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What is the value of employee empowerment? A study of more than 7,000 employees showed that employees who did not feel empowered were rated at the 24th percentile of engagement while those with a high level of empowerment came in at the 79th percentile. This drastic difference shows the impact empowerment has on engagement in the workplace.
When employees are motivated, inspired, and confident, they’re more likely to go above and beyond in their roles. The key is to build a culture that encourages these qualities. Thankfully, with the right approach and tools, any organization can empower its employees.
This article discusses the benefits of employee empowerment — plus, how to start implementing best practices and embed employee empowerment into your company culture.
What is the definition of empowerment?
Empowerment is the act or action of empowering or enabling someone to perform certain acts or duties.
What is employee empowerment?
Employee empowerment is a management philosophy that focuses on allowing an organization’s employees to make independent decisions and to feel empowered to take action as they see fit. This contrasts with micromanagement, which does not allow for independent decision making.
Companies that are interested in empowering employees should act on the following:
- Give employees a voice by regularly soliciting and acting on their feedback.
- Provide opportunities for employees to grow through more autonomy, additional responsibilities, or even an entirely new role.
- Recognize employees frequently to increase their engagement and confidence in their own abilities.
- Provide employees with the tools, training, and authority they need to excel.
A company’s leaders, HR professionals, and fellow employees all play key roles in establishing a supportive, empowered environment. All parties need to establish mutual trust, feel comfortable taking risks, and establish clear expectations and guidelines. Without this collaboration, truly empowering employees is impossible.
What are the 5 points of employee empowerment?
The five points, or ways to empower your employees starts with listening and recognition, and includes:
- Fostering an environment of trust and psychological safety
- Building employee confidence with recognition and incentives
- Offering flexibility in work arrangements
- Asking employees for feedback and actioning it
- Supporting professional growth with coaching and delegation
What are the benefits of employee empowerment?
When employees feel empowered, the results can transform your workplace, with benefits that include:
- Motivated employees
- Greater trust in leadership
- Improved creativity
- Stronger bottom line
Employee empowerment can instill greater trust in leadership, encourage employee motivation, lead to greater creativity, and improve employee retention ー all of which ultimately results in a better bottom line.
Motivated employees
Empowering employees through greater autonomy has been directly linked to increased employee motivation. Employees who have more control over how, when, and where they do their job will work harder and find their work more engaging. Given the chance to show off what they can do, employees will put their best foot forward and feel more satisfied at the end of the day.
Greater trust in leadership
According to Harvard Business Review, employees who are given decision-making freedom are more likely to feel trusted by their leaders, leading to higher engagement and performance.
This is not to say that empowering employees involves pushing work onto their team that managers don’t feel like doing themselves. Leaders who empower their employees act as coaches, push their employees to do their best work and support them along the way. Empowered employees felt that their leaders would not take advantage of their hard work. Instead, they would recognize and celebrate their wins.
Improved creativity
When employees are given autonomy, they’re empowered to think outside the box, collaborate across teams, and contribute new, innovative ideas. This increased sense of ownership also leads to higher engagement, since empowered employees are more likely to take on additional responsibilities and actively support organizational goals. The ability to make decisions encourages more meaningful work, driving creativity and innovation that can have ripple effects across your organization.
A stronger bottom line
At the end of the day, companies that promote employee empowerment are simply performing better than those that don’t. When teams are highly engaged, profitability can increase by 23%. On the other hand, disengaged employees cost the global economy nearly 9% of global gross domestic product.
What does empowerment do for employees?
Empowering employees has several benefits, including:
- Increased levels of employee engagement
- Higher employee performance
- Better quality of work
- Elevated employee satisfaction
- Improved business results
How do you improve employee empowerment?
Improving employee engagement starts with creating an environment where employees feel like they have the tools to succeed. By connecting clear expectations with flexibility and ongoing development, managers can inspire confidence and encourage employees to take ownership of their work.
8 tips on how to empower your employees
- Delegate work responsibility based on role and skill set
- Set clear boundaries and expectations around when and how the work will be completed
- Be flexible and allow employees to adjust their workday if needed
- Ensure employees have the resources they need to be successful
- Focus on the end results, not the process
- Be open to employee input to improve processes
- Support the development of soft skills
- Create a continuous learning environment
What are the advantages of employee empowerment?
There are many advantages to employee empowerment. Some of the most impactful include:
- Greater motivation
- Higher productivity
- Enriched company culture
- More creativity in problem solving
- Confident decision making
- Reduced employee attrition
- More trust in leadership
- Improved customer experience
- A better brand experience for customers
- Better business outcomes
What are employee empowerment techniques?
