How to Empower your Small Business Employees

Working in an environment where you feel like you matter is important to everybody, whether you’re the CEO or the checkout girl.

Having a voice, not being ignored and feeling like you’re in control of your own progress is the key to being empowered, but sometimes the powers that be can be too busy to acknowledge and listen to your thoughts and feelings, no matter how helpful they might be.

Here are a few ways to make sure that you make the most of your employees.

Place Value on Development

People achieving what they want to achieve makes them happy, and as their manager it should make you happy too. Challenge them and engage them; no one likes apathy, and it makes for a good place to work and will make your company look good too. The chance to develop is something that everyone values, and if you can’t develop in your current role, you’d find another one!

Give Your Employees a Chance to Speak

Feedback is essential in cultivating happy empowered employees. Regular communication is key, whether that’s one-on-one or a larger number of people. Reviews and meeting mean that employees have the chance to tell you how they feel- without retribution- they will feel like they matter, their voices are heard and their opinions valid. If you don’t, people may become unhappy or frustrated and grow to resent the workplace, and if they don’t leave, they will at the very least become unproductive.

Recognise Achievement

The best way to empower someone is to praise them for something they have done well. And in today’s age of instant gratification, the sooner you praise them, the better. If you praise someone, they are more likely to do more good work, or at least try harder to do better and be praised again.

Implement an Action Plan

To develop, you need goals because people respond well to goals. This means all kinds of goals; from long term ones to short term ones. But not too many- you don’t want to overload someone, otherwise they could become apathetic.

A long term big goal can be a bit vaguer, as it should be made up of lots of little more specific goals that will eventually mean that you achieve your big goal. Therefore, when you review the performance of colleagues and employees, whether it’s for the first time or not, you should always consult these goals to see how far someone is progressing.

A person who has implemented their own plan, along with input from you, of course, is more likely to achieve their goals, because they feel like their own.

The Opportunity to Learn

Sometimes people need training or education to help them develop to a higher level. Cornerstone OnDemand Learning Systems are perfect for this. They can help optimise your talent pool within your company by delivering highly targeted, highly customisable training of any kind. It actively addresses skills gaps and identified competency, making your work-force more productive.