How to Empower Employees: 8 Best Practices Great Managers Use

With staff engagement rates on the decline, empowering your employees to do their best work is more important than ever. Research has shown that only 4% of employees are willing to give extra effort when empowerment levels are low, while 67% are willing to go the extra mile when empowerment is high.

But for many managers, knowing how to empower employees can be a challenge. Encouraging your staff to perform at their best might not be enough. Competitive salaries and endless perks may attract plenty of applicants but they can’t guarantee retention, and performance and won’t always result in a hardworking team.

Want to encourage empowerment in the workplace? Employees need to feel valued, challenged, and optimistic about their future in the company. Yet, in reality, many organizations struggle to provide this environment due to limited resources, overstretched budgets, flawed structures, and time constraints.

Words like “engagement,” “fulfillment,” and “empowerment” often sound too conceptual. However, there are tangible, short-term goals you can set to benefit your company and empower employees. Below, we’ve listed eight ways to help you achieve those goals.

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What are the benefits of empowering employees?

Organizations that invest time and budget into empowering their employees, whether through training or tools, can reap many benefits in terms of company culture, environment, productivity and more.

Here’s a breakdown of the key benefits of empowering employees:

• Boosted engagement and productivity. When employees have a sense of ownership over their work, they’re likely to be more engaged and productive in ensuring tasks are completed thoroughly and to a high standard. They may also take more initiative and go the extra mile as they feel that the business has invested in them and entrusted them with duties they’re well-equipped to handle.

• Encourages trust and faith in the business. When staff feel empowered, they’re more likely to have trust in the business, as empowerment shows that they’re valued, invested in and supported. This helps to create a healthy working environment and positive culture, as workers will be more willing to put in their best efforts. It also strengthens faith in the business, as staff can recognize that they’re being trained for their own development. They’ll therefore have fewer concerns about being taken advantage of or overlooked.

• Fosters creativity. Empowerment encourages workers to think for themselves and come up with innovative ways of doing their work. Organizations with empowered employees often find that workers are more confident and proactive, as they feel more competent and assured within themselves to make decisions, problem-solve, and challenge outdated processes.

• Increases retention. Employees may be less likely to leave organizations that empower them. According to Gallup data, some companies can lower staff turnover by 51% by ensuring their workers are engaged.

How to empower your employees

Empowering employees involves providing them with the tools, training and support they need to feel confident in their performance.

If you’re looking for ways to empower your workforce, here are some techniques you can try:

1. Pay close attention to your employees’ mental wellbeing

Some organizations make an effort to invest in employee wellness, but many others fail to prioritize it. As a result, employee wellbeing suffers, leading to an unhealthy working environment and low retention rates, while managers are left trying to figure out how to increase morale and retain talent.

If you’re wondering what you can do, besides pushing people to meet the next deadline, consider mental health awareness courses. These can help team members notice symptoms of anxiety, depression, and burnout in themselves and colleagues. Empowering your employees to recognize these symptoms can help them flag when they need support—and give you the chance to help.

2. Try accessible empowerment strategies to retain top talent

If you’re interested in empowering your team and creating loyal, hard-working employees, it can be as easy as changing a few simple habits and putting your people first.

For instance, managers could consider:

• Setting aside time for wellbeing and workload check-ins at the start of 1:1 meetings
• Cultivating an open team culture where members feel comfortable sharing their ideas
• Creating an internal support network or Teams channel for employees to navigate their mental health in a safe space
• Celebrating individual and team accomplishments to recognize employees and acknowledge a job well done

3. Collaborate with others to problem solve

Many managers try to handle all the issues for their department on their own, in the hope of protecting their team from stress or distraction. Unfortunately, not only does that often leave them feeling overwhelmed, but it also prevents other team members from learning how to problem-solve.

Challenging your workforce by allowing them to solve their own issues facilitates empowerment, sparks innovation, and shows you trust and value them. Next time you’re faced with a tough decision, see if your staff can help; you’ll probably find them willing to get involved.

4. Be a reference instead of an authority

It’s important that leaders learn how to be a reference, rather than an authority, when it comes to problem-solving. Sometimes, when employers are figuring out how to empower employees, they make the mistake of overreaching. And employees won’t feel empowered when they feel micromanaged!

There’s nothing wrong with taking charge and tackling issues but acting as a reference instead of an authority means you give accurate, trustworthy advice in order to help your team solve their own problems.

So instead of spending time and energy trying to figure out the answer to every issue, try to think of advice, and effective ways to communicate it, so that your staff are empowered to come up with their own solutions. This helps to foster independence, and once the idea takes hold, your team will feel confident enough to tackle any problem presented to them.

5. Find each employee’s wheelhouse

As you get to know your employees, you’ll start to learn their talents in the workplace. For example, a chef who can work the grill better than anyone else on the line, or a developer who has a knack for figuring out issues in WordPress. If you can identify that skill in every employee, you can use it to your (and their) advantage by making them the go-to in their area of expertise.

But that doesn’t mean overloading one person with the same task or overlooking anyone else. It’s about putting them in charge of that area and making them a reference for the rest of the team. There are few better ways of empowering an employee than by telling them you think they’re so good at something that others should be learning from them.

6. Back your people

If you’re prepared to empower your employees (and you should be), you also need to accept that you have a responsibility to support them and their decisions. That means helping when they ask for assistance and giving credit when they succeed—and doing so in a meaningful way. You’ll also need to fight their corner if people question their expertise, and allow them to make mistakes—within reason, of course.

It takes more than simply bestowing responsibility on someone to fully empower them; you also need to believe they can do a good job without your help. A good team stands together regardless of hierarchy.

7. Seek understanding at every level of the organization

If you manage managers, how do you measure employee performance? How do you know if the people they’re managing are performing well? When you’re busy handling your own task list, it’s easy to fall into a routine of interacting only with those people who report directly to you—and vice-versa.

There’s life beyond that one-degree separation, and your behavior impacts the engagement, performance, and satisfaction of the whole team. Understanding the roles and needs of people outside your team allows you to better understand the actions your colleagues take and how you can empower all employees.

Be sure to ask about the pressures your direct report managers face every day. This way, you’ll have an easier time helping them achieve their goals.

8. Offer ample opportunities for career progression

If you can offer real career progression, your organization can become an engaging new opportunity instead of a stepping-stone on the way to more money. Offering employees training in a new skill, providing tuition reimbursement for obtaining an advanced degree, or unlocking internal opportunities for role expansion are all great strategies to empower people.

Empower employees every day

Now you know the different steps you can take to empower your employees; it’s time to put them into action. Empowering your workforce will ultimately empower your brand, as it helps to ensure that every member of your team is equipped with the knowledge, skills and confidence they need to tackle their role to a high standard. As a starting point, speak to your staff and identify ways to elevate the employee experience.