What Employee Empowerment Is And Why You Need It

Research shows that empowered employees enjoy their jobs more, stick around for longer, and have a bigger impact on your organization’s bottom line.

Read on to get to grips with how to empower your employees to bring their best selves to work each day.

What is meant by employee empowerment?

An empowered employee is free to implement their own ideas and be accountable for them. They’re given the autonomy to make judgment calls about their work rather than run every little thing past their line manager. And they’re encouraged to take control of their career growth and personal development. 

In short, staff empowerment is the polar opposite of micromanagement. And it can bring a whole host of benefits to your business.

Why is employee empowerment important?

According to a meta-analysis of research into work empowerment, empowered employees:

• Are more satisfied by their jobs.
• Are more committed to their organization.
• Have higher “task and contextual performance”.
• Suffer from less workplace stress.
• Don’t think about leaving their job as much as unempowered staff.

Give your staff autonomy and you’ll reap the benefits of a happy and healthy workforce. In fact, studies have shown that job autonomy has a significant impact on both job satisfaction and performance.

Want a more effective team that enjoys their work and sticks around for longer? Focus on empowerment in the workplace.

Five simple ways to empower your employees

Enjoy the benefits of employee empowerment in your workplace by making these simple changes:

Make sure your people are heard

Employees who feel their voice is heard are almost five times more likely to feel empowered at work.

Giving your staff ample opportunity to provide you with honest feedback through simple Flows that help your managers get meaningful feedback from their reports (and your employees to give useful feedback to their managers) is therefore a simple way to empower them.

Try Assembly to schedule one-to-one meetings in just a few clicks.

Of course, you’ve got to take action on that feedback for your teammates to feel like they really have a voice in your organization. Adapting your corporate policies and company culture to reflect the needs and wants of your people is a surefire way to empower your employees. 

Recognize your team

To keep your employees empowered, it’s important to recognize their winning ideas – and praise their initiative after their less successful ones.

Worried that telling an employee they’ve done a good job might come across as patronizing? Don’t be: 40% of employed Americans say they'd put more energy into their work if they were recognized more often. And yet 65% of employees haven’t received any form of recognition for good work in the last year.

So, be sure to bake regular recognition into your company culture to keep your employees empowered. The most meaningful feedback is honest, authentic, tailored to how the individual likes to receive recognition, and comes from their line manager. Tick all these boxes by following our simple employee recognition template – as well as celebrating your teammates with weekly wins. 

Try Assembly to make recognizing your employees as easy as possible.

Set your people up for success

For an employee to truly be autonomous, they need to feel like they're in control of their career trajectory.

Part of empowering your employees is therefore providing them with the opportunities to develop the skills they’re interested in learning, take on the responsibilities they’re interested in, and grow into the role they want to be the next step on their career journey

So, make sure managers are regularly touching on your staff’s career trajectory in their one-to-one meetings. 

Try Assembly to schedule one-to-one meetings in just a few clicks.

Having an open dialogue with each of your team members about their career growth and how they feel that’s developing is one of the most effective things you can do to keep your staff empowered, engaged in their work, and wanting to stick around.

So, don’t make the mistake of leaving a candid discussion of your reports’ career aspirations until their annual performance review. Instead, invite them to let you know how they’d like to grow their career at least once a quarter and then do what you can to make that happen for them.

Help them find meaningful work

People crave a sense of purpose and meaning from their work. Your employees won’t feel empowered unless they feel like what they’re doing connects to one of their core values or is putting their unique talents to use.

But helping your employees find meaning in their work can be tricky. Even if they enjoy the tasks they do on a day-to-day basis, a teammate might not be engaged with your organization’s mission or feel like they’re getting to exercise their best skills.

Employee engagement and job satisfaction surveys can help give you an idea of how meaningful your employees are finding their work. Then managers can dig deeper into this during one-to-ones and help make sure their reports are given plenty of opportunities to do work that’s meaningful to them.

Empower your line managers

For an employee empowerment strategy to work, your managers are going to need to be comfortable giving their reports autonomy. A single micromanager can undo all the hard work your organization has put into empowering a team.

So, be sure to empower your managers with all the training and resources they’ll need to lead teammates that you encourage to take the initiative and implement their own ideas.

‍Book a demo of Assembly to provide managers with all the tools they need to manage an empowered team.  

Be sure to check in with your managers regularly to make sure they’ve got all the support they need to give their team autonomy and feel confident handling any issues within their team without affecting how empowered their reports feel.

The bottom line

Empowering your employees can have a huge impact on their productivity, engagement, and job satisfaction. Stick to the tips we’ve laid out in this article to reap the benefits of a team that’s comfortable with coming up with their own ideas of how to improve your organization.