How does Employee Empowerment Improve Productivity in the Workplace?

The business magnate Bill Gates said, “As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.”

Earlier, businesses functioned around their owners, and decisions were subject to their preferences. In the current dynamic and rapidly changing business landscape, this leadership style is no longer acceptable.

Today, employees are considered valuable assets for any organization. Therefore, empowering will encourage them to showcase their best potential and drive business profitability and growth.

In this post, we will take you through the importance of employee empowerment and effective ways to empower employees at the workplace. Let’s get started-

Why is employee empowerment important for business?

Workplace empowerment has many benefits. According to sources, “employee empowerment is associated with improved job performance, satisfaction, and a higher commitment towards the work and the organization.”

Additionally, when employees feel empowered at work, they are more likely to:

• Go the extra mile to help the organization achieve its objectives
• Coordinate and improve collaboration in the workplace
• Enhance their work quality and performance
• Encourage effective communication in the workplace
• Maintain a positive attitude on the job
• Drive creativity and innovation in their work
• Recommend company to potential employees

As Dale Carnegie says, “people support a world, they helped create.” This implies that it’s impossible to empower your organization without first empowering your employees. Therefore, organizations should help employees grow and foster. This will also promote organizational growth and positive business outcomes.

Now, let’s move ahead to explore the ways to empower employees.

5 Effective ways to empower employees in the workplace

Employee empowerment is an organization-wide program that promotes clear objectives, fairness, high morale, recognition, active participation, teamwork, and communication.

Let’s take a look at effective ways to empower employees in the workplace –

1. Identify appropriate resources and delegate tasks

Entrusting employees by delegating critical responsibilities makes them feel valued and evokes a sense of belonging to the company. Conversely, improper delegation can result in de-motivation and poor employee retention.

Therefore, managers should take an employ-centric approach to ensure the tasks assigned to the employees matches their skillset. For example, you are managing an ad campaign project. In that case, you can ask the marketing executive to research and prepare the details about the target audience, content strategy, etc., instead of providing the details yourself. This will make employees accountable and responsible for the work, which will positively reflect in their work.

2. Prevent micromanagement to build a positive work culture

Micromanagement is the opposite of empowerment. Most employees don’t appreciate being micromanaged. It creates an environment where the employees feel that they are under constant supervision. This affects their creativity and performance and leads to disengagement. In a recent survey, 68% of employees reported that working for a micromanaging boss lowered their morale and productivity.

Therefore, instead of micromanaging the employees, one should grant them autonomy to manage their workload, contribute ideas, and make decisions without constant supervision. It will contribute to a positive work environment which boosts employee morale and work quality.

3. Provide constructive feedback and recognize excellence

Constructive feedback from managers can build your employees’ confidence and help them understand the areas of improvement. This will enable them to learn and push their potential to the maximum extent and deliver better work results.

Feedback should always be a healthy blend of praises and suggestions for improvement, rather than generic feedback that leaves them without any clue. For example – if the employee fails to match the organization’s standards, the manager must provide actionable advice rather than being too harsh. The manager’s confidence in their employees will motivate them to achieve more incredible things for their organization.

4. Encourage cross-departmental collaboration in the workplace

Cross-departmental collaboration is more than just coordinating with other teams. It involves a shared vision that encourages employees to share information and understand the nitty-gritty of each other’s roles. Moreover, it empowers employees to diversify their portfolios and work on multi-faceted projects. That way, employees can explore new ideas and opportunities.

It also helps in boosting employee morale as they will know that the company values their inputs, perspective, and thoughtful solutions. In addition, as employees with different functions and job responsibilities work on a common goal, it ultimately increases the quality of deliverables.

5. Upskill the workforce to promote professional growth

According to Gartner, 58% of employees need new skills to thrive professionally. Therefore, upskilling the workforce helps them see the path to career advancement. In addition, it will help them to stay abreast of technology and industry trends.

Organizations can initiate training and upskilling programs that empower employees to undertake different roles and responsibilities. Thus, creating engaging learning experiences can help future-proof the workforce. It will also make employees more efficient and productive in their work.

Let’s get into details about how resource management software helps in empowering employees.

How does resource management software help organizations empower their employees?

Saviom’s robust resource management solution helps organizations empower their workforce and unleash their true potential. It allows managers to consider the resource’s interests, skills, capacity, and availability before allocating them to projects/tasks. This automatically engages the employees and motivates them to stay productive.

Using the tool, managers can create project vacancies and publish the requirements across the enterprise. That way, all the relevant resources matching the criteria get notified. Accordingly, resources can show their interest in the positions. After that, managers can finally select the most suitable resources and fill the position. This will propel employees to perform the tasks by putting in extra effort, eventually improving the work quality.

Conclusion

Even though employee empowerment has become a top priority in most industries, businesses still struggle to empower their employees successfully. Therefore, implementing the above strategies in the right way will help maximize resources’ productivity and business profitability. It will also make employees feel more confident and inspired to grow.

Want to improve productivity at the workplace? Empower employees by leveraging the best resource management software.