Empowering bank workers to improve their performance is a challenge for the banking industry, especially in this era of rapid digital transformation of financial services. In addition, the merging of some major banks and the restructuring of their services put increasing pressure on banks to deliver value (Osibanjo et al., 2020a). Many banks have had to develop new strategies to substantially scale up the customer and capital base, and expand business operations (Ibidunni et al. 2016). These pressures are often the driving forces behind the frequent laying off of staff, thus, hindering employee empowerment. Employee dissatisfaction has been reported in numerous banks, to the point where employees have downed tools to demand improvements in better working conditions (Ackon, 2018). Crafting workable strategies to empower bank employees for better performance in the face of internal and external pressures continues to be a big issue and demands urgent research attention.

Studies have shown that empowering bank workers would enable them to heighten productivity, reduce wastages, improve the credit supply in the economy, and enhance the health of the financial system (Ibidunni et al. 2016; Jiménez et al., 2012; Liden et al., 2000). The idea is that an empowered employee is a productive worker, and a productive worker is, in turn, a competitive asset to the organisation. The banking industry in many developing nations including Nigeria still falls short in employee empowerment (Bose & Emirates, 2018).

In addition, studies have shown that bank workers can be empowered through increased job autonomy, open communication, and participation in decision-making (Bose & Emirates, 2018; Dahou & Hacini, 2018; Gambacorta & Shin, 2016). However, there appears to be an almost dearth of context-specific research focusing on the Nigerian banking industry (or other developing nations) on the mechanisms through which employee empowerment can enhance or improve the performance of bank employees. Such studies are increasingly needed to stem the tide of increased employee turnover, job dissatisfaction, and the heightened level of dwindling performance in the developing nation’s banking sector. Hence, the study examines the extent to which employee empowerment variables (‘employee input acknowledgment, mutual decision-making, joint resolution implementation, and sense of belonging climate’) enhance job performance.

Employee empowerment entails providing employees with the information and control tools they need to make independent decisions relating to the performance of their jobs in a company (Dahou & Hacini, 2018). Empowerment is the process of developing employees’ and management’s capacity to work more autonomously in terms of attitude, skills, and knowledge. It is also a technique of ensuring that employees’ full potential is realised to help the company achieve its objectives (Jocelyne & Kariuki, 2020). Allowing employees some level of autonomy over their jobs helps them to accomplish more and save time by reducing the need for third-party approvals (Adeniji et al., 2013). Employee empowerment leads to a leaner, more agile organisation, which can enhance better individual and corporate performance outcomes (Dabo & Ndan, 2018).

Several researchers have examined the various facets of empowerment from many angles (Onifade et al., 2021). Job autonomy, performance-based remuneration, and cooperation have all been used to characterise empowerment. However, management must understand what employees expect if they are to get the most out of their team. Every employee wants to feel valued and when organisations fail to recognise and/or address their employees’ psychological requirements, their relationship suffers (Jocelyne & Kariuki, 2020); employee and organisational expectations are misaligned, resulting in a tense relationship that hurts performance (Dabo & Ndan, 2018). Employee empowerment addresses these issues by gradually devolving some authority to employees, effectively placing them in charge of their destiny in terms of their work environment. When employees are empowered, it strengthens the relationship between the company and the workers (Bose & Emirates, 2018). Therefore, it is the expectation of this study that employee empowerment will have a positive effect on job performance.

The sheer volume of research on job performance carried out by various scholars emphasises the importance of highly productive individuals to organisations. It is well recognised that companies place a premium on their top performers; as a result, it is critical to evaluate employees’ job performance (Sultana, 2020). Nonetheless, current literature indicates that there are discrepancies in how work performance is studied and rated; it is therefore assumed that these differing perspectives on the idea arise from the intrinsic differences in diverse jobs (Metin & Demirer, 2021). Job performance is defined by Atatsi e al. (2019) as scalable activities, behaviours, and output that individuals produce that are connected to and lead to the goals of the organisation.

In general, job performance refers to the contributions of a worker to the overall accomplishment of an organisation’s goal and can be broken down into many factors when considered at a granular level (Metin & Demirer, 2021). Technocrats typically agree that job performance comprises two parts: contextual performance and task performance. The activities that come within the scope of the allocated duties of an employee are referred to as task performance. It is also known as ‘in-role mandated behaviour’ because it feeds directly into the key performance indicators that constitute the basis of employee appraisal. Contextual performance, often known as ‘discretionary extra-role behaviour’, comprises elements that fall outside of typical job descriptions (Metin & Demirer, 2021). Organisational citizenship is inextricably linked to contextual performance.

Among the desirable outcomes linked with performance are productivity, quality, efficiency, and profitability, to name a few (Armstrong, 2019). The level of work performance, which includes both monetary and non-monetary aspects, determines a company’s success. According to Bieńkowska and Tworek (2020), some of the factors relevant to job performance in various types of jobs include demonstration effort, job proficiency, team performance, supervision, administration and management, among others.

