How to Empower Your Employees

Have you ever tried to give your employees the chance to make their own decisions related to their assigned responsibilities? Perhaps you’re afraid to do it because of the many risks involved in letting them do the tasks in their own. Employee empowerment can make your organization more efficient and effective when implemented the right way. It promotes trust and confidence inside any workplace. However, it can also be disastrous if not done strategically. The following shall guide you on how to empower your employees.

1. You need to trust your employees; hence, you should hire the employees that are trustworthy and reliable. This also means that you need to set your quality and standards in the hiring process of your personnel.

2. You need to make your employees trustworthy and more reliable. Thus, after hiring the competent people, you should train them well. Remember that you cannot rely on someone who is not reliable. You should understand that as an employer, one of the most important responsibilities you shouldn’t ignore is providing them with the best trainings and preparations.

3. After training and preparing them, you should delegate the duties and responsibilities that will fit them best. Every person has his own talents and potentials, and you need to align those things to their positions. Hence, another work for you to be done is to monitor and evaluate your employees from hiring to training.

4. Give them the authority and independence they need to accomplish their tasks. Employee empowerment is based on the notion that non-managerial employees can make their own decisions in carrying out their specific jobs and assignments, resulting to a more efficient work environment within a certain organization. It simplifies many organization processes and reduces too much bureaucracy.

5. Make them revolve in you but preserve their own rotation. This is the principle of solar system applied in management. If you can observe our solar system, the planets are revolving around the sun, while they are rotating on their own axis. The process of revolution and the planets’ own rotation keep the solar system organized for millions or billions of years. The sun empowers the planets by giving them the independence to rotate on themselves. Managers should learn from this kind of empowerment, where they can also give their people the privilege to handle their own responsibilities.

6. Keep your employees informed. You’re granting authority and power to your employees to accomplish their specific tasks without your interference. Thus, you need to keep them oriented with the organization’s common goals, including the organizational mission, vision and objectives. This is to ensure that they will be heading in alignment with the whole organization’s direction, as well as its destination.

I hope that you have learned an important lesson on managing your people today. Keep in mind that empowering people is not only a process of granting people with powers through a piece of paper or a verbal discussion, but it is a process that requires your commitment to train and teach them how to empower themselves.