There are several ways to make employees feel empowered at work. Be sure to incorporate the following into your best practices:
- Provide frequent feedback on their performance
- Ensure that it is honest and constructive
- Be clear and specific
- Ensure that you highlight what they did well/their strengths
4 steps for empowering employees in the workplace
- Show employees that their feedback matters
- Recognize to empower
- Provide opportunities for professional growth
- Make empowerment part of your organization’s culture and vision
There are tremendous benefits to empowering employees but ingraining it in a company’s culture takes a considerable level of focus. Start implementing best practices throughout your organization by following these four steps.
1. Show employees their feedback matters
Many companies distribute annual engagement surveys, but very few take the time to read employee comments, let alone act on them. Survey fatigue is a direct result of leadership not taking immediate action on feedback.
Encouraging employees to frequently provide honest feedback and actively changing your organization to fit their needs gives them a real voice in how the organization functions. According to Achievers’ Engagement and Retention Report, 90% of workers said that they are more likely to stay at a company that takes and acts on feedback. HR and engagement leaders agree ー 64% say an always-on feedback tool is essential to an engagement listening program. However, only 20% use such a tool.
The timing and the way a company collects feedback has a direct impact on the results received. Consider using an employee-driven feedback tool such as a workplace chatbot so that employees can give feedback in the moment.
Ensure you choose an employee feedback platform that shows leaders what drives their employees’ engagement via dashboards and heat maps that give real-time insights that provide guidance for any situation. Feedback reveals how to effectively empower your workforce.
Companies need to tailor their empowerment strategy to individual employees and their organizational culture. Take the time to decide what employee empowerment methods work best for your team members. Facilitating open, honest conversations between employees and leaders by using the right engagement solution is a way to empower all team members and increase trust.
2. Recognize to empower
Recognition goes a long way and has been directly linked to higher empowerment. Insights from Achievers 2024 State of Recognition Report found that 45% of employees recognized at least monthly say they’re engaged at work, compared to 23% of workers recognized annually or less.
To empower employees through recognition, give them words of support, encouragement, and praise. Acknowledge their accomplishments so they know you’re invested in their success and trust them. Recognition from all levels ー from peers, to managers, to the C-suite ー is critical for establishing an empowering culture at your organization.
Recognizing behaviors that are in line with company values incentivizes employees to repeat them by empowering them with the confidence they need to live company values. 92% of workers agree that they are more likely to take a specific action again if they are recognized for doing it the first time. Using a recognition platform can foster an environment of empowerment, drive individual performance, and improve NPS scores and raise stock prices.
3. Provide opportunities for professional growth
Professional growth and employee empowerment are highly interconnected. Research from Gallup shows that organizations who make strategic investments in employee growth report 11% greater profitability and are twice as likely to retain their employees.
Invest in learning and development by urging employees to share their knowledge, take on new responsibilities, and attend industry conferences or events that gives them the power to learn and improve their skills. HR should also set up a clear path for career advancement at their company. Even if employees feel empowered, it can be discouraging to work towards an ill-defined or unattainable goal. Promoting employees in-house shows that growth and success have tangible rewards at your organization.
Companies also need to ensure there are plenty of coaching, mentoring, and training programs available to boost morale and offer a concrete sense of direction. And don’t neglect psychological safety, either, or employees won’t get much out of the relationship.
4. Make empowerment part of your organization’s culture and vision
Revamping your company culture to focus on empowering employees takes time and dedicated effort. All levels of your company need to feel empowered and set up for success, including HR, managers, higher-level leadership, and employees. Think of ways for existing employees to guide new employees through onboarding, set up mentoring circles or idea exchanges, and brainstorm new and exciting ways for employees to engage with other departments.
Empowering employees produces a culture of continuity that can handle any changes that come your way.
Employee empowerment starts with listening and recognition
Companies need to find ways to empower employees in order to encourage and excite them. This makes employees feel as though they are meaningfully contributing to the company’s success and improves emotional well-being.
Two of the main factors in empowerment are an openness to employee input and recognizing employees. Achievers Listen and Achievers Recognize can help jumpstart your company’s efforts towards employee empowerment.
Achievers Listen allows your employees to provide feedback on their terms through frequent, anonymous surveys and an always-on feedback channel. And it empowers managers as well by accelerating the feedback loop and providing them with the insights they need to take real-time action. Achievers Recognize empowers everyone in your organization to easily send monetary and social recognition to team members who exemplify your company values.
Both Achievers Listen and Achievers Recognize include detailed reports on KPIs that can be shared across the organization and offer essential guidance so you can take the right actions without hesitation. Achievers empowers you to create the company culture you’ve always wanted.
Employee empowerment FAQs