Employee empowerment, according to Tutar et al. (2011), has an impact on achievement motivation and contextual performance. The study’s purpose was to explore how employees’ perceptions of their own empowerment influenced their achievement motivation and performance. Data were obtained from employees of Ankara’s public and private banks and examined utilising statistical techniques and procedures. When the research data were evaluated, it was found that employee empowerment had a positive impact on accomplishment motivation and contextual performance. Employee empowerment is a critical predictive variable for accomplishment motivation and contextual performance, according to the findings.

In the banking sector in Pakistan, Ghafoor et al. (2013) evaluated the effect of employee empowerment on contextual performance of employees. The study’s objective was to see how employee empowerment affected employee success motivation and contextual performance. Employee reactions in public and private banks were studied using regression analysis. According to the findings from the study, empowerment has a positive influence on contextual performance. It demonstrates that for employees working in a dynamic environment, employee empowerment is critical for achieving motivation and final performance.

Employee empowerment, service quality, and customer satisfaction were all investigated at Pakistani banks by Abbas et al. (2011). The study’s goal was to evaluate how employee empowerment affected service quality in Pakistan’s banking industry. Questionnaire was used to gather information from staff, as well as clients of the bank. The data were analysed using statistical techniques such as factor analysis and correlation analysis. Employee empowerment, customer satisfaction and service quality are all linked, according to their findings. This indicates that employee empowerment in Pakistani banks improves service quality.

Peters and Mazdarani (2018) investigated the impact of employee empowerment on service quality in service organisations using Länsförsäkringar Bank AB as a case study. The goal of the study was to see how Länsförsäkringar Bank AB promotes staff empowerment and how it affects service quality. According to the findings of this study, employee empowerment allows employees to positively influence clients’ views of service quality by providing them authority over the service delivery process, resulting in customer satisfaction. Employee empowerment is also widely practised at Länsförsäkringar Bank, thanks to the activities and policies of Human Resource Management (HRM) and senior management.

In the light of the above literature, we hypothesise the following:

The quantitative research was chosen and the cross-sectional survey design was adopted. This was because a greater number of studies on employee empowerment and performance outcomes in the financial industry adopted the quantitative approach (Gill et al. 2010). Quantitative research is widely acknowledged for producing more reliable and consistent data that are easily analysed through statistical techniques (Saunders et al., 2019; Silva et al., 2019). In addition, the cross-sectional survey design was adopted because of its ability to enhance uniformity in the collection of more objective data based on larger samples that represent the entire population of interest. For this reason, the research sample consisted of 381 middle-level bank managers, drawn through a random sampling approach from the top five deposit money banks (DMBs) in Nigeria.

The face-to-face approach was used for data collection through the structured questionnaire. Of the 381 participants, 65 were excluded from the analysis because of various reasons ranging from not completing the demographic questions, leaving some questions blank, to ticking more than one space for a specific questionnaire item. This left us with 316 usable copies of the questionnaire for data analysis. Of the 316 participants, 51.6% were males and 48.4% were females; 85.1% were less than 40 years of age; 72.9% had less than 10 years of work experience, and 76% had bachelor degree educational qualification.

The independent variable (employee empowerment) had four dimensions: employee input acknowledgment, mutual decision-making, joint resolution implementation, and sense of belonging climate. They were measured using the ‘Job Empowerment Scale’ developed by Spreitzer (1996) and adapted to the Nigerian context by Onifade et al. (2021). An example of an empowerment questionnaire item is ‘I have the autonomy to determine how I do my job’. On the other hand, employee performance was measured using the ‘Individual Work Performance Scale’ developed by Koopmans et al. (2012). For the context and purpose of this study, scale items were adapted to measure four constructs: employee productivity (EP), employee satisfaction (ES), task performance (TP), and contextual performance (CP). An example of an employee performance item includes ‘I am confident about my ability to do my job’. All questionnaire items were measured via the 5-point Likert type scale where 5 = strongly agree, 1 = strongly disagree.

The analysis of data for this study was achieved through the smart PLS-structural equation model (SEM-PLS) 3.9 version. The reason for using this statistical tool was because of its robustness in evaluating latent constructs (i.e. multiple items) and providing results for both measurement and structural paths compared to other analytical methods such as regression (Astrachan et al., 2014). All hypotheses were tested and accepted at p < 0.05 level of significance.

Ethical clearance to conduct this study was obtained from the Covenant University’s Research Ethics Committee.

The descriptive analysis of employee empowerment variables is shown in Table 1. It can be observed that 75.95% of respondents agreed that their opinions are taken into consideration when making crucial decisions. Similarly, 71.84% asserted that the employees’ inputs are acknowledged by the supervisor or management. The result also indicates that most of the respondents (64.24%) believed that management follows through on employee resolutions. Lastly, it is revealed that 70.3% of respondents felt encouraged to solve work-related problems on their own because they have significant autonomy.

The data analysis considered both structural and measurement models. The items adapted for measuring employee empowerment include involvement in decision-making, acknowledgment of employees’ inputs, implementation of employees’ resolutions, and a climate of sense of belonging. All factors or constructs in the measuring model yielded values that were greater than the acceptable minimum of 0.60. The inner model of structural equation computation is the structural model (Hussain et al., 2018). It calculates R² values and significant values for path coefficients.

