Describe how technology can help empower workers.

Empowerment is described as “turning the front line loose” which means encouraging and rewarding employees who take the imitative and do not always do things by the book. In order to do this it is important that employees do not have too many medial tasks which bring little human dignity. Technology can be used in this sense as the small repetitive tasks which were previously performed by a human can now be performed by a machine freeing the employee to express themselves more freely. With an empowerment approach all employees should have access to data regarding the organisations performance , they should be rewards based on performance in order for the employee to feel that they are actually making a difference which will therefore encourage the employees start taking the initiative if they think it will aid the organisation in some kind of way.

Critique the idea that empowerment is a significant consequence of web 2.0.

Web 2.0 is the second generation of web development and design that aims to facilitate communication, secure information sharing, interoperability, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Empowerment has become a consequence of web 2.0 as with the new types of communication it allows employees to communicate with others in a new manner which allows them to work professionally and socially at the same time. This increased job satisfaction encourages empowerment within the workforce. Due to the popularity of web 2.0 companies are being forced to somehow integrate them into day to day life as people will use these sites anyway and it only makes sense to adapt in order to get the most out of their workers. Web 2.0 empowers users beyond creating content. It's about how we interact. For the next generation, it will be about mass collaboration, using social networking."