Empowering your employees raises profitability above 20%
Tools and platforms such as Alyze help companies involve their workforce in decision-making processes
- 1.Introduction
- 2.What’s empowerment?
- 3.Benefits of empowerment
- 4.Success stories
- 4.1.Google
- 4.2.McDonald’s
- 5.How do I involve employees?
- 6.Conclusions
Introduction
Committing employees to the mission of the company they work for pays its dividends. A few research studies show that companies with highly engaged workers have a profit above 20% compared to those who lack these people. The prestigious consulting and advising firm Gallup has just released a report that backs this statement.
But, how do you get a stronger commitment from your employees? Empowerment is the key.
What’s empowerment?
Empowerment is taking a whole different approach when it comes to managing the workforce of a company. Until now, most companies had a pyramidal structure where decision-making was a matter that only affected the people on the top.
But in the past decade, something has changed. It’s been proved that companies with a rigid structure have difficulties adapting to changes, accepting new challenges or even being aware of their customers’ real pains.
Flexible structures are key to facilitating changes faced by the companies of the 20th century. Involving employees in the decision-making process is essential. It makes them feel important and provides them with a feeling of individual autonomy.
Under this paradigm, workers stop being mere executors to become active agents of the company. Empowered employees are powerful employees.
But, why is this good?
Benefits of empowerment
Far from the traditional business mindset, providing employees with more power results in numerous benefits for the company:
Motivation: Empowerment improves self-esteem. Workers feel they’re being heard and have value inside the structure of the company. That’s what motivation is about.
More efficiency: Being more motivated means efficiency. Reducing the time spent on critical processes and improving them is vital for every company. Empowering workers also means empowering their strengths and special capabilities. If every member feels valued and motivated, this will indeed benefit the group.
More involvement: Empowered workers start to consider themselves an important part of the entrepreneurial project. The workplace is no longer only the place where they work, but a location where they enjoy some power in the decision-making process. This makes them feel more involved in the whole strategy.
Talent retention: This is one of the greatest benefits of empowerment. When the workforce feels appreciated and comfortable is less likely they’ll start thinking about switching to a different company.
Better results: It cannot be forgotten that most of the time, workers are the ones who are near the customer and have a better knowledge of their needs. Suggestions, changes or improvements made by the workers result in improving the customers’ satisfaction and, consequentially, the final outcome of the client-provider relationship.
Google or McDonald’s are placing their bets on this management model to get better economic results
Success stories
Here are some examples from well-known companies such as Google or McDonald's.
The Internet behemoth has created a creative environment for its employees. Most workers at Google feel comfortable, happy and inspired. Some of the resources used for empowerment at Google involve workers participating in meetings and the chance of asking questions and promoting their own ideas.
McDonald’s
McDonald's empowerment strategy is unique and it’s not only applied on the inside, but also in front of their final clients at the restaurants. Employees are free to improve the customer experience using the resources of the company.
How do I involve employees?
There are hundreds of ways to involve employees in the decision-making process of a company: large-scale meetings, meetings, conferences, weekly reports, etcetera.
Nevertheless, not all companies have the chance to invest time (or money) in these types of actions. Management software and tools that facilitate extending democracy to all areas are key to achieving the goal of empowering the workforce and overcoming obstacles.
Alyze has built an extremely easy-to-use platform that allows managers to involve their employees in the making of decisions. A platform that makes them feel comfortable and valued.
Our software is based on artificial intelligence and facial recognition. Both technologies are at the service of knowing what type of emotional reaction triggers some specific content when it’s placed in front of the eyes and ears of your workforce. For example, you can ask them to watch two (or more) advertisements to promote a new product or service and Alyze will tell you which one of them got more engagement from your most valuable audience: your employees.
Changing your branding, establishing a portfolio with new services or decorating your workplace are decisions where employees can now participate thanks to Alyze.
That’s how empowerment becomes a part of your strategy.
Conclusions
- Committed employees can increase the profit of a company by above 20%.
- Committing employees to your company is something you can make by involving them in the decision-making processes of your company. This is also known as empowerment.
- Global successful companies such as Google or McDonald’s are applying this new model of empowerment.
- Tools and platforms such as Alyze facilitate the participation of the employees in the decision-making processes thanks to automated tests and artificial intelligence.