Overcome Empowerment Roadblocks


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How to Overcome Empowerment Roadblocks

Why Empowerment Roadblocks Exist

Employee empowerment is a wonderful concept. Implementing empowerment on a company-wide basis is, however, a contradictory matter. While empowerment has been lauded by experts and management alike, this is one of those ideas that, both orally and in the written word, looks like a revolutionary idea on par with the wheel and production lines.

As company after company has learned, adopting and implementing working empowerment models is often unsuccessful. Consider one appropriate yet difficult area. Customer service is critical to the success of operations, branding, and profitability. This department is also a perfect model of how to best use employee empowerment. Giving customer service staff the ability to make decisions that improve the company’s image is a wonderful and seemingly achievable goal.

Yet, there is data indicating that empowerment roadblocks exist at many companies, even though they have made a public commitment to this policy. Why? The reality does not match the policy and commitment. The companies maintain that their customer service employees are empowered to act in the best interests of the customer and the company. But they aren't. Constrained by policy and procedure manuals that try to mandate employee reactions and answers to every conceivable question or problem, most customer service employees risk rebuke if they use their alleged empowerment ability.

Studies indicate that many employees are afraid of empowerment abilities. They simply don’t trust or fully believe the management that bestowed this power upon them. Further data indicates that this fear is well justified in recordable results. Until senior management both adopts and fully supports employee empowerment, this situation will probably continue to result in customer annoyance and, in some cases, corporate branding destruction.

How to Overcome Roadblocks and Implement Real Empowerment

Here are some proven, effective ways to remove the empowerment roadblocks that exist throughout corporate America. Regardless of your authority level on the management ladder, you can make a positive contribution by implementing (or convincing others to implement) some or all of these tips.

  • Do not implement or support policies and procedures designed (purposely or unwittingly) to protect the company against unintelligent employees or less-than-honest customers. Both your staff and customers will realize what these policies mean as soon as they read (employees) or hear (customers) them. A company that boasts of its empowerment activities looks even worse and branding efforts might be seriously damaged.

  • Train your staff. Are you tired of hearing this phrase yet? You will be. Yet, the reason you hear it so often is precisely the reason you’re reading it again. How often have you witnessed valuable policies, procedures, and ideas that were adopted and half-heartedly implemented without providing proper staff training? To overcome empowerment roadblocks, you must insist that your staff be trained on the proper way to use this ability for both your customers’ and your company’s betterment.

  • Regardless of your industry, you must advise your staff that they are in the “service” business, not banking, insurance, manufacturing, farming, etc. Those companies that have both understood and taken action to instill this in their staff have typically enjoyed consistent success. For example, look at Southwest Airlines to see a perfect example. While many airlines have slipped into bankruptcy or endured forced merger, Southwest has had a consistent profitable bottom line for 35 years! Instill a service mentality into your staff and reinforce your confidence with an empowerment policy to allow them to put this philosophy into positive action.

  • Understand that the empowerment actions (or lack thereof) of your staff today may influence many years into the future. Bypassing empowerment roadblocks often has a more wide-ranging positive effect than just solving customer, operations, or financial problems today. Again, consider just customer service. Giving your staff the power to settle customer issues satisfactorily using their judgment solves the immediate today problem. But, this pleased customer will probably continue to do business with your company in the future – possibly many years into the future. They are likely to spread the always valuable and sometimes elusive “word of mouth” praise about your products and your company. It’s impossible to put a real price tag on the marketing benefits you’ll enjoy for years to come.

Companies that “talk the talk” about employee empowerment and then take actions that result in the exact opposite policy are doing themselves serious, if not irreparable harm. These firms might spend millions on advertising and branding efforts to receive nothing but invoices to pay, with no effect on the bottom line. In these cases, and there are many, they would have been smarter not to even imply they had an empowerment policy. Empowerment is a wonderful policy. Use it to its maximum.