Anduze - Employee Empowerment... Not Just a Concept, but a way of life

Employee Empowerment…Not Just a Concept, but a way of Life

Todd Anduze Area Director Carrollton GASBDC

The development of a great working team and how management can directly influence production and operations will always bare the question of how this can be accomplished.  How can management utilize employee empowerment to be effective?  It is an important question because everyone wants to work in a place where the managers teach, respect and fulfill the needs of individuals while creating a top performing team.  Only through the adoption of employee empowerment can managers themselves achieve their potential and the employees under them.  With just a little emphasis on team building and the empowerment of employees, companies can be much more successful and productive.    

The understanding of different concepts of leadership shows how a manager can better understand individual employees and how they learn and listen to create a better team.  Leadership can be separated into four main leadership types: directive, transactional, transformational and empowering.  The different types are defined as directives being task-focused, transactional being reward oriented, transformational involving the communication of a vision and finally empowering leadership focusing on encouraging behaviors, such as goal setting and teamwork.  Using effective empowering behaviors show leaders encouraging their employees to use self-leadership strategies to adopt the behavior of setting goals and achieving those strategies. 

The impact of using the empowering type of leadership behavior can be directly linked to the overall satisfaction of employees and the effectiveness of management.  It can also show how much leadership behaviors, such as example leadership, concern for team and coaching increase the employees’ loyalty to the company.  Leaders should grant employees the freedom, through individual empowerment, to be a part of the company and not just work in one.  

Employee Empowerment will also change company policy and the all-around way it is viewed by the public, through the education of managers and training of employees.  For a number of years, the saying “our employees are our greatest asset” was the slogan for many companies.  The irony is, these same companies tended to act the exact opposite in the way they handled the hiring of managers and the training of employees.  Too many times we see managers that can’t communicate with employees and employees that are working in a company that they hate.  This will always lead to a greater employee turnover rate and loss of resources, including inventory and revenue.  If a company can be shown how much money is saved with the increase in production and the decrease in turn-over, then maybe the way companies train and educate their employees will change for the better.  The upside of Employee Empowerment is, the loss of resources will decrease and the revenue will increase, and also slowly changing the way the industry is viewed by all.

The way a company treats its employees is noticed by society.  Not only could using employee empowerment catapult a company to a recognized top company to work for, but it will also enrich everyone’s lives. It will show a company cares about doing things the correct and most responsible way and is willing to improve and enhance itself.  Being a company that has leaders utilizing employee empowerment, has a company that also has people that will go out of there was to help it succeed.