It is highly recommended that managers empower their employees by offering constructive feedback, comprehensive training, and unwavering support. This approach is crucial in guiding employees towards success and providing them with ample opportunities to showcase their unique talents and capabilities. For further insight, please take a look at these ten valuable suggestions.
What is Employee Empowerment?
Employee empowerment is a business philosophy that provides encouragement and positivity to workers in the workplace. In every business, managers should support their employees in every task, provide positive and constructive feedback about their work performance, and train their confidence.
As a manager, you must guide your employees. Trust your team members to make mistakes, take risks, and learn from them. An excellent way to encourage them is to provide them with resources and new opportunities to showcase their character and work skills.
Why Empowering Your Employees is Important
Empowering your employees could have a positive effect in many ways, like their job performance, professional satisfaction, and a boost in their level of commitment towards their jobs. As a manager, you will receive many benefits, like they will work with a more positive attitude, contribute more as a team, and communicate skillfully.
How to Empower Your Employees
Typically managers have the authority and skills to train and enhance their employee’s work skills. Your employees must be given knowledge and expertise to feel empowered and encouraged to work on themselves. In this article you will find ten tips on how to empower your employees.
1. Showcase your loyalty
A great way to build your work relationship and employees’ trust is to showcase your loyalty. Give them opportunities, and have them lead a project without your assistance; this will assure them of the trust and confidence they need from you as their manager.
Example scenario: If you are a team manager, give each team member tasks that fit their strengths. When and if they succeed, this will help encourage them and know that you trust them for giving them a chance to showcase their strengths.
2. Communicate a clear vision
As a leader, you must have all your team members the same. For your employees to perform well, they must receive precise instructions from you. As a manager, you must start by giving clear instructions, informing them about the company’s vision and mission, and providing a detailed job description with their responsibilities and duties.
Example scenario: It is your first day as a manager, and you have an entire team that doesn’t know any of their job roles; the first thing you should do is introduce yourself and the company’s vision and mission and take each individual and have a one on one conversation explaining in details their job roles and responsibilities. This way, there will be clarity from the start.
3. Don’t avoid small talks with your employees
One-on-one conversations are mandatory to keep up with your employees professionally and personally. Make it a necessary weekly thing, sit down with your employees and have conversations about their work and how their life is going. These talks could be anywhere in the office, or you’re grabbing your lunch. Ask them about their work, if they have any complications you could support, how their family is doing, and much more. Checking in with your team will build a good connection between you and your team, ensuring a bond.
Example scenario: Make it a habit to have weekly or monthly meetings with each of your teammates. For example, schedule them on an app you all use, take 30 minutes out of your day for that one week, and see how your team is performing and anything else they would like to add. You never know if someone is going through something that could be affecting their work performance.
4. Encourage self-improvement
In a company being a manager doesn’t mean you supervise your team’s daily tasks. It means being a leader to them and providing them with resources and opportunities to grow as people and as leaders. A prominent way to encourage your employees’ self-improvement is by holding monthly training sessions to improve and become more educated in their industry.
Example: Mentoring sessions are an excellent way to provide essential information to your employees. You can schedule one every month with a different topic, speakers, exercises, and activities, so it could be an exciting way to widen your employee’s minds and enhance teamwork.
5. Leave your office door open
As a leader, you should be open to discussing any topic your employees need to talk about. You want your employees to feel valued and that their opinions matter to you, keep your door open to them. It is called an open-door policy; it will show that you care what they think and support them whenever needed.
Example scenario: Mrs.Claudia has an open-door policy for all of her employees. One day she was sitting in her office, and one of her employees walked in and started discussing a problem they had with one of their tasks.
6. Support time-offs
A great way to keep your employees spirits up is by giving them time off. You don’t want to burn out your employees; if you work your employees too hard, this will affect you negtaively.
This might seem counterintuitive, but you’ll get a lot more out of your employees if you work to keep them from burning out. Learn to spot the symptoms of burnout, and avoid employees getting anywhere close by actively supporting vacation time.
Example:Your employees will actually be more productive and better at their jobs if they are well rested and rejuvenated. You don’t have to mandate full weeks off at a time, but you should foster an environment where a long weekend here and there is not only tolerated but actively supported.
7. Delegate more than just work
As a manager, sharing projects or tasks with your team is a great way to empower them. A manager can delegate different work tasks or projects to anyone on their team. Working together as a team means dividing the workload. Give opportunities to your team by having them lead projects and take tasks they’ve never taken so they can learn from them.
Example: Asking a team member to lead an important meeting while you are busy taking a call. This simple action will provide them with the confidence they need from you to lead.
8. Learn flexibility
As a manager your employees might often be put in situations and emergencies, choose to be flexible. Sometimes employees can be parents, as parents they have responsibilities like dropping their kids to school in the morning or picking them up. As a manager, if your employees need extra time coming in and leaving the office, give it to them.
Example: A great idea is to offer work-from-home for the employees who have children that they cannot take to daycare.
9. Inspire creative thinking
There is always room for creative growth. Inspire creative thinking workshops for your team to expand their minds and find newer and better ways to work on a task or a project. This is a great challenge for your team to work on, developing different ideas for the same task to see how creative they are.
Example: Create monthly challenges for your team. For instance, pick one client and set a task for your team to create the most creative pitch and see what they come up with. This will challenge them and trigger their creative minds.
10. Show you appreciate their efforts
It is always a good thing to hear good feedback. As a boss, you need to be able to deliver positive and constructive feedback to your employees. Showing you appreciate their work, even if it’s not their best, will help motivate them to perform better on their next task.
Example: A great way to praise your team is to show them your appreciation through words or rewards.
Empower Your Employees and Unleashed Their Full Potential – Summary
Empowering your employees is crucial for new and aspiring leaders. As a manager or a boss, it is up to you to educate and improve your employee’s full potential. Whether using these tips or working towards your own, they will benefit you and your employee in many ways.