The significance is discovered by using the bootstrapping method (Osibanjo et al., 2020b). To improve the significance of the results, the default bootstrapping in Partial Least Square is 5000 subsamples (Osibanjo et al. 2020). Four items were used to assess employee empowerment, which is a latent variable. Meanwhile, job performance was measured with 12 questionnaire constructs. The effect of employee empowerment on job performance is shown in Figure 1. It reveals the structural equation modelling results of the hypothesis with standardised estimates. It is worth noting that all of the components of employee empowerment in Table 3a and Table 3b had factor loadings greater than 0.60. At 0.05 probability level, the results were statistically significant in line with Newkirk and Lederer (2006).

The following conditions should be met for measurement of all scale items, according to Fornell and Lacker (1981): (1) factor loading must be greater than 0.60, (2) composite reliability of each construct has to be ≤ 0.80, (3) the AVE estimate must be greater than 0.50, and (4) instrument’s Cronbach’s alpha reliability must be ≤ 0.70.

Results in Table 2 show that all employee empowerment constructs were loaded with values greater than 0.60, suggesting better Cronbach’s alpha reliability and composite internal consistency. For the individual metrics, factor loadings ranged from 0.759 to 0.818. The model was considered valid because the first condition for the degree of fitness was adequately met. The inner structural model revealed that none of the items had a loading factor less than 0.6, as shown in Figure 1.

The significant values of the path coefficients were analysed using the structural model. For calculating the significance level in PLS-SEM, bootstrapping is essential (Hussain et al., 2018). In the default bootstrapping, 5000 subsamples were employed (Osibanjo et al. 2020). With a similar response rate, the path coefficient values of AB, FBN, GTB, UBA, and ZB were presented. Findings of structural models and path analysis for employee empowerment on job performance in the banks have been shown in Table 2 and depicted in Figure 1.

As predicted by the hypothesis, employee empowerment comprising involvement in decision-making, acknowledgement of employees’ inputs, implementation of employees’ resolutions, and sense of belonging significantly influences job performance in the selected banks as displayed in Table 3a and Table 3b.

The path coefficients for all of the constructs yielded positive relationships at a 0.05 level of significance (Table 3a and Table 3b). Thus, the path coefficient shows a significant relationship between employee empowerment and employee satisfaction (i.e. β = 0.758, T_val = 36.397, p = 0.000); employee productivity (i.e. β = 0.656, T_val = 12.289, p = 0.000); task performance (i.e. β = 0.601, T_val = 19.576, p = 0.000); contextual performance (i.e. β = 0.663, T_val = 16.632, p = 0.000). Hence, employee empowerment made the highest contribution to employee satisfaction and productivity while task performance had the least.

Also, the result implied that implementation of employees’ resolution, sense of belonging, and acknowledgment of employees’ input had the highest indirect beta values among the constructs that best predicted job performance while involvement in decision-making had the lowest value on the job performance. To assess how employee empowerment affects job performance in the selected banks, path analysis and bootstrapping based on the institutional level were developed. The structural models and path analysis had a good predictive and explanatory power for employee empowerment and job performance based on banks (see Table 4).

As shown in Table 4, the data revealed a positive relationship between employee empowerment and job performance in the banks. The latent variable, employee empowerment, was assessed using five items. Job performance, on the other hand, was assessed using fourteen (14) items, as shown in Figure 1. Employee empowerment has a positive and significant effect on job performance in the selected Nigerian banks (β = 0.733, r² = 0.537, p = 0.000), according to the findings. According to the correlation value of 53.7%, the predictor variable’s overall effect on job performance is strong and positive.

The coefficient of determination (R²) is also shown in the regression findings. R² values of 0.71–0.90 are considered excellent, 0.51–0.70 are considered good, 0.31–0.50 are considered fair, and 0.10–0.30 are considered weak (Hair et al. 2019). The path model of 0.537 was observed for the endogenous latent construct in this study. This implies that employee empowerment explained 53.7% of the variations in job performance in the banks in the model, suggesting a moderate and fair explanatory power. As a result, the other variables not included in this model are responsible for 46.3% of the change in job performance in the Nigerian banks studied.

The R-square for employee empowerment and job performance (i.e. employee satisfaction, employee productivity, task performance and contextual performance) in the selected banks was also analysed. Basically, the R² of Bank ‘A’ (β = 0.569, r² = 0.324) is quite fair; Bank ‘B’ (β = 0.551, r² = 0.304) is quite fair; Bank ‘C’ (β = 0.525, r² = 0.276) is relatively weak; while Bank ‘D’ (β = 0.562, r² = 0.316) is fair; and Bank ‘E’ (r = 0.606, r² = 0.367) is also fair. Generally, the findings reveal that the variance of employee empowerment (β = 0.733, r² = 0.537) explained by the job performance in the selected Nigerian banks is moderate and fair.

Generally, the relationship between employee empowerment for all selected banks and job performance is established to be directly significant. Ultimately, the findings showed that employee empowerment strongly predicts job performance in the selected banks.