According to Walt Disney, “You can dream, create, design, and build the most wonderful place in the world … but it requires people to make the dream a reality.” Your employees are the backbone of your business. Empowering your employees from day one will help ensure they remain engaged, and willing to perform to the best of their ability.
The Importance of Empowering Employees
Empowering your employees involves providing them with a level of trust as well as permission to make certain decisions on their own, in order to fulfill their responsibilities within your organization and to further your company’s goals. Empowered employees are more confident in their role within the company as well as their longevity with your organization. This increases motivation and productivity – it can also help lower turnover. An employee who feels empowered in their role tends to be more satisfied in their position and more loyal to their employer.
10 Steps for Empowering Employees
Employee empowerment begins day one, with the culture you’ve created, communication with your employees, how you provide feedback or recognize employee achievements, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Below is a list of ways you can help empower your employees:
1. Build a culture of trust: When employees believe they are trusted by their superiors they will be more confident in their roles and decision making. This will lead to higher productivity and better job performance.
2. Communication of company goals and vision: Employees need to understand the company’s goals in order to align with them. Make sure all employees are well-aware of your corporate goals, as well as your mission and vision statements.
3. Set clear expectations: Your employees can’t meet or exceed expectations without knowing what those expectations are. From a new hire’s first day, to the start of any new initiative, make sure your expectations are always clearly communicated.
4. Provide any necessary resources: Don’t expect miracles from your employees. Make sure they have all the resources they need to be successful. This means anything from providing them with employee training on their first day, including training on any software or systems your company uses, to access to files or documentation.
5. Foster open and clear communication: Establish open lines of communication so employees know they can always come to you with any questions or concerns. This also goes back to the culture of trust – you want your employees to trust you with anything they may need to communicate.
6. Delegate thoughtfully: Don’t delegate tasks just for the sake of getting something off your plate. When delegating tasks, try to delegate in a way that provides a challenge or learning experience for that employee, or demonstrates your trust in their skills.
7. Encourage problem solving: Part of trusting employees to complete projects is trusting them to be able to solve problems along the way. Encourage your employees to work through problems that arise, not just bring them to you. Even if they do need help, encourage them to brainstorm potential resolutions. This will also help them build important soft skills.
8. Provide Constructive Feedback: Be thoughtful about the feedback you provide. Keep in mind you want to build your employees up, not tear them down. Be specific – beyond just telling them they did a good job, what did they do right? What could be done better?
9. Recognize hard work and achievements: When your employees do a particularly good job, or finish a big project, be sure to recognize the work that went into it and their success. Knowing their work is appreciated will go a long way towards empowering employees and encouraging continued success.
10. Foster a continuous learning environment: Learning shouldn’t end with an employees’ onboarding. Encourage your employees to continue to grow existing skills or develop new ones. Establish custom learning paths to develop your employees with leadership potential. This investment in your employees will speak volumes about your trust in them.
Build Empowerment with Employee Training
Empower your employees from day one and help them reach their potential with the benefits of learning management system (LMS). trainingGrid® is an LMS developed with you and your employees in mind. Its intuitive design makes learning management simple and allows employees to begin training with just a click. This flexible system comes with a variety of robust features customizable to fit your needs in addition to built-in reporting, certification tools that track your compliance documentation, and the ability to customize learning paths.
Request a guided demonstration of trainingGrid® today!
