The Impact of Empowerment Elements (Autonomy, Information, and Responsibility) on United States Federal Employees' Job Satisfaction

The objective of this quantitative, correlational study was to examine if, or to what extent, a relationship between empowerment elements (autonomy, information, and responsibility) and job satisfaction of United States Health and Human Services (HHS) employees existed. The harvested data was collected via an online survey. The research questions asked whether there were any significant, positive relationships between the empowerment elements and HHS employees' job satisfaction. The analysis of the harvested data utilized a Pearson correlation analysis and simple and multiple linear regressions. The bivariate correlation results indicated strong and significant positive relationships among all the empowerment elements. The regression results showed autonomy (R2 = 0.86), information (R2 = 0.79), and responsibility (R2 = 0.82) were significant predicators of HHS employees' job satisfaction. A multiple regression analysis was performed to confirm the significant relationships between job satisfaction and the primary and secondary predictors (autonomy, information, responsibility, and rewards). The relationship between job satisfaction and the predictor variables was still very strong (R2 = 0.82), but not strong enough to indicate that adding rewards was worthwhile. The coefficients in the multiple regression results revealed a strong positive relationship between responsibility and autonomy (0.00), information (0.89); however, was not significant. These findings indicated that employee empowerment elements are associated with HHS employees' job satisfaction, which may have a positive impact on employee retention and overall individual and organizational performance.