What are company empowerment examples?
When it comes to boosting engagement and motivation, employee empowerment is a win-win for both a company and its workers.
This article provides HR professionals with examples of employee empowerment that can help them understand how to empower their employees so that they feel comfortable voicing ideas, making decisions, and identifying areas where they can benefit the company.
The phrase “empowerment” encompasses all that a company does to give its workers more agency, responsibility, and faith in their own judgment and decision-making. When a company gives its workers the freedom to make decisions on their own, along with the resources they need to do so, it is empowering those workers.
Compare employee engagement with employee empowerment. Despite their differences, the two do go hand in hand; engaged workers are a byproduct of empowered workers.
Employee empowerment and its advantages
As stated before, a significant advantage of employee empowerment is a rise in engagement. But there are other fascinating advantages of employee empowerment that have been shown by research.
Some examples are:
- Improving critical thinking and creativity: Giving workers more say in their work lives boosts critical thinking and creativity.
- Empowering employees improves their decision-making abilities, leading to better customer service. As a result, staff members are better equipped to address consumer concerns and incorporate problem-solving into their work ethic, which ultimately leads to better customer service.
- Putting an emphasis on both personal and business development: Managers who empower their people frequently encourage and respect fresh ideas. As a result, when workers have agency over their work, they are more invested in making improvements that benefit both themselves and the company.
- Increased morale, productivity, and retention: Empowered workers will logically experience higher morale, produce better work, and remain with the organization longer as a result of these advantages.
Examples of employee empowerment for human resources
A company can give its workers more power in many ways. To further understand how human resources can back up employee empowerment, let’s examine a few case studies and examples.
- Have workers weigh in on business choices
In your experience, how often have different departments made choices without considering the potential effects on other employees? The question now is how frequently the HR department has acted unilaterally, making decisions without consulting the staff.
It is usual practice for companies to avoid discussing decisions with employees who would be most affected by them. Taken together, these consequences may lead to lower morale, fewer ideas, and, in the worst-case scenario, less production and more employee turnover.
To begin empowering your employees, you should evaluate and enhance your organization’s and HR department’s practices that exclude them from choices that will have a big impact on them.
Think about:
- Putting ideas into a suggestion box (or an electronic one).
- Running a poll.
- Having workers choose their own objectives and key performance indicators.
- Motivating and educating supervisors to include their staff in making decisions.
- Setting up times and places for group brainstorming.
Example: Surveys for Microsoft employees
Microsoft is well-known for its practice of including employees in various operations. The organization polls workers on a variety of issues, including training and development opportunities, career paths, and even the process of layoffs. The company uses the survey data to shape its personnel development programs and identify areas for potential career growth.
For even more open communication inside the company, Microsoft publishes the survey findings on a public platform that all workers are welcome to browse.
- Give workers the tools they need to autonomously make choices
Executives spend 70% of their time making decisions, according to McKinsey. Managers lose over half a million man-days worth of productivity because of this. This works out to almost $250 million per year in salary for a Fortune 500 company.
Delegating decision-making responsibilities is essential for CEOs to maximize their time efficiency. The key to effective decision-delegation is providing employees with the autonomy and responsibility to make their own choices.
To do this, you’ll need a number of things, including:
- Supervisors who are well-versed in delegating authority and who aren’t afraid to let their employees make tough calls.
- Workers whose decision-making responsibilities are crystal clear, including:
- When given the authority to act independently
- How can they make use of the resources available to them
- Where their power to make choices ends
Example: Ritz-Carlton: Encouraging the resolution of consumer complaints
When guests have problems, any employee at any level of the Ritz-Carlton organization can use a set budget of about $2,000 to fix it without involving a manager. The key takeaway here is not the amount of money the company has to spend on problem-solving, but rather the importance of providing staff with the tools they need to make decisions.
According to Ritz-Carlton: “There is much power for all of our Ladies & Gentlemen knowing that we truly trust them with an amount that large, per incident. They are able to make decisions in the moment to quickly resolve a guest issue or to make an experience beautiful and memorable (or both). And our Ladies & Gentlemen know they can do this on their own, regardless of their level, without having to go through levels of leadership for approval.”
- Provide workers with a range of options
In the days before the pandemic, people believed that being physically close to their coworkers was essential for creativity, teamwork, and productivity. The advent of flexible employment arrangements, however, has flipped these presumptions on their heads. Flexibility in the workplace boosts creativity and productivity when implemented well and accompanied with the resources workers need to thrive.
When it’s running smoothly, flexible working fosters a performance culture by focusing on measuring output instead of presence, as stated in BP’s Future of Work study.
The success of flexible work arrangements depends on their foundation in autonomy and support. In order to do this, consider the following:
- Make sure that staff can easily access resources that promote teamwork.
- Come up with some rules to follow so everyone can work along.
- Consider reimagining the office as a place where people may meet with clients, share ideas, or just relax and unwind.
Example: Reworked: Fostering cooperation and trust
Reworked introduced the ‘empowered hybrid model’. The native digital magazine let most people choose whether to come into the office or not. The motto of the organization is “Get your work done wherever works best.”
Within its new hybrid work paradigm, the organization has established guiding principles to facilitate collaboration. Among these, they are reworking their main office to incorporate a “onsite offsite” area.
The days of working in the office simply for the sake of it are over. However, according to CEO Andy MacMillan, “the effect is powerful” when employees come in with a purpose, when the process is natural and enjoyable, and when they are able to effectively complete tasks.
