Team empowerment: A key factor to increase employee engagement
Posted by [email protected] on Jan. 5, 2023 / Subscribe 0
By Naga Mallika Gunturu
According to their State of the Global Workplace: 2022 Report, Gallup recently determined that global employee vital signs, such as engagement and well-being, remain stable—but not great. Only 21% of employees are engaged at work. And employee engagement here reflects on their involvement and enthusiasm in their work and workplace. Key factors for positive employee engagement are the purpose of the job and the impact it creates, growth prospects, company culture, and autonomy.
Autonomy refers to how much freedom employees and teams have to do their jobs. It is the power that individuals or teams have to shape their work and their work environment in such a way that it enables them to perform at their best.
Team empowerment is a notion wherein organizations enable all team members to have a certain degree of autonomy and control over their day-to-day activities. Key success factors of this are that employees are provided with the means to make important decisions and are provided with the necessary frameworks that ensure those decisions are correct.
An important aspect to note is that as project and program managers, we work with team members who have different skills and levels of competencies. Each member of the team could react differently to the same situation and possess different decision-making styles. Let us look at some ways that we could enable and empower team members to succeed.
- Clarify purpose: Ensure that every team member understands why the project or task at hand is important. Tie the purpose of the particular project or task to a bigger purpose like that of the organization’s goals and objectives. Also ensure every member understands the role they play as well as the role others play in the project. This helps the team members to know what to focus on and why. It clarifies what value the team member is expected to deliver and the confidence the organization is placing on them. This in turn would boost their motivation and increase the chances of the best quality job getting done on time.
- Encourage the “fail fast and learn fast” mentality: Very often, team members hesitate to try anything new for fear of failure. Break this mindset and encourage the “fail fast and learn fast” mentality. This encourages teams to be creative, innovative, and bold to try new things; and in this process they learn how to experiment and persevere. Eventually they become confident that thinking outside-the-box and trying the unknown is valuable and is a contribution to the overall success of the project.
- Encourage open and honest feedback: Showing team members that their feedback and opinions matter is important to keep them engaged. Very often project retrospectives or lessons learned are conducted at the end of the project. While these contribute to the lessons learned repository and could potentially help another new initiative, what would really help is to have such reflections throughout the project execution cycle. Collecting feedback on simple questions (What is going well? What should we continue to do? What should we stop doing?)—and taking actions on that feedback—sends signals to the team members that everyone’s opinions matter and it encourages them to give open and honest feedback to each other.
- Encourage self-growth: Motivate team members to learn new skills that are beneficial to the project and the organization at large. Encourage team members to identify such areas themselves and provide learning opportunities. This sends a signal that the members are valued and in turn boosts their motivation.
- Delegate responsibilities: Last but not least, delegate more responsibility to team members. Trust your team members’ abilities and do not hesitate to hand off important tasks. The psychological safety net created by the above measures will encourage them to take up the additional responsibility with a positive mindset. Be available to your team when the situation demands. Experiment and be prepared with different styles of coaching and mentoring to support the members appropriately.
0 Comments