Overcoming the Empowerment Gap
Part 1 of this 5-part blog series explores why it’s time to transform restless, stressed and often unhappy workforces into ones who are ready to compete
What is empowerment, and why should employers care about it?
To some, the notion of employee empowerment may be more pie-in-the-sky than reality in today’s workplace. But whatever your feelings about the word itself, when you peek behind the semantics, you’ll more often than not find success.
For most of the 20th century, the workplace focus was on task execution. Most people would work for a single employer for decades. An employee would punch a time clock, be told what to do and how to do it, work a 9-to-5 shift and go home.
Today, that focus on execution has been replaced by a focus on empowerment. The majority of U.S. job growth has come from jobs requiring complex interactions with others; the jobs that involve little interaction and mostly repetition have been automated and outsourced. People need to be self-directed, self-motivated. In short, the age of workplace empowerment has arrived.
Simply stated, empowerment means employees are engaged. They have all of the tools they need to:
- Learn and grow
- Connect with colleagues
- Make smart decisions
- Be leaders and contribute to business success
Put another way, engagement fuels empowerment. Asking people to meet narrow, predetermined performance goals won’t cut it much longer. Employees want to be empowered; they want to move to the next level.
Succeeding vs. Surviving in Today’s Economic Climate
Coming off the heels of the recent recession and ongoing economic uncertainty, not all employers, but the vast majority, are suffering from workforce malaise. We did a survey with Kelton Research last year that revealed just how unappreciated and disengaged employees were feeling with their employer. Our notion was that people were trapped in a “marriage of convenience” with their employer, being made to feel that they were lucky to have a job at all, and employers doing little to nurture the employee/employer relationship. Results from that study revealed that:
- 68 percent of employed Americans said they hadn’t received useful feedback from their supervisors
- 82 percent had not established career goals with their supervisors
- 53 percent didn’t feel they had a clear understanding of how their role contributed to company objectives
- 25 percent had been given new duties or responsibilities at work that were outside of their primary skill set
If that sounds depressing, it should. And according to all the other surveys that have come out the past year on the topic of workforce happiness and talent flight, it hasn’t gotten any better. But things don’t have to be that way. Those statistics go a long way to showing why empowerment matters to businesses who want to succeed, not just survive, in today’s rough economic climate.
Empowered employees are more engaged – resulting in better retention, much improved customer service and more. Empowerment means people are more motivated and better aligned with an organization’s business objectives. They are happier, and that means more productive.
Sadly, employers today suffer from what could be called the “empowerment gap.”
Many employers can intuitively sense change is necessary. It’s time to transform restless, stressed and often unhappy workforces into ones who are ready to compete. Plus, with hiring on hold, there is an even tighter focus on the people already on the job because they will make or break an employer’s ability to succeed. Employers who begin to close the empowerment gap will be the ones thriving – not just in the short term, but also when the economy eventually recovers.
Empowerment matters. It can be viewed as a key performance indicator for the health and wellness of an organization’s people strategy. That’s why today, employers need to take it seriously. Empowerment can’t be a hollow phrase, it has to be a true business strategy.
In the coming weeks I’ll continue to explore this topic. My next post will delve into the business benefits of empowerment.
In the meantime, if you’re interested in reading more about this topic, download the white paper, “From Employment to Empowerment: Why Business Execution is Not Enough” and “The Empowered Workforce: Crucial to Success in the New Economy.”