The Key to Success with Employee Empowerment

As an entrepreneur and small-business owner, you have a lot of responsibilities. You’re ultimately in charge of all aspects of your company, and trying to keep up with everything can be highly time-consuming.

Many business leaders are finding that employee empowerment can help ease some of the responsibilities. With this strategy, you are empowering your team to be responsible and accountable for their actions, and be able to make many crucial decisions on their own without regular guidance.

When considering employee empowerment, many business owners worry about losing control of their organizations, but when done properly, empowerment has your employees all working towards the goals you define.

Effectively Convey Responsibilities

The biggest problems that occur from employee empowerment are often the result of confusion in the workplace. This is most common when employees don’t know exactly what is expected out of them, or are unaware of your long-term and short-term business’ goals and strategies.

When delegating tasks and empowering employees to make decisions on their own, be very clear with what you expect from them. There should be no question over who is responsible for what, or when a situation should be brought to your attention.

By effectively conveying responsibilities to your team, you’re not only able to avoid uncertainty, but you are also in a better position to hold your employees accountable for their actions.

You should also be open about the plans for your business and the steps you and your team should take in order to reach them. Empowered employees need to have an in-depth understand of your company’s goals and the milestones you’re aiming to achieve along the way.

Prioritize Employee Training

In order for empowerment to be efficient and autonomous, your employees need to know how to function without constant management. This means training them in some new responsibilities that they haven’t needed to worry about in the past. How are your workers able to make business-growing decisions on their own if they’re not properly trained on how to do so?

Employee training can seem like a major investment, but it can mean the difference between successful employee empowerment, and lackluster performance down the road.

Allow Open Conversation

Even with a well-implemented employee empowerment program in place, there are still times when your direction and leadership will be required. When business leaders utilize empowerment solely to avoid managing their team, it’s not uncommon for them to become hard-to-reach or unpleasant to talk with.

Make sure that your employees know that you’re available to help them with any questions or problems they may have. Keep an open-door policy, and encourage your team to bring anything to you that they’re not comfortable handling on their own.

Employee empowerment can help foster innovation and increased performance in the workplace, but needs to be carefully implemented to help maximize success. Poor planning and structuring can leave employees confused and unsure of what you expect from them. With thorough training and open communications, however, employee empowerment can take a load of responsibilities off your plate and allow you to focus on your business’ future outlook instead of its day-to-day activities.

Acknowledge employee achievements

Making it a point to cite successes at board meetings and to verbally congratulate employees on a job well done is a great way to create an office atmosphere focused on success and to empower employees to keep up the good work.