Empowering Employees

Are employees empowered to make decisions?

Do you trust your employees?

There are many good reasons to empower employees to make decisions. First of all it shows confidence in their abilities and is a symbol of trust. Empowering employees to make minor day to day decisions will lift the burden of those decisions from management so that managers can focus more on strategic issues with broader implications. Also, the front line employees are quite possibly more capable to make some decisions since their day to day responsibilities may directly relate to the decision being made. This is especially true for decisions dealing with processes and procedures. When employees are empowered to make decisions they may be able to increase the efficiency of the business because of their specific and unique knowledge of their job.

It is impossible to empower employees if management doesn’t trust them. Trust is a very important factor for all businesses, managers, and employees. When a business hires an employee they are entrusting that person to not only act in accordance with the company’s policies, but they are entrusting that person with the company’s intellectual property, physical property, and potential for success. If the company cannot trust the employees there are serious issues somewhere. The issue could be that the company doesn’t treat the employee fairly and therefore the employee wants to seek “justice” through distrustful activities. The issue could also be that the employee is just a bad seed and has done something to violate the trust or has yet to earn trust.

All issues of distrust in a work environment need to be investigated and explored. If criminal activity is the culprit the decision is obvious but if other minor issues cause the distrust then a plan needs to be developed so that the employee and the employer can both regain the trust of one another. Trust is also one of the most critical issues in allowing employees to be empowered to make decisions. Empowering employees to make decisions is a good way to show management’s trust in the employees and the employees should respond by making good decisions for the business.

Filed Under Human Resources, Management | Leave a Comment  | March 17th, 2010

Comments