A popular buzz word today when it comes to engaging employees is empowerment. Leaders say, “We empower our employees to solve problems,” or “you are empowered to change things.”  

This is powerful to employees only IF it is true.  If they are only words that are not followed by actions, you can do much more harm than good.

For example, you want to put together a task team to solve a specific business problem.  You ask for volunteers to be a part of this important initiative and tell them they are “empowered” to come up with a solution.  The team is excited about the opportunity.  They work additional hours outside of their normal duties and come up with recommendations they firmly believe will solve the problem.

The team puts together a formal presentation and shares the results with you and the leadership team.   Here’s where the problems can start.  If you do not like the recommendations and decide not to implement them, the potential impact on the morale of the team members is significant:

• They will feel like they were lied to and they weren’t truly empowered
• They will feel like all of their hard work was wasted
• They will not trust senior management moving forward
• They will not volunteer for future projects
• They will share their experiences with co-workers and spread the distrust

This scenario can have severe consequences on employee morale, production and retention.

If you truly believe in empowering your people, then you have to manage the process from beginning to end to make sure employees are truly empowered.  

1.   Provide guidelines and constraints – you need to limit the exposure and risk but setting guidelines like no additional spending or the recommendations must align to strategic objectives. 

2.   Trust your employees –Have faith that your employees are capable of solving problems without your intervention.  You have set the guidelines and constraints, now leave them alone.

3.   Hold them accountable for the solutions– Along with empowerment comes accountability.  When they present their solutions, you need to make sure they are within the guidelines and constraints and they are fact based solutions.  If not, they need to go back and rework their recommendations.

4.   Support the implementation of the recommendations – Once they have met the requirements and their solutions are based on sound decisioning, then you must support the implementation. This is true empowerment.

5.   Celebrate the successes – A key to getting more people involved is to communicate to all employees the success of a project and reward the team members based on their contribution.  This will help in getting future volunteers for the next initiative and will build morale.

Use the “E” word carefully but if you use it appropriately, it can lead to significant results for your business and for your people.

Please share your thoughts and comments on this topic.  I'd love to hear from you.  You can also check out my website at www.derrickstrand.com or email me at dstrand@derrickstrand.com for general information or to sign up for my newsletter.  Also, connect with me at the following social media links: