Empowering Employees
Introduction
Whether 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.
Run and Check syndrome
This is where a front-line employee has no authority to make any decisions. They constantly have to bother the management each time an offer or decision is needed.
I used the electrical store example as it very close to my heart, I used to be that salesperson, with run and check syndrome on my shoulders everyday. So I know what effect it has!
- I know that customers feel undervalued, as the person who serves them has no authority to help them to the full extent of their needs.
- I know how stressful it is for both employees and management to waste time checking things time after time.
- I know how undervalued employees feel because they don’t have the power to fully complete their job, which leads to further pressure from unsatisfied customers.
Many times I was told by a member of management to stop pestering them!
But with no empowerment, an employee has NO choice.
The answer is simple.
If you know certain decisions must be made every day, allow the smaller ones to be made by the employee. Give them appropriate boundaries and examples of reasonable circumstances.
I.e.: The 10% discount or replacement option.
This saves time and effort on all sides, and allows quicker and better customer service.
Not only that the employee feels more highly valued as they are being given responsibility.
No power = No win
An empowered employee can adapt to each customer in real time (this is a crucial area), and carry through their job with less time wasted, less hassle, and less frustration for the customer.
A totally un-empowered employee creates a no win situation for everybody.
The customer feels undervalued and receives poorer service.
The management has time taken up by queries, and is likely to have less motivated staff, and poorer sales or performance results.
The employee feels under-valued and stressed, particularly if there are problems that they can see but have no power to change.
Situations where management accuse employees of not doing their job, but at the same time will not give them the empowerment needed to do it are very common.
What is needed?
When you set a task for an employee, try to make sure that they have the necessary authority to carry it through to finish. This may mean taking a risk on the judgement of your employees, but in the majority of cases, empowered employees will perform better and learn more.
In many cases, not all authority can or should be given to an employee. Delegate the authority you believe is relevant and is needed to each employee.
Just remember, the more empowerment you give to an employee, the more trusted and valued they feel, and the harder they are likely to work.
Fear
The management of some businesses fear that by giving employees some decision making authority they will cost the company money, they will become power hungry, or will abuse the power.
This is a very negative view of employees. If these feelings were expressed to employees by management, they could in itself be responsible for negative feeling amongst workers.
What these fears fail to address is the costs of not giving employees the relevant authority.
- Cost of lost time
- Unsatisfied customers, leading to lost customers
- Lower productivity from employees feeling undervalued
If management cannot trust employees to do their job it points to a very large flaw in the company’s recruitment policy!
Motivation & Trust
The many theories of motivation offer significantly different opinions on how to encourage workers. One thing however is clear; a worker who feels undervalued will not be motivated.
A key benefit of empowerment is improving motivation, and therefore productivity. By allowing employees some authority and responsibility you help to make them feel needed and valued.
The respected theorist Maslow believed that feeling secure in your job is the first important factor in motivation. Showing an employee they are valued is a great way to demonstrate this.
Trust
Make an employee feel trusted, and in most cases, they will work harder to ensure that trust remains. (Don’t pile on many difficult tasks; this is poor management not trust!)
Do however; try to set achievable goals. Few things feel more rewarding than completing a difficult task effectively. If you show an employee that you trust them to do a difficult job, on most occasions they will put in a lot of effort to make you feel they deserved that trust.
Combine trust and the power to complete a job, and employees will (in almost all cases) respond positively.
Watching
Don’t scrutinise your employees every minute of every day. Part of trust is letting them get on with their job without constant management observation and supervision. Being watched is a sign that they are not trusted, that management don’t believe they can do the job correctly.
Try leaving them to it, and they will feel more trusted, more valued, and will usually give better performance too.
Other Benefits
A side benefit of motivated / positive employees is that absenteeism and job dissatisfaction levels will fall:
- An employee who feels valued is less likely to try and avoid work.
- With the authority to complete their job, employees are far less likely to feel dissatisfied at work; leading to lower employee turnover.
- Happier workers will be more productive
“What would you do?”
Possibly the most important question you can ask an employee; never overestimate its importance in empowerment!
For example: You work in a small office.
A person phones you with a strong, justified complaint about an ex-member of staff and asks what action will be taken.
You go to the manager and ask what should be done.
The manager turns and says “What do you think we should do?”
Instantly, the manager is showing that they trust you, and respect your opinion.
The manager may know that the standard course of action is to inform the person complaining that the member of staff no longer works there and offer a 15% refund as a gesture of apology.
However, by asking the employee they are putting faith in their judgement. They are allowing the employee (who work with the customers everyday) to put forward their view on the situation.
This can sometimes reveal important information to management (e.g. A 10% refund may be just as effective if backed with a written letter of apology.) as well as making the employee feel very highly valued.
Employee Suggestions
Listen to your employees.
The frontline employees are the ones who deal with your customers, who use your equipment, who follow your management, everyday. Who else is better placed to make a suggestion about the business ?
Responding
Don’t just listen. If you believe the suggestion will not work, say so. Tell the employee why it won’t work, and thank them for putting it forward. If you believe the suggestion could work well, then tell the employee, and act on it.
Few things feel more empowering than when a company listens and responds to your ideas.
Culture
If you create a work culture where employee suggestions are appreciated, not ignored; then employees will respond.
When talking to staff, ask if they have any ideas. As a minimum, leave a suggestion box (they do work) where people can place ideas. Actively listen to and follow up these suggestions, and employees will feel respected, as their opinions (even if not carried out) were listened to, and treated as important.
It’s all about communication between management and staff. Remove the barriers to communication and employees will become more open and confident.
Remember
- Give employees the authority necessary to complete their job.
- Empowered employees will work harder, will be absent less, will produce better results, and will provide better customer service.
- Customers like empowered employees. It makes them feel more valued, as well as giving them confidence in the employees ability to do their job.
- Give employees trust, and they will rarely let you down.
- Try asking “What would you do?”
- Actively encourage suggestions and management communication. This makes employees feel more appreciated as well as allowing money saving/productivity increasing ideas to surface much more easily.
- An empowered worker is tomorrow’s manager.
- “Responsibility without authority is not empowerment”
Good delegation of authority and trust will create happier, harder working employees, as well as providing more satisfied customers, and less hassle for management.
With an effective, sensible system of empowerment, everybody wins!
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