Empowering Employees: Best Practices and Tools
For managers and business owners alike, empowering your employees tends to provide better results than leaving them to their own devices. While some employees prefer being left alone to do their work, all employees would benefit well from positive reinforcement, amongst other empowering practices.
According to a survey done by Office Vibe, they found that 69% of employees would work harder if they were better appreciated within the workplace.
Showing your appreciation and rewarding employees helps keep your talent in the company for longer. As a result, they’re less likely to be on the lookout for a new job when they’re feeling empowered in their current one.
What are the benefits of employee empowerment in the workplace? This guide will provide you with guidance on the best practices and tools for empowering your employees. By the end, you’ll have the information required to deliver the best to your employees so that they will continue to thrive in their roles.
Choose a good performance management system
Investing in some of the best performance management systems can really help you in empowering your employees in the long term. This SaaS will do all the grunt work while leaving you with time to deal with your other tasks and goals.
This way you can hold regular performance reviews, track and encourage employee growth, keep everyone aligned with company goals and OKRs, and use data to create a culture of continuous feedback and praise.
The benefits of employee empowerment in the workplace
Why is it so important to empower your employees? What are the advantages that your business gains as a result? Well, you get a lot in fact. Here are just a few of the benefits that come with encouraging your employees to flourish in their jobs:
Empowering employees is a habit that benefits more than just the individual employee themselves. It engages the whole workforce and shows your employees the value you hold for them as a business. That type of loyalty and commitment to your employees is what’ll help keep them in the business for longer.
A healthy work culture is something that most people would want when coming to work every day. In fact, it’s what people look for when applying for a job in the first place. A study by Jobvite found that 46% of job seekers mentioned company culture as being an important influence when applying for a job.
There’s no denying the gains that a business achieves when looking after its employees. With increased sales and higher retention rates alone, it’s worth investing the time and effort to empower your employees in any way possible.
5 best practices and tools for empowering employees
If you’re looking to empower your employees this year, there are a number of useful practices and tools worth implementing in your business operations.
Whether it’s choosing the right benefits package, or offering mentor opportunities, there’s a lot you’re able to do as a business to improve your employee’s productivity and happiness within the workplace.
1. Utilize a global rewards and benefits platform.
Giving your employees a variety of rewards and benefits for their hard work and commitment to their role is important to do.
According to Gallup, 65% of employees report not receiving any form of recognition for good work done in the last year. That lack of recognition is influential on how employees see their future within the company.
To help encourage and empower your employees, it’s important that you're offering them some great perks. A global rewards and benefits platform is a great way to customize a benefits package for all of your staff and to tailor those benefits or rewards depending on their position.
For those in HR, it’s an efficient way of managing every staff member and providing them with rewards when they do great work for the company.
2. Mentor employees through their mistakes with 1-2-1 meetings.
Everyone makes mistakes and instead of chastizing your employees for those mistakes, it’s better to mentor them through it. What went wrong in the first place? What could be improved upon so that it doesn’t happen again?
There will always be hiccups within the workplace and within the roles of your staff members. Conducting 1-2-1 meetings is a great way to keep in touch with your employees on a regular basis, which is particularly important within bigger organizations.
3. Monitor tasks and fair workloads on Trello.
Not every staff member is able to take on the same amount of work as their peers. Some may struggle with the workload they’re given and that impacts their health and happiness. It also impacts business productivity when they’re feeling overwhelmed with the workload they have.
Using a software like Trello is helpful because it monitors the tasks your employees have and delegates a fair workload to each and every employee.
4. Encourage problem-solving.
All staff members will encounter problems and obstacles within their roles. It’s important that you are there as a business to support and encourage problem-solving. While it’s sometimes necessary to hand-hold them through certain situations, you have to take off those training wheels at some point so they can make their mistakes and learn from them.
Building these soft skills for your employees is something they’ll greatly benefit from and will have more independence in their role. Not only that but the confidence they’ll gain is also what they’ll need to thrive in their job.
5. Offer training opportunities to improve their skills.
Giving your employees training opportunities to improve their skills is great for their career development. A study found that 87% of millennials report that development is important in a job. Not only does it benefit the employee but it also adds knowledge and skill sets to your business.
For any employee, being offered training gives them the empowerment they need to thrive in their position and perhaps go on to achieve more in their career later down the line.
Empower your employees within the business in 2023
It’s a necessity to look after your employees for their own health and well-being, as well as the health of the business.
Empowering your employees helps them strive for more success in their role and that directly benefits the business. Make sure you’re empowering your staff within the business this year.