Giving autonomy to your employees: The how and the why

Any employer who wants to build lasting success will need to give some thought to the happiness of their employees from time to time. There are various ways to make employees happy – perhaps the most straightforward way being to give them more money – but there is a growing consensus around the importance of giving your employees more autonomy. Letting your workers have more input into when, how and where they work can be influential in keeping a happy workforce.

Of course, ceding control is not something that comes easily to any employer. You have a vision for the way your business will work, and ensuring that that vision is upheld can rely quite a lot on being single-minded when it comes to decision-making. How do you give your employees the autonomy that will keep them happy, while not losing control where you need to have it? It’s a balance that needs to be struck, and fortunately there are ways to meet the needs of your workforce while also maintaining your position as the one at the top of the pole.

Let your employees pick their path forward

As a manager or owner, you will of course have a say in what your employees do today, as they work on the projects the business has ongoing. That’s not something you can or should cede – but you can encourage autonomous thinking about the future by allowing your employees to decide how they will specialize as they go forward. That means things like deciding which training courses they will go on, which departments they are seconded to in times of need, and more besides.

Employees will always find parts of the job that they love and parts they are less enamored by, and as long as they approach the whole job with their best foot forward, that’s all you can really ask of them. But when they look at how they are going to engage with the job for the next few years, the chance to decide what additional duties they take on allows them to feel that they are stakeholders in the business. If they feel that they have some say in how they will work going forward, they are more likely to see themselves working for you in the long term.

If a college student is compiling a list of courses and their credits, it’s common to have major and minor credits on that list. Someone who is studying film production, for example, might take on a minor in French or business administration. Approaching your employees’ responsibilities in this way is another good idea. There will be certain things that they have to do, like delivering on high priority projects or an Employer Advantage workplace safety course that’s essential for OSHA compliance. Outside those core competencies, they can have their pick from other projects that pique their interest.

In any business, some things need to be done by a specific time and must be given high priority, with modules being signed off at key deadlines. If an employee isn’t motivated to take part in these, it needs to be expected that they can get on with their duties anyway. However, they are unlikely to be to put out about the bits they find boring, given that your business is going above and beyond by giving them buy-in on tasks they definitely do want to be a part of. This also ties in with the point above about future development.

Allow them to decide the when and where

Flexible working isn’t just for pandemics. By and large, the objections to working from home are being disproved. It’s not bad for productivity, as some people assumed it would be. It’s not led to a rise in employees disappearing from the “grid” – software such as Zoom, Skype and more have generally meant that employees are easy to contact and sometimes even more available than they would be if working in an office. Furthermore, it’s not realistic to believe that employees will disappear and make a mockery of expectations just because they’re working from home. They want to still have a job, after all, which means they’ll carry out their duties.

Deciding where they work is one part of the autonomy you can freely allow to employees, but deciding when they work is also something that you can offer them. As long as the work that needs to be done is done by the time it needs to be, it doesn’t matter whether your employees are doing it in their kitchen at midnight, or in the office at 9am. Different people work better in different circumstances, and it makes sense to put them in the places where they can deliver their best work. Their value to your business is all about how much easier they make it for you to achieve your goals, after all.

Actively encourage employee feedback

It’s important that a business should know how its employees feel about how their job is going and what the business itself is doing. With all the above points in place, the final step is to open up your ears to feedback from them. Giving them a degree of autonomy will allow them to see how their work benefits the business, and give them a stake in the future success of the business. More than this, it makes them think about the business differently – almost like a stakeholder. 

If they have a stake in the future success of the business, they will want to ensure it’s going in the right direction. This will make them think seriously about the value they can bring to the business as much as they think about what the business can do for them. Therefore, their feedback will come from a position of real consideration.

A business that treats its employees not just as humans, but as people with something to offer over and above their basic attendance, will see the benefit of this approach. So you shouldn’t see giving autonomy to your workers as a loss of control; see it more as a gaining of valuable perspective.

Image by Gerd Altmann