To better engage staff members, what should human resource managers include in their empowerment initiatives?

Over the last decade, businesses have certainly kept their employees smiling. According to recent figures from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 88 percent of workers today say they are satisfied with the work they do, up from 77 percent in 2005. This marks the peak of workplace satisfaction in the history of the SHRM poll.

With that said, we must ask the question: Is satisfaction everything? It’s certainly nothing to scoff at, but today’s business leaders should not be comfortable stopping there. They should actively engage their staff and empower their teams if they haven’t already done so.

What’s the difference?

High satisfaction may indicate a lot of great things going on in an office, like mutual respect and trust among workers in different departments. Satisfaction may just as easily signal complacency or even stagnancy. Employees who are comfortable with the status quo are just plain less likely to shake things up.

Empowerment goes further than merely satisfying workers by teaching them to value themselves, their work and their personal missions to improve every single day. To better engage staff members, what should human resource managers include in their empowerment initiatives?

1. Simplified communication

Remember when businesses feared that a lack of communication would ruin operations? These days, the problem has flipped. Too much communication now stops productivity dead in its tracks. The Radicati Group estimates that the average commercial email user will send or receive a total of 126 emails every day in 2019.

If HR managers aim to empower workers by removing internal e-mails from this figure to free up employees’ time, they will need to replace the medium with employee portals that are not only as user-friendly as everyday tech but also smarter, more organized and more considerate of good time management.

The best leaders are the ones who turn others into leaders.

2. Action through authority

Responsibility is at the core of empowerment. Employees should feel as though what they’re doing actually impacts their status and that the effort they expend ultimately returns their investment in spades.

Nothing strips empowerment from workers quite like having to jump through hoops for seemingly simple administrative actions or waiting for superiors to manually approve small matters. In total honesty, this lack of agency can make employees feel like toddlers in the world’s most bureaucratic daycare.

So what can HR managers do to help employees feel empowered? The answer often comes down to examining how workers perceive their level of authority and autonomy and how management communicates that information, both verbally and nonverbally. Do workers have the tools and authority to effectively manage their jobs? Do supervisors and managers trust their employees? Are employees being delegated work that allows them to learn new skills and grow in their positions? Are nonsupervisory employees included in business decisions that impact their jobs and the company as a whole? Through analysis of these answers, HR managers can identify where their organization can take steps to improve workers’ sense of empowerment and increase job satisfaction.

3. Unyielding support through HR analytics

All successful businesses hope to change the world – in big ways, in small ways, for a few people, for everyone. Their missions are what attracted employees to their doorsteps in the first place.

Over time, however, personal connection forged by bright-eyed bushy-tailed new hires may lose its luster under daily deadlines, meetings and administrative work without proper nurturing. Behind-the-scenes HCM tracking technology gives HR managers an analytical vantage into employee performance, so no issues are left unattended. Backed by hard data, employees receive the attention they need, and businesses learn how to better their processes from onboarding onward.

Empowered human capital does not happen unaided. The right HCM software solutions help HR cultivate in-house talent. Is an all-in-one HCM software suite from Evolution what’s missing from your employee empowerment strategy? See for yourself by visiting the Evolution HCM Technology page.

Savers Admin utilizes Evolution HCM software.