IntroductionWhether you have 1, 10, or 100 people working for you, you need to make them feel that their actions count.
Empowerment is a ‘catch-all’ term for many ideas on employee power and responsibility; but as a broad definition it means giving employees the power to do their job.
This can mean giving some authority to front line staff, encouraging employee feedback, or simply showing employees more trust.
To fully appreciate the benefits of empowerment, you need also to look at the huge disadvantages (and costs) of non-empowerment.
Customer Service
Few business owners would disagree that customer service is important. Customer service is a vital part of ensuring people continue to use your business.
What many business owners appear to miss is that empowering employees is a critical part of customer service.
Have you ever been trying to get help from a business, and found yourself passed through from employee to supervisor, from supervisor to management? Each time having to repeat your problem in full, and each time getting more fed up?
This is a classic sign of un-empowered employees who don’t have the authority to do their job.
A basic example:
You buy a Television from an electrical store.
John the sales person advises you, and you go home with the TV.
When you arrive home the TV has a big scratch across the side.
You return to the store and tell John of your problem, and agree that for a partial refund you will accept the scratched TV.
John says this is a fair arrangement, but he needs to check with his line manager if this is ok.
(If John was sufficiently empowered you could receive the refund and leave satisfied now)
John comes back 5 minutes later with his manager, who asks you to explain the problem again. You go through the details of the purchase and the problem, and the manager agrees to the solution, but needs authorisation from the store manager.
(If the manager was sufficiently empowered you could receive the refund and leave now)
The store manager comes back after 5 minutes with John and asks you to explain the situation again. You go through the details of the problem, and the store manager agrees to a partial refund. However first he needs to get an authorisation number from Head Office.
(If the store manager was sufficiently empowered you could receive the refund and leave now)
After 5 minutes on the phone the store manager comes back and agrees to process the refund. Finally the problem has been solved, but at what cost?
To sort the problem the store has paid for:
John’s time
His manager’s time
The store manager’s time
The head office’s time
Not only that, but in the process of waiting and repeating yourself you may have (as most people would) decided not to bother shopping with their store again.
If John was given the power to do his job properly, the company would have saved the employee time costs, as well as kept a customer.
The answer in this case would be for John to know, and be able to enforce the company policy.
(E.g.: Maximum 10% discount or replacing the product)
Instead, you became a victim of un-empowerment disease, or “Run and check” syndrome.
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