Hitting a brick wall is one of the most unpleasant sensations in the world, especially at work. Employees can tell when they have the potential to do more but lack the authority or resources to do so, or the voice to request it. Working in this state is extremely frustrating, resulting in demoralization, decreased productivity, and disengagement. According to a study of over 7,000 employees, those who felt disempowered were rated at the 24th percentile of engagement, while those who felt empowered were rated at the 79th percentile. So, here we are going to share all details about employee empowerment.
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Fortunately, any organization can empower its employees with the right approach and tools. This article discusses the benefits of employee empowerment and how to begin implementing best practices and incorporating employee empowerment into your company culture.
What exactly is employee empowerment?
When someone is empowered, they know they have the ability to accomplish something and have the confidence to do so. Employee empowerment is the process by which companies provide their employees with everything they need to succeed. However, this entails far more than simply allocating resources. Companies that want to empower their employees should do the following:
- Give employees a voice by soliciting and acting on their feedback on a regular basis.
- Allow employees to advance by giving them more autonomy, additional responsibilities, or even a completely new role.
- Recognize employees on a regular basis to boost their engagement and confidence in their abilities.
- Of course, give employees the tools, training, and authority they need to succeed.
Leaders, HR professionals, and coworkers all play important roles in creating a supportive, empowered environment. All parties must build mutual trust, feel comfortable taking risks, and set clear expectations and guidelines. Employee empowerment is impossible without this collaboration.
The Advantages of Employee Empowerment
Employee empowerment can increase trust in leadership, motivate employees, foster creativity, and improve employee retention, all of which contribute to a higher bottom line.
Employees who are motivated
Employee motivation has been directly linked to increased empowerment through greater autonomy. Experts agree that employees who have more say over how, when, and where they work will work harder and enjoy their jobs more. Employees who are given the opportunity to demonstrate their abilities will put their best foot forward and feel more satisfied at the end of the day.
Increased faith in leadership
According to a Harvard Business Review meta-analysis, leaders who empower their employees are more likely to be trusted by their subordinates than leaders who do not empower their employees. This is not to say that empowering employees entails delegating tasks that managers would rather not do themselves. Leaders who empower their employees act as coaches, encouraging and supporting their employees to do their best work. Employees who felt empowered believed that their leaders would not take advantage of their efforts but rather would recognize and celebrate their successes.
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Increased creativity
According to the same Harvard meta-analysis, leaders who were perceived as empowering had direct reports who were more likely to be rated as highly creative by their colleagues. Surprisingly, subordinates who encouraged their employees to think for themselves and collaborate across teams came up with more novel ideas. Furthermore, empowered direct reports were more likely to volunteer for extra assignments and support their organizations outside of their day-to-day job functions. Researchers suspected that empowered people were more committed to meaningful goals and used their creativity to achieve them.
A better bottom line
At the end of the day, companies that encourage employee empowerment simply outperform those that do not. Businesses with highly motivated employees are 21% more profitable. Disengaged employees, on the other hand, cost businesses in the United States an estimated $450 to $550 billion per year.
4 Steps for Employee Empowerment at WorkPlace
There are numerous advantages to empowering employees, but incorporating it into a company’s culture requires considerable effort. Follow these four steps to begin implementing best practices throughout your organization.
1. Demonstrate to employees that their feedback is valuable.
Many businesses distribute annual employee engagement surveys, but few actually read the responses, let alone act on them. Survey fatigue is a direct result of leadership failing to act on feedback immediately. Even if they do act on the results of an annual survey, chances are that any response will be too late to make a difference, as the annual survey cycle takes months to complete from deployment to analysis to response.
Encouraging employees to provide honest feedback on a regular basis and actively changing your organization to meet their needs empowers employees by giving them a genuine say in how the organization operates. According to Our Engagement and Retention Report, 90 percent of employees are more likely to stay at a company that accepts and acts on feedback. An always-on feedback tool is essential to an engagement listening program, according to 64% of HR and engagement leaders. However, only 20% of people use such a tool.
The manner and timing with which a company collects feedback have a direct impact on the outcomes. Consider implementing an always-on, employee-driven feedback tool, such as a workplace chatbot, so that employees can provide feedback when it is most important to them. This type of feedback channel can be combined with pulse surveys, which are another strategic complement to a modern employee engagement strategy. They are typically a small series of questions (5-20) sent quarterly to track engagement levels and understand what drives engagement over time.
Choose a platform that allows managers to take action as well. Using an employee feedback platform can immediately show leaders what motivates their employees’ engagement through dashboards and heat maps that show managers where they can have the most impact. Managers can take positive action with these real-time insights that provide guidance for any situation by participating in a post-pulse survey listening session where they and their team can collectively plan and take responsibility for the response to feedback.
