In times of change, empowering your employees can lead to a more engaged, productive, and positive workplace.

“Employee empowerment is particularly important during the Covid-19 pandemic because it equips employees to deal with stress and changes to work process and environments,” writes Joseph Freed, for Business 2 Community. “But the future of the workplace remains uncertain, and investments in empowerment now will continue to pay dividends long after the pandemic subsides.”

Empowering employees includes: giving individuals the ability to make decisions with less oversight; incorporating employee feedback into changes in practices; and providing resources, data and support employees to navigate these scenarios.

Here are some strategies on how you and your organization’s leadership can empower your team:

• Involve your middle managers. Individuals who are often middle managers have limited ways to make changes and also have limited ways to react to feedback. Organizations should work to give this level of employee more latitude to make changes and respond to feedback.

“Also, involve them in enough discussions so they have a good grasp on the direction the company is headed,” adds Freed. “It might also be useful to develop a ‘listening ecosystem’ to help management gather feedback from rank-and-file employees. This can include onboarding and exit surveys, a regular company census, regular pulse surveys, information from HR tickets, social listening and People Analytics data.”

• Let go of the regular workday. “With remote work, distributed teams, and employees dealing with children at home thanks to Covid-19, it’s no longer reasonable to expect all employees to be working steadily,” writes Freed. “Trust employees to get their work done even if hours are unconventional…this might mean allowing employees to block off time when they’re not available or giving them control over when and how they schedule their meetings and calls.”
• Focus on your team the way you’d focus on your client. While it’s natural to focus on your clients and customers, it is also important to apply this same energy to your staff.

“To empower employees, companies should apply that same level of focus to their employees. How can they make work processes easier for their employees, or meet their needs in a way that makes them more happy, engaged and productive,” writes Freed.

• Emphasize your goals. “In times of major change (such as Covid-19, a merger or acquisition, or other significant events outside of the workplace), empowering employees often means focusing less on how work gets done and creating multiple paths to success,” explains Freed. “Don’t hold employees to specific processes if those processes don’t work for their specific work situation.”