“Why do leaders need to empower employees? Empowerment involves increasing the decision-making discretion of workers.” This paper will discuss the purpose of empowerment of employees and ways that this helps employees stay motivated, help company morale, and have your business prosper.
Keywords: Empowerment, employees, motivation, business, vision
What is Empowerment?
Empowerment gives the workers power to make their decisions. This help employees feel motivated in the workplace and helps them do their jobs competently by having the knowledge, skills, and experience.
Discussion
One main reason employers empower their employees is to get a decision from the people who know the most of their job. These people know more aspects of their daily work and can make decisions that will help benefit them and the company more. Empowering your employees has many positive impacts on their individual and team performance.
Types
There are many types of ways to empower your employees that can permont ways to benefit your company. The types are involving their employees, trusting their employees, promotions, and getting personal with their employees.
Involving them
Involving employees is key in the workplace. “Creating a work environment in which employees feel as if they have the power to initiate change is also positive and a tribute to your work culture.” (thebalance, 2018). Involving employees helps the company by letting these people get a say in the matter and bringing up workplace morale. This has a positive impact not only on the employees but the company as well. Examples of involvement include: contribution of ideas, putting them in charge of assignments, sharing stories, etc.
Trust
Trust is another major part in the workplace. “ Trust is defined as the belief in the integrity, character, and ability of a leader.” (leadership and Trust, pg. 353). There are five ideas that make up trust. These are integrity, competence, consistency, loyalty, openness. If the employees and employers can trust each other, it will improve the work environment and company morale because your employees will have loyalty to the company and integrity and the other concepts that make up trust. Ways to obtain trust is by slowly learning to trust your employees. Employers gain their employees trust by slowly giving up control of some assignments, sharing important information, investing in the employee’s development in the company, being consistent, and paying attention to your employee’s needs. All of this added together gives the employer his employee’s trust in order to help the company prosper more.
Promoting
“The possibility of a job promotion can motivate an employee by appealing to career anchors, which are the major career and personal priorities that workers may hold.” (smallbusiness, 2018). Promotions in workplaces help employees start working harder which help the business and company morale. It helps improve the employees motivation by providing increased compensation, improved job experience, ambition, greater benefits, etc. If employees see or think there is a promotion in their future, it not only improves their motivation with these factors but makes all other employees work hard and become competitive to hopefully receive a promotion in the future.
Getting Personal
Getting personal with your employees helps build a stronger connection between you two and in turn helps the company as a whole. By getting more personal with employees, it helps the employer see new opportunities with the employee, the employee’s work becomes more efficient, gives a new level of awareness, etc. And not only does it just help the employees, it also helps the employers. Getting more personal helps the employer become more of an effective coach and also it helps dismantles the “boss wall” which helps make the workplace a more friendly and relaxed place to get work done. With being more on a personal level with employees, there is a mutual respect in the workplace and the levels of motivation rise with the confidence level of the employees as well.
Cons of Empowerment in the Workplaces
These different types of empowerment are consider pros for the employees and employer. As I said earlier, these types help motivate the employees to work hard and to help the company prosper and also help the employer get to know their employees and also to help the company morale. But there are some disadvantages to empowerment.
Disadvantages
Increased Arrogance
With the employees having more of a say in the company with increased empowerment, this can lead to increased arrogance. When employees are empowered, they have an increased level of confidence but sometimes too much confidence can be a problem in the workplace. “Arrogant employees are difficult to deal with, don’t take direction well and can become insubordinate.” (smallbusiness, 2018). With employees thinking they can act out and do whatever they want, this not only brings down work productivity but also takes a toll on other employees and brings up levels of dissatisfaction and can bring down company morale.
Confidentiality Issues
A type of empowerment that I mentioned earlier is trusting your employees with important information. While this is good for bringing up the trust between you and your employee, it can also make for security risks and confidentiality problems. “However, when information is freely exchanged…there is an increased risk of confidential and security-related data being leaked to parties that shouldn’t have access to that type of information. (smallbusiness, 2018). If an employer shares with their employee information that could damage the reputation of the company, then that employer is putting his/her company at risk. If the employer and the employee got into a disagreement, then the employee, out of anger, could leak this important information and ruin the company.