He continued: “For instance, one of our teams recently held an onsite off-site, but others with a matrixed relationship to that team wanted to come in and spend time with them. It led to the sort of collaboration and trust-building that sometimes happens best in person.”
On top of that, Reworked suggests that staff skip mixed-mode meetings and go straight for virtual or in-person gatherings, depending on what works best for them. Colleagues are able to have more coherent discussions as a result.
- Accept your mistakes
Leaders in high-performing cultures encourage risk-taking and the acceptance of failure as learning opportunities. There is a strong emphasis on employees learning from their errors and taking chances.
Nevertheless, a shift in strategy from the top down is necessary to provide people the freedom to make mistakes and grow from them.
Only 20% of German employees, 21% of US employees, and 22% of French employees strongly agreed with the statement “My firm offers an environment where people may try, fail and learn from mistakes” in a global Gallup research. Companies are not succeeding in fostering an environment where errors are acceptable, as this shows.
The following are some things that HR can do to promote a learning culture:
- The best leaders are those who can admit when they’re wrong and then share what they’ve learned with their employees.
- Establish a structured forum for the exchange of knowledge.
- Celebrate mistakes that you’ve learned from and used to make you better.
- Inspire supervisors to see their staff as allies in the pursuit of a common objective.
Example: Netflix: Do what’s right by the business.
The culture at Netflix promotes openness and honesty when it comes to employees making errors and discussing them.
According to Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, “When you succeed, speak about it softly or let others mention it for you. But when you make a mistake say it clearly and loudly, so that everyone can learn and profit from your errors. In other words, ‘Whisper wins and shout mistakes’.”
- Acknowledge and celebrate successes
According to a poll by OnePoll, nearly half of all American workers have quit from their jobs due to a lack of appreciation. Also, if management took note of their efforts, 65% of respondents said they would put forth more effort.
People Teams can do the following to make employee appreciation a permanent part of company culture:
- Managers should take part and demonstrate the importance of appreciation by doing so themselves.
- Prove that recognizing employees is critical to building a positive employer brand and filling open positions.
- Create a program to recognize employees and their peers, and then put it into action.
- Ensure that all employees are aware of the company’s employee recognition program by communicating it effectively and on a regular basis.
Example: E.On: Thank you notes
The German power firm E.On pushed its personnel to show appreciation for one another by sending both electronic and handwritten notes of gratitude. Because there were no formal chains of command at this corporation, anyone could say “thank you” to any employee.
Almost a thousand employees received thank-you cards from senior executives in the form of real Post-it notes. Staff morale went up from 61% to 69% and the percentage of workers who felt appreciated went up from 39% to 52% because of this.
- Develop personalized plans for personal growth together
People are looking for possibilities to grow and advance in their careers. An Indeed survey found that 19% of people who were actively seeking a new job did so in the hopes of advancing their careers.
But there’s more to employee empowerment than just providing chances for advancement. The human resources department can go a step further in empowering workers by letting them direct their own professional development.
Human resources can accomplish this in a few ways:
- Job shadowing and work rotation are two ways to help employees grow in their careers.
- Let workers choose their own goals and key performance indicators.
- Provide opportunities for mentorship and/or micro-mentoring.
- Make time in people’s workweeks to concentrate on things like learning something new.
Example: GoDaddy: Fostering Talent Development
In 2019, GoDaddy launched an internal initiative named MyCareer in response to feedback from workers. Employees get access to a one-stop shop for career-related resources through the program’s intranet portal. Among these resources are company-wide leveling guidelines that help workers understand their responsibilities, as well as training, workshops, discussion guides, and more.
Employee engagement at GoDaddy has increased thanks to the company’s commitment to employee development. In addition, workers have been well-prepared to advance in their careers through the MyCareer initiative.
- Assist managers in developing their leadership skills
Empowering staff is a crucial responsibility of managers. In order to help their staff grow professionally and achieve more than they ever imagined, great managers are able to persuade people to try new things and push themselves beyond their comfort zones.
Management can improve their leadership skills with the support of People Teams by:
- Providing suitable training for them. To begin filling in the gaps in knowledge, identify which managers will require specific training.
- Getting new managers up to speed, particularly those for the first time in a managerial position.
- Encourage them to seek out guidance and mentorship as needed.
Example: CultureAmp: A sincere desire to help others succeed
A great leader cares about their team members’ long-term success. They back their staff members throughout their careers.
Didier Elzinga, the CEO of Culture Amp explains it thus: “Authenticity and a genuine desire to see people succeed breeds loyalty. I want Culture Amp to be the dream job for our people, but if it’s not, I want it to be their stepping stone to a dream job.”
Main points to remember
- When making decisions that will have an effect on workers or their jobs, it’s important to include them in the process.
- Trust your employees and provide them with the resources they need to solve problems independently so that they can make decisions.
- Whenever feasible, provide staff with the option to work remotely, but be sure to lay down specific ground rules to foster teamwork.
- Learn from your mistakes and foster a culture that does the same.
- Incorporate employee recognition into the fabric of your business and use it as a springboard to celebrate successes.
- Help workers chart their own courses for professional development by giving them a hand in determining their own objectives and key performance indicators.
- Provide managers with the resources they need to foster a culture of empowerment among their teams so that they can improve as leaders.
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Amit2025-03-28 04:24:272025-03-28 04:24:29What Is a Pay Stub and Why It Matters for Employees and Employers
