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 | Yorkshire Times A Voice of the Free Press |
Ian Garner
Business Writer
2:00 AM 2nd July 2022
business
Employee Empowerment, The Path To Business Excellence?
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Empowering your employees is a crucial tool to delivering business excellence. All the policies and procedures mean nothing unless they are reflected in practice.
Empowerment has been defined as follows:
'Employee empowerment is all about giving staff more autonomy and responsibility for their daily work.'
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
No organisation can provide answers to all the questions an employee will come across, nor can they have ready-made solutions for all challenge employees encounter, on a day-to-day basis.
A solid framework of business purpose, vision and values is a suitable place to start, but everyone needs to understand and apply these philosophies in a consistent way.
I have heard empowerment described as “there are no rules, you can just do what you think is right.” This is an overly simplistic definition and is extremely dangerous.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Empowerment is about giving enhanced authority to employees to make decisions where there is a need and seeking permission might be too late.
For empowerment to succeed there are some essential ground rules.
The most important is, empowerment is the authority to act as you believe the business would want you to act, not authority to make up your own rules.
The space in which people can exercise empowerment is between those things you must always do and those things you must never do.
Most people are clear on the ‘always do’ and ‘must never do’ and that leaves a clear arena to exercise empowerment without breaching these two notions.
However, the onus is on the business leaders to make it clear what the business expects at the heart of their purpose, vision and values.
International business consultancy McKinsey said:
'The key to achieving better delegated decisions is to empower employees by developing their managerial capabilities to give them the authority or power to act.
It’s easy to tell employees what decisions they can or can’t make, but our research says that this alone is not enough.
Empowerment requires managers to give their employees both the tools they need to make high-quality decisions and the right level of guidance and involvement from above as they do so.'
'The key to achieving better delegated decisions is to empower employees by developing their managerial capabilities to give them the authority or power to act.
It’s easy to tell employees what decisions they can or can’t make, but our research says that this alone is not enough.
Empowerment requires managers to give their employees both the tools they need to make high-quality decisions and the right level of guidance and involvement from above as they do so.'
Think about some of the unexpected questions or problems potentially confronting your team. It’s a form of scenario testing. Think about the most unusual or worst-case situation. Do your purpose, vision and value statements provide guidance that can be followed by any employee? If not, you probably need to rewrite your policy, vision and values.
Accountancy firm KPMG, comments that: 'Your ability to transform your workforce will be central to your survival and growth. Creating such an aligned, empowered workforce can only be achieved by providing your employees with the required architecture for them to prosper.
This must be shaped by the culture, and should include; strong leadership, insight-driven rewards and feedback, capability development centred around skills for the future, and access to technology to support modern ways of working.'
This must be shaped by the culture, and should include; strong leadership, insight-driven rewards and feedback, capability development centred around skills for the future, and access to technology to support modern ways of working.'
Richard Branson got it with this great quote:
“The way you treat your employees is the way they will treat your customers”
Hear! Hear!
Ian GArner
The Institute of Directors (IoD) is the UK's largest membership organisation for business leaders, providing informative events, professional development courses for self-improvement, networking and expert advice. The IoD North Yorkshire Branch has members across Harrogate, York and the surrounding towns and is reaching out to business leaders, of large and small enterprises, to help their businesses succeed.