Lack of Experience
“A benefit of having empowered employees is that they take on more responsibility within the company.” (smallbusiness, 2018). Even though giving the employees more responsibility can help with hiring less managerial positions to save money, it can lead to more complications. With these employees being less experienced than managers who usually take these positions, they can make easy mistakes and in turn can hurt the company if these mistakes prove to be drastic enough.
Problems in Interpersonal Relationships
Employees can become overconfident and can take things way too far in the workplace. Some employees think that just because they have more responsibilities and are in charge of some areas, that they can treat other employees differently and without respect. This can lead to a very hostile and draining workplace with not a lot of people getting along with one another. This can be bad for the business by having the employees focus on the wrong things instead of focusing on their work.
What are Employees?
Employees are people who earn money (salary or wages) working for a person or company. Employees make up the company. Without employees, how would any of the work get done? Even though employees are a valuable part of a company, they are seen at the lower end of the work spectrum. Yet without them, nothing would be acco
mplished.
Employee Types
There are many types of employees. A good employer hir
es employees who look and are qualified for the job. An excellent employer knows the vision they have for the company and knows the different types of employees they hire in order to know how to motivate them and to help their company prosper. With that being said, they are nine different kinds of employees according to theguardian.com.
The Defender
“This worker seeks security, predictability and stability.” (theguardian, 2018). To motivate this type of employee, an employer needs to constantly communicate with them. This employee needs to have stability and to have security in work in order to be fully motivated and a loyal worker.
The Friend
This worker likes having a lot of relationships in the workplace. “This worker likes organisations and roles with a strong team ethos, excellent social activities and opportunities for helping others.” (theguardian,2018). To motivate this employee, give them support and team activities. They need a team to thrive and when they have it, they can get anything done.
The Star
These employees like to be in charge and like to have a high self esteem and social status. “This type of employee likes management or leadership roles with clear and visible responsibility for people and resources, and promotion and career prospects.” (theguardian, 2018). To motivate these employees, give them opportunities to be in charge or more responsibility in the workplace. Coaching them also helps motivate them because they feel specialized.
The Director
“They seek power, influence and control over people and resources.” (theguardian, 2018). This employee likes to be in charge of his peers. By giving them responsibility and influence over others, this will motivate them to work harder and to become better.
The Builder
These employees are motivated by promotions. They are more likely to work hard and be interested in the job if they see visible promotions in the future. “They are energised when they have a clear career path and plan, regular progress reviews and increasing responsibility.” (the guardian, 2018). These employees will become competitive if there is a clear goal and financial opportunity in front of them.
The Expert
“This employee seeks knowledge, mastery and specialisation.” (theguardian, 2018). To motivate this employee, train them. They like training and they like learning new things to later be in charge of others. They like to further their intelligence and expertise in the job and to become a better version of themselves for the company.
The Creator
To motivate this employee, give them credit for their creativity. This employee, “seeks innovation, creativity and change.” (theguardian,2018). They like to be original in their work and to work on projects that can show their creativity. They do not like routines but spontaniety in the workplace.
The Spirit
This employee likes freedom in their work in where they can make their own decisions and do things on their own time. They are their own free spirit. To motivate them, you can give them their objectives for the job and to give them freedom and to not crowd them while they work. Understanding them is key to a good relationship.
The Searcher
“Seeks meaning, purpose and wants to make a difference.” (theguardian, 2018). These employees like doing assignments that have a purpose in life. They do want to make a difference in the workplace and in the world. To motivate these employees, let them know they are doing a good job and actually making a difference in the company and or in the job they are doing for the public. They like praise and to know they are being helpful and useful.
There are more employee types than these but these are just a couple to look at. If you want to hire employees to see how to motivate them, there are motivational maps that can help define your employees and see what is needed to motivate your team members to get the job done correctly and fast.
Conclusion
In conclusion, empowerment can help employees and the company prosper. Even though there are some negative consequences to empowering employees, the benefits greatly outweigh the disadvantages. But in order to empower and motivate your employees correctly to help your company, you will need to recognize what type of employees are working for you. After finding out what kind of motivational techniques can help your individual employee, your company will prosper and your vision of the perfect company can come true.
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