Why Empowerment is Crucial for Your Culture

Empowerment is a critical element of building a culture that balances high performance with high care. It is more than just a skill that you learn, it’s an ongoing discipline that requires regular practice. While empowerment carries many business benefits, it’s also a conundrum for a lot of organisations we work with, because it’s heavily tied into deep-rooted beliefs and their resulting behaviours that form the bedrock of corporate culture. ? ? In this blog we will look at what we mean by empowerment, the benefits of empowering your people, and what might be getting in the way. We will also share examples of how you can reframe beliefs and think about empowerment differently, so it becomes a daily discipline. ?

What is employee empowerment??

Employee empowerment is one of those terms that is open to wide interpretation. At a high level, it’s about giving your people ownership and accountability for deliverables. Stretching your teams in this way is essential for their growth and development, but it also challenges leaders to let go more, trust your people, and not micromanage or do their job for them. ?

What are the benefits of empowering individuals at work??

The ability to effectively empower individuals is at the heart of high-performing organisations. Four major benefits are: ?

?1. Speed?

When you empower people, decisions get made quicker, because they are not going up and down a chain of command and involving more voices than necessary. And when decisions are made swiftly, execution is accelerated. ?

2. Quality?

Decision making by those closest to the issue often improves quality. If you’re escalating decisions or getting too many people involved, you’re moving decisions further away from those with the most knowledge of the problem. This significantly impacts the quality of your decisions, because those removed from the issue simply won’t have the information they need to make a proper judgement.?

3. Motivation?

Empowering people is a shortcut to higher levels of engagement, motivation, and trust. When people feel they have autonomy and control, they are far more likely to be innovative, creative, and put in greater discretionary effort. ? By contrast, nobody likes to be micromanaged. It creates friction, erodes trust, and leads to plummeting engagement and motivation. ?

4. Value for money?

When your leaders are not in the weeds, your organisation is getting value for money from them. They are being paid for their ability to add strategic value, lead their teams, and deliver commercial outcomes. If your leaders are making decisions that could be made by people several levels down from them, then you’re wasting time and money and not getting value for money. ?

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