The responses reveal how to effectively empower your workforce.
Businesses must tailor their empowerment strategy to individual employees as well as their organizational culture. Take the time to figure out which employee empowerment strategies work best for your team members. And encourage employees to provide feedback to managers and senior leadership right away, so they get into the habit and any early issues can be identified and addressed. Using the right engagement solution to facilitate open, honest conversations between employees and leaders is a critical way to empower all team members and increase trust.
2. Recognize in order to empower
A little acknowledgment can go a long way. Employees who are recognized for their outstanding work feel more empowered to do their best, and recognition has been directly linked to increased empowerment. Furthermore, according to Brandon Hall Group’s Culture of Recognition Pulse Survey, organizations with a high rate of employee recognition have more than double the employee engagement, and employees who work for a company that consistently recognizes its employees are 79 percent more likely to rate their employer highly. Recognition also boosts motivation: 90% of employees say receiving recognition motivates them to work harder.
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Give words of support, encouragement, and praise to employees to empower them. Recognize their accomplishments so they know you care about their success and believe in them. Recognition at all levels, from peers to managers to the C-suite, is essential for fostering an empowering culture in your organization.
Recognizing behaviors that are consistent with company values encourages employees to continue doing them, giving them the confidence they need to live their values. 92 percent of workers agree that being recognized for doing something the first time makes them more likely to do it again. Using a recognition platform can help to create an empowered environment and make it easy for employees to feel good about taking positive risks. Employee recognition platforms have been shown to improve NPS scores and stock prices in addition to improving individual performance.
3. Provide opportunities for professional development — as well as the necessary support
Professional development and employee empowerment are inextricably linked. 87 percent of millennials believe that job development is important, and since millennials account for more than a third of the workforce, it’s in your best interest to meet their needs. However, the importance of professional development is not limited by generation, as 40% of employees who receive inadequate training leave their job within 5 years.
Then, all businesses must invest in learning and development. Inviting employees to share their knowledge, take on new responsibilities, and attend industry conferences or events empowers them to learn and grow. Enabling employees to take ownership of their own projects and sharpen their critical thinking skills ensures that they are prepared for new opportunities. Employees who are exposed to these opportunities feel valued members of the workplace community.
Fostering professional development necessitates that HR create a clear path for career advancement at their company. Even if employees feel empowered, working toward an ill-defined or unattainable goal can be discouraging. Promoting employees within your organization demonstrates that growth and success have tangible rewards, so all of your team members can feel confident that they, too, can find a long-term home with your company.
Companies must also ensure that employees who want to achieve their goals have access to a variety of coaching, mentoring, and training programs. Mentoring and coaching more junior employees can boost morale and provide them with a clear sense of direction, but you should also consider establishing other types of mentor relationships. An experienced manager may have just as much to teach a new hire as the new hire has to teach the manager. Employees will not benefit from the relationship if psychological safety is ignored.
4. Incorporate empowerment into your organization’s culture and vision.
It takes time and dedication to transform your company culture to focus on employee empowerment. Listening to and recognizing employees is a great place to start, but you must do so on a daily basis to effect company-wide change. Employees who feel ‘heard’ by leaders are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to do their best work, according to Dr. Natalie Baumgartner, Chief Workforce Scientist at CareerCartz, and leaders must “find ways to recognize everyday behaviors that align with company culture and goals.” To foster an empowerment culture, leadership must recognize that its role is to support employees rather than the other way around.
As every team member should be set up for success, all levels of your company, including HR, managers, higher-level leadership, and employees, must feel empowered. Think of ways for existing employees to guide new employees through orientation, set up mentoring circles or idea exchanges, and brainstorm new and exciting ways for employees to engage with other departments to ensure no one is left out of your empowerment initiatives.
Employee empowerment creates a culture of continuity that can handle any change thrown at the organization, including a global pandemic.
Employee empowerment begins with listening and recognition.
Companies must find ways to empower their employees in order to motivate and excite them. This gives employees the sense that they are making a significant contribution to the company’s success and improves their emotional well-being.
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Employee recognition and openness to employee input are two key factors in empowerment. CareerCartz Listen and CareerCartz Recognize can help your company’s efforts toward employee empowerment get off to a good start. Through frequent, anonymous pulse surveys and an always-on feedback channel, CareerCartz Listen enables your employees to provide feedback on their terms. It also empowers managers by shortening the feedback loop and providing them with the information they need to take real-time action. CareerCartz Recognize enables everyone in your organization to easily send monetary and social recognition to team members who demonstrate your company’s values.
CareerCartz Listen and CareerCartz Recognize both include detailed reports on key performance indicators (KPIs) that can be shared across the organization and provide critical guidance so you can take the right actions quickly.
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