How To Empower Others In The Workplace – Home » Employee Corner Blog » Employee Relations » Workplace Empowerment: What Is It and Why Does It Matter?
There is no doubt that employee empowerment has many positive effects on a company and its employees. Empowerment in the workplace has been repeatedly shown to be associated with better job performance, employee satisfaction, and greater corporate responsibility.
How To Empower Others In The Workplace
But what exactly does employee empowerment mean, and how can organizations embed it into their culture? We’ll define workplace empowerment, explore why it’s important, and reveal some actionable strategies for making it a reality in your workplace.
Employee Empowerment In The Workplace: 6 Steps To Take Today
Empowerment in the workplace means giving employees control over their work and contributing to meaningful decision-making. In an empowering culture, company leaders delegate responsibility, freely share information, and solicit input from team members.
Empowerment in the workplace is not just about how company leaders treat their employees, but also about what they demand. When you empower your employees, you expect them to be held to higher standards, set ambitious goals, and be held accountable for their performance.
When executed properly, employee empowerment can help organizations motivate employees, retain top talent, and achieve optimal business results.
Empowerment in the workplace is positive for employees, managers and the entire organization. Here are some key benefits of employee empowerment.
What It Really Means To Lead More Effectively Through Empowerment
Employee empowerment had the greatest impact on employee engagement. Empowered employees feel more invested in the company’s mission, are willing to step up when extra work is required, and are more likely to make contributions that make a meaningful difference. When employees take ownership of their work, they are more committed to doing a good job and feel a stronger sense of pride when they achieve their goals.
One aspect of employee empowerment is to tap into employees’ strengths—to take advantage of what they’re good at and passionate about. When employees do work they are good at, they enjoy it, and happy employees stay at their jobs.
Another aspect of workplace empowerment is recognizing employees for good work. This helps improve retention, as high performers want to work for a company where they feel their contributions are valued.
Encourage subordinates to continuously support professional development, provide regular feedback, and seek opportunities to increase employee knowledge. Career development is beneficial at the individual level because it promotes employee engagement, but it’s also a win-win for organizations that benefit from a more skilled workforce.
Empower Employees To Make Things Happen
At the organizational level, workplace authority refers to the belief that managers know their teams best. When managers are empowered, they can connect with employees and better provide for their team’s success. Empowered managers are open about what employees value. Processes are further optimized due to direct input from the employees who handle these processes on a day-to-day basis.
Adaptability is one of the strongest predictors of an organization’s financial success. Empowered employees embrace change and even become change agents, leading to creative solutions and innovative business development. Research has found that autonomous employees feel responsible for their work and engage in transformational behaviors such as proactive problem solving. When you empower your employees, they are motivated to do good work, which often pays off from a business perspective.
You can’t empower employees without an empowered leadership team. When employees raise concerns with managers, the response should never be, “It’s out of my control,” but rather, “I’ll see what I can do.”
To achieve true empowerment in the workplace, organizations must fully support managers and meet their needs. That means investing in leadership training, giving managers ownership of decision-making and engaging them in conversations about the company’s future.
Equipping And Empowering The Future Ready Workforce
Employee empowerment revolves around taking ownership of their work, but it also requires a lot of communication. Organizations with a culture of empowerment provide employees with the information they need to gain a solid understanding of the business and its goals, which helps them make stronger decisions and be more successful at work. Leaders must communicate information about the company’s mission, goals, and direction clearly and regularly.
There’s a reason why customer surveys are so effective when it comes to product optimization – because they gather feedback from people who have directly used and experienced the product. It’s no different when you’re trying to optimize your business. You need to get feedback from people who are in the business. Employees can be an amazing source of change if you really listen to their contributions.
Give them a chance to express their opinions, and then regularly ask for feedback. Use tools like employee advisory groups to give employees a voice in company decisions.
If employees are limited to a set of rigid tasks every hour, it’s hard to feel engaged in their work. Give employees the space to go beyond their typical skills by participating in new and interesting projects. Provide direction and structure, then step back and see what they think. This not only builds trust between the manager and the team, but also provides opportunities for employees to develop new skills.
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Power in the workplace is not all sunshine and daisies. Giving employees autonomy means they sometimes make bad decisions. There will be failure and disappointment. In an empowering culture, managers support employees taking responsibility for these failures, analyzing how they happened, identifying lessons learned, and using new discoveries to support a way forward.
We’ve mentioned company culture many times, but it’s not just something that can make the word “entitlement” happen overnight. Building a culture of empowerment requires long-term strategic planning and conscious decision-making. It should also walk the talk and allocate resources to programs that support employee well-being, innovation, creative thinking and transparency.
Employees are unlikely to feel empowered if the tools they use to get their work done aren’t working. Any talk of licensing is quickly undermined by outdated software, broken devices, and inefficient systems.
Invest in tools and technology that enable employees to access the information they need, communicate with colleagues, work faster and optimize tasks. This is a great opportunity to listen to employees by asking them what they want.
Employees Increasingly Seek Value And Purpose At Work
Bringing people together around a common goal is one of the best ways to mobilize your team, suggests leadership experts at Harvard Business School. To do this, clearly describe the organization’s mission and the drivers behind it, such as improving customer health, making people’s lives easier, and using technology to drive change. Use this “why” as your compass when making decisions; If the initiative doesn’t help you reach your goals, it’s not the right move.
As you can see, empowerment in the workplace takes many different forms. Essentially, it’s about trusting employees to do the job they were hired to do and supporting them with the resources they need to continuously improve, ultimately driving better results for the business.
Pete Newsome is the President of 4 Corners Resources, a nationally recognized talent acquisition firm he founded in 2005. His mission was the same as it was then: to conduct business as a human being, while organizing infinite opportunities for intelligence and advancement. Pete is also the founder of career advice website zengig, a comprehensive platform that provides resources, tools and guidance for every career journey. You can hear him hosting the weekly Job Call and Career Zen podcasts. When he’s not thinking, writing, or talking about his career accomplishments, Peter vacations and travels with his family of six. Over the past year, as the world adapts to remote work, there’s been a lot of discussion about the employee experience—how investing in workers pays off, how employers can provide more flexible, efficient, and empathetic services—and how that’s internal. Support creates a culture that engages and motivates employees. But before the COVID-19 pandemic completely reshapes the workplace, we’re rethinking Microsoft’s employee value proposition. We knew there was a differentiated product, but we felt we were missing an opportunity to tell our overall story more effectively. So we started listening and learning, asking our employees what they value about working at Microsoft. What we found is the foundation of Essentials – the stories of our employees that make Microsoft truly unique.
What we’ve heard from our employees in focus groups and surveys around the world is that our priorities are more than just our profits and losses. What our employees really appreciate is the benefits of our benefits. In other words, it’s the feelings and outcomes they get from the support and investment we provide, their business and their need for change.
New Ways To Connect And Empower People On Workplace
Our foundation is divided into four distinct pillars: Community, Flexibility, Growth and Prosperity. These four pillars are the most important topics in every employee discussion. Because the magic isn’t in any particular program or policy—it’s in understanding and communicating how they all work together
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