Building a Strong Team: Our 9 Tips for Employee Empowerment
Valentin Hinov
10 February 2024
How motivated are your employees to perform? Unfortunately, many companies forget the importance of employee engagement, as well as its influence on productivity and well-being.
Well… you’re in luck because we have the perfect solution—employee empowerment. Join Thankbox as we dissect employee empowerment and share our top nine tips for empowering your team to reach their full potential.
Let’s get started!
What is employee empowerment?
So what exactly is employee empowerment?
It’s the continuous process of providing employees with the authority, autonomy, and responsibility to make valuable contributions to their tasks and roles. The goal is to show your employees their value and help them develop the confidence and motivation to do their best.
By empowering your employees, you also:
Complement employee well-being
Build trust in the workplace
Improve job satisfaction retention
Enhance employee motivation
Encourage creativity and productivity
Essentially, an empowered workplace values a positive work culture and also prioritises the career growth, self-improvement, and development of their employees.
9 amazing tips for employee empowerment
Here are our 9 great strategies to help get you on the right path to employee empowerment.
1. Appreciate your employees
Recognition is a major motivating factor for any workplace.
It makes employees feel valued and genuinely seen for the effort they put into their work. You can consider a scheduled or spontaneous Employee of the Month award for everyone to look forward to.
At Thankbox, we make employee recognition simple and fun—you can create a stylish e-card with uplifting messages, GIFs, photos and videos to celebrate a new milestone. Better yet, you can reward outstanding achievement with our digital gift cards to make the occasion even more special.
By acknowledging and rewarding big and small accomplishments, you’ll find that your employees have a greater drive to perform well.
2. Set up internal networking
For your employees to feel more empowered, they need to be able to connect with one another and build strong professional bonds. A great way to accomplish this is by setting up an internal networking program where they can brainstorm and share ideas.
This is also an amazing opportunity to better engage your remote employees, who may feel alienated from the workplace.
3. Provide learning and development opportunities
Invest in your employees’ personal development by incorporating opportunities like coaching and peer mentoring. It can be especially beneficial for your remote workers because it helps reduce the feelings of isolation that often come with working from home.
By helping your team sharpen and learn new skills, everyone benefits. You may also want to consider encouraging employees to participate in leadership activities to help them prepare for career growth.
4. Open up space for failure
Teach your team to conquer the fear of failure by giving them room to make mistakes and learn from them. After all, failure is a consistent part of life, and learning to see the silver lining is a major driver of growth and empowerment.
This doesn’t mean you should leave your employees to be reckless.
Instead, let them troubleshoot solutions independently and advise them if necessary. By giving them more autonomy over their work, they can become more self-reliant and develop better creative and problem-solving skills.
5. Foster empathy
As we are all human, empathy should be a core facet of your workplace values. It helps your employees feel valued as individuals instead of just another metric. Pay attention to your employees and offer help when they seem to be in a low place.
You can also build empathy in your workplace by organising group activities like picnics and casual company outings, or sharing your own failures to show the human side of leadership.
Empower Your Employees With Thankbox!
The key to building a strong team is encouraging recognition. With just one click, you can build stronger bonds and show your employees how valuable they are.
6. Develop clear communication channels
By establishing channels for clear communication, you can encourage collaboration and teamwork and improve how your employees solve problems.
Some great ways to improve your communication channels are:
Adopting an open-door policy where employees are free to approach management when they have concerns or new ideas.
Organising team-building activities to get employees used to working together.
Conducting monthly surveys to understand how everyone is doing in the workplace.
7. Offer flexible working hours
Flexibility goes a long way in empowering your employees. By scheduling flexible working hours and providing hybrid work opportunities, you’re contributing to a healthy work-life balance for them.
Even more, when you give your employees a bit more autonomy over their schedule, it helps to show that you trust and respect them. This can be pretty meaningful to your team, and they’ll be more motivated to stay productive.
8. Stay open to new ideas
A vital part of employee empowerment is making sure that your employees have a voice in some major decisions that could impact their work experience. If they feel that they have some power to make valuable changes in their work environment, they’re more likely to experience higher job satisfaction and stay engaged.
Keeping the door open for the voices of your workforce allows you to build a strong team that doesn’t just focus on working for their pay cheque.
9. Promote honest feedback
Making sure constructive feedback is a consistent part of your company culture is a great way to empower your team and encourage trust. By keeping your feedback honest (and respectful) you’ll be pushing them in a positive direction to achieve their goals.
It can go both ways too. Employees should be able to feel comfortable voicing their concerns and sharing their opinions with those above them. Always make sure to listen and take action when they do.
Empower Your Employees With Thankbox!
The key to building a strong team is encouraging recognition. With just one click, you can build stronger bonds and show your employees how valuable they are.
Wrapping up
By prioritising employee empowerment, you’ll be well on your way to building and maintaining a powerful and happy workforce. It’s not just about improving your output as an organisation—it’s about fostering overall employee engagement and personal development.
What better way to kickstart employee empowerment than showing your appreciation? With Thankbox you can instil confidence and boost the morale of your employees with just a few simple clicks.
Create a Thankbox today and make every achievement a memorable one!
Images: Cover | Cheerful colleagues | Men in a coffee shop | Woman showing empathy to a concerned man | Smiling woman sitting on the floor while using a laptop | Serious colleagues working in a modern office
