Get the skills: Empowering others

Empowerment is about encouraging others to get involved in projects and use their energy and creativity to shape the direction of the project, the organisation and their own career. It helps to develop skills and increase job satisfaction. As employees learn more about sustainability and the organisation’s targets, it is important that they feel able to use that knowledge to make changes and contribute to delivering the strategy and targets. 

 

Empowering others is a great investment in time and effort. It is not just about delegating or allocating a task to another, to remove it from your own job list. 

 

An engaged and enthusiastic workforce is more likely to overcome any challenges it faces quickly and effectively, as it has the skills, knowledge and autonomy to identify and implement solutions.

 

However, empowering others requires trust. Most managers can reel off examples of when they have trusted others to complete a task and it did not work out as well as they had hoped. They are left with the feeling that they could have fulfilled the task more quickly and effectively themselves. But, in many cases, the problem was down to asking a person who does not have the necessary skills, or failing to brief them properly or to set clear expectations.

 

Lack of empowerment is particularly an issue when it comes to sustainability, despite growing levels of concern about a range of issues from inequality to nature loss and climate change. Knowledge is a factor; employees are unsure what are the best actions for them to take, or whether their actions make a difference. Before getting involved, they also need to be confident that the organisation takes sustainability seriously and values their involvement.

 

Effective empowerment

Empowerment is about giving employees the information they need to tackle a problem and the permission to act on their initiative to achieve the organisation’s goals. Learning what you can do to empower others is critical to increasing engagement in sustainability initiatives, as well as wider business strategy.

1. Put sustainability on the agenda: With sustainability still in its infancy in many organisations, employees need to be convinced that the organisation takes the issues seriously and values their involvement. If a manager never asks how they are getting on with a project or always drops the sustainability discussion because of a lack of time in the team meeting, it sends a signal that the organisation does not value sustainability actions. By contrast, ensuring sustainability is discussed and employees are clear on what the critical issues are, allows them to get involved in decision-making and identify how they can play their part.

2. Identify easy ways to get involved: Making a small change and doing it consistently is more motivating and empowering than trying to have a big impact and failing. Provide employees with a list of simple ways they can get involved, for example changing to Ecosia as the default web browser. Then encourage them to increase their involvement as knowledge and confidence grow.

3. Learn to trust: While it can be difficult for managers, especially if they are ultimately responsible for the outcome of the project, they must learn to trust their team and give them the opportunity to complete tasks without too much interference.

4. Get to know the team: Potential is not the same as current capability. Managers often allocate projects to talented individuals without providing them with the necessary knowledge and training and then become frustrated that the task is not completed to the required standard. It is important to understand where individuals are currently at and the support they need to fulfil their role. One of the biggest challenges for employees is having the time to think about sustainability and how they can embed it into their role, especially when there is pressure to get on with immediate business tasks. So it is important to ensure people are able to set aside time to tackle sustainability projects.

5. Set clear parameters: Managers inadvertently disempower their teams either by failing to brief their team fully meaning they do not understand the extent of their remit or by prescribing the approach and micromanaging the outcome. With clear parameters, employees have the autonomy to act and understand when they need to check in and seek approval, for example before signing the contract with a more sustainable supplier they have identified.

6. Provide space to experiment: If employees are worried about the repercussions of their actions, they will be reluctant to take action. They need the opportunity to test the approach that suits them best and to learn from their mistakes.

7. Invite questions: Encourage employees to ask questions about the sustainability strategy and their role in delivering it. Doing so will reassure them that they are not expected to be experts on the issues and give them a chance to explore different possible actions. While individuals need some training to play their part, providing too much information can feel as if they are being told what to do – try to get the balance right.

8. Encourage employees to set their own objectives: Most employees will be more motivated to act if they have the chance to decide where they can have the most impact and set their own objective. Once this is set, there also needs to be a discussion and agreement on the support they need to realise their goal and of the co-benefits of any action. For example, becoming the department sustainability champion could help them to build the leadership experience they need to take the next step in their career.

9. Ensure policies and processes support action: Company policies can help to encourage action. For example, train travel is often more expensive than flying, but employees will investigate alternative forms of travel if they are given clear guidance that they can book a train if it is up to 110% of the flight cost.

10. Provide feedback: Being empowered requires employees to be able to come forward with practical and feasible ideas for improving sustainability. To do this they will also need tools to help them ‘make the case’. Further, it is important that proposals are properly reviewed with feedback given on why projects are approved or not. No matter the initiative, showing an individual that you appreciate their efforts is one of the most effective ways to empower them. With sustainability initiatives, individuals also want to know they are making a difference. Providing feedback on the wider impact of the project, for example on the amount of single-use plastic saved, also helps. One idea is to reward good ideas and initiatives that are linked to business objectives. 

11. Foster peer support: Encourage employees that are already engaged in sustainability initiatives to support their colleagues to get involved. We are more likely to act if we see that our peers are already taking action; it sends a signal that action on sustainability is culturally acceptable or desired within the organisation. Importantly, it also means that managers and sustainability professionals are not the only ones responsible for building engagement and acting on environmental and social issues.

12. Boost to well-being: There is growing evidence that sustainability engagement can contribute to employee well-being, if people feel that they can make a difference and have a positive impact. But organisations need to monitor this, as employees can often feel overwhelmed or helpless. It may be necessary to step in with resilience and well-being support when needed.