constraints. However, the main question in such programmes is their effectiveness and influence on subjects' work orientations in authentic work contexts. This study addresses the influences of a subject-driven empowerment programme organised outside the work organisation. The programme was aimed to increase subjects’ personal agency and professional subjectivities at work. Participants of the program were 19 middle-aged nurses, physiotherapists, and secretaries of a central hospital. The programme consisted of 12 days in one year working as a whole group and as sub-goups between. Subjects’ own competenies, work philosophy, and the culture of work organisation were analysed. The programme utilized creative methods, such as psychodrama and sociodrama, visual arts, and narrations. Multimethod data collection used videotaping, questionnaires, and portfolios. Follow-up data were collected 6, 12 and 48 months after the programme. Theoretical approach was informed by subject-centred theories of identity. Becoming empowered was thus understood to manifest as subject’s experience of his or her inner strength, as increased self-awareness and self-respect, and as an increased capability to social interaction. This poster describes how the influences of the empowerment programme were manifested in the long run after participating the programme. We especially focus on  subjects' redefinition of their professional identities at their work contexts. 

Promoting spaces for professional subjectivities and personal agency in work organisations: Long-term influences of an empowerment programme 

Salme Hänninen

Anneli Eteläpelto

Summary

Background and aims

Learning for and through work has been often reduced as the acquisition of skills and knowledge. However, novel demands and challenges at work often necessitate the promotion of worker's professional identity and subjectivity. This is not always possible within the work organisations, where the organisational culture and narrow work roles may restrict wider dialogue needed for personal changes. We thus need procedures and programmes, which could promote individual empowerment outside the organisational constraints. However, the main question in such programmes is their effectiveness and influence on subjects' work orientations in authentic work contexts.             

In human-centred work, like in health care, subjects may narrow their professional and subjective identities as the consequence of the constraints and dilemmas of work organisation. Challenged by this, we need practices where employees can get out of their narrow roles allowed in work conditions. However, the practices developed outside the work organisation, should have an influence to subject’s position in his or her working conditions. The aim of the empowerment programme addressed in this study has been developed for the purposes of empowering subjects outside their immediate working conditions. Emphasis of the program is in working with individual subjectivities with main focus on subjects’ professional identities. The empowerment program is aimed to have a real effect on subject’s working position.

Prior research on empowerment have addressed the question of  how subjects have found their resources and how the take the responsibility of their own growth and developing. The process of empowerment has been understood as intra-psychological  growth, but also as a social process Rodwell 1996, 309, Siitonen 1999, 13, 81-88). In order to engage into the process of empowering, the subject should have a clarified idea of her identity, which includes the conception of his her personal identity (Who I am), and where does he or she is  belonging (Neufeld &Grimmett 1994). Some prior discussion on the effectiveness of empowerment programs have suggested the benefits of such programs for employees’ well-being and for the whole work organisation (Siitonen 1999, 87).    

So far, we have lack of research on more subject-based empowerment practices which could prevent narrowing of subjects personal and professional identities. The main question in such programmes is their effectiveness and influence on subjects' work orientations in authentic work contexts.             

Challenged by this, this study aims to construct and evaluate an empowerment program with the purpose of supporting subjects’ working ability and promoting their professional identities. The study further evaluates the nature and long-term effectiveness of the programme.

In this study subject’s empowerment is perceived primarily from an individual perspective. Becoming empowered is thus understood to manifest as subject’s experience of his or her inner strength, as increased self-awareness and self-respect, and as an increased capability to social interaction. The main question in such programmes is their effectiveness and influence on subjects' work orientations in authentic work contexts.            

Research questions

The research questions can be specified as follows:

1. How do the participants of the empowerment program evaluate the influences and processes of the program from the perspective of their personal and professional subjectivities?  

2. What kind of individual differences can be find in subjects’ utilization of the empowerment program

3. What were the long-term influences of the programme in terms of subjects' personal empowerment and their well-being through empowerment at work?  

Methods

The programme was aimed to increase subjects’ personal agency and professional subjectivities at work. Participants of the program were 19 middle-aged nurses, physiotherapists, and secretaries of a central hospital. The programme consisted of 12 days in one year working as a whole group and as sub-goups between. Subjects’ own competenies, work philosophy, and the culture of work organisation were analysed. The programme utilized creative methods, such as psychodrama and sociodrama, visual arts, and narrations. Multimethod data collection used videotaping, questionnaires, interviews and portfolios. Follow-up data were collected 6, 12 and 48 months after the programme. Theoretical approach was informed by subject-centred theories of identity. Becoming empowered was thus understood to manifest as subject’s experience of his or her inner strength, as increased self-awareness and self-respect, and as an increased capability to social interaction.    

Findings and discussion

Analysis of data showed that following outcomes of empowerment were displayed:

1. Becoming more confident with oneself and increased self-awareness, integrity 

2. More detached conception of the work community and its relationships

3. Courage to take care of one’s own feelings and needs, and express them in the

      work place and private life 

4. Strengthening of one’s own professional identity.

Further analysis of the influences showed that different participants were able to benefit from the program in different ways. The identified types were titled as 1) exhausted 2) transformational learner, 3) deepener, and 4) searcher. These types are demonstrated by giving an example of a single case, a person who best represents the type.

Our results, which are based on subjects’ own evaluations concerning  the influences of the empowerment program, demonstrated fairly positive outcomes, in terms of promoting subjects’ personal and professional identities. The results demonstrated that personal and professional aspects of empowerment were closely intertwined.

Although the program was intended to support personal processes, it seemed to have an effect also on subjects’ work orientation and on their social relationships within the workplace. The long-term follow-up data indicated that by supporting individuals through a program of this kind, there can be positive secondary effects on subjects’ position in the workplace, and hence on their overall well-being. Most of the participants reported that they had acquired relevant tools for empowering themselves in the work context on a long-term basis.