It’s not unusual to think the best way to empower your employees is to adopt a hands-off approach. After all, no one in the history of work has ever said, “I really like it when my boss checks up on me 30 times a day.” So, micromanaging is obviously not the right approach. You also don’t want them to feel set adrift, as if they’re unable to approach you with their needs and concerns. To truly empower your team, you must strike just the right balance between these two extremes.
This balance gets even more delicate when you’re introducing new procedures designed to streamline your office workflow. The whole point of streamlining is to reduce the need for direct supervision and empower employees, but dropping them into the deep end of a new way of working doesn’t feel empowering as much as it feels overwhelming and, in the worst case, deeply demoralizing. The success of your streamlining efforts rests in giving your team the support they need during the rollout phase, so they’re empowered to take the reins as quickly as possible.
TRC Services Empower Your Team
With the comprehensive menu of record retrieval, record management, and exhibit preparation services at The Records Company, you have a set of important tools to empower your employees to be the best at what they do. Our secure online portal is designed for flexibility to meet our clients’ needs. By outsourcing record retrieval and related tasks, you give your team space to play to their strengths, allowing them to be more productive and satisfied with their workdays. Our services also help you foster the work-life balance your employees crave when they’re off the clock.
Making the Most of TRC Services
When you introduce any new process or service to your workforce, even services and processes as user-friendly as the ones we offer, the key to success is buy-in, and you get that buy-in by supporting your team through the learning curve. Too often, managers see new technology–meant to make life easier for their employees– throw it at their team and say, “Here’s a new thing that will help you. Okay, bye!” That scenario turns the helpful new process into a new burden that employees have to navigate on their own. Learning through trial and error drains the time and resources you’re trying to save.
Instead, invest a little of that time up front. Training your employees in the use of our portal and best practices for submitting requests doesn’t take much time, but it sends a strong message to your employees that their time and personal resources are valuable too. When your team feels included and supported in the process, they feel empowered to use our services to their best advantage.
At a time when worker retention is a challenge for so many employers, it pays to invest in job satisfaction for everyone in your office. The long-term benefits of that short-term investment in empowering your team create a sense of accountability and ownership in the workplace, which translates to improved services for your clients – and that’s the goal for us and for you.