The Effects of Empowerment on Health Care Worker Performance During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Saudi Arabia.

Background And Objectives: In this study, we assessed the potential impact of employee empowerment on health care workers' performance during the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic. In particular, we aimed to determine the empowerment practices that would have the greatest positive effect on employee performance. Understanding the relationship between performance and empowerment can help health care providers better manage worker stress during any global crisis. This understanding is crucial in guiding policies and interventions aimed at maintaining health care workers' psychological well-being and their overall performance.

Methods: This cross-sectional study evaluated the relationship between employee empowerment and performance, determining the best empowerment practices for health care leaders to utilize. Frontline health care workers (n = 100) selected using convenience and snowball sampling completed the survey between March 15 and 31, 2020. This is the period when the pandemic just started to accelerate in Saudi Arabia. We conducted Pearson's correlation analysis to assess whether there was a relationship between performance and health care workers' empowerment practice, and stepwise linear regression analysis to investigate the impact each of these empowerment practices on health care workers' performance.

Results: Our results indicate that health care workers' performance can be expected to increase the most through 2 empowerment practices: giving employees the discretion to change work processes and offering performance-based rewards (R2 = 0.301, P < .05).

Conclusion: Our findings suggest that health care leaders must invest in these 2 practices to better equip frontline health care workers. During a global crisis, additional discretion granted to employees helps reduce their anxiety and burnout and hence empowers them with the flexibility to adapt to unforeseen circumstances and improve the quality of their interactions with health service recipients.