Autonomy does not mean "no rules or total freedom". We all have rules at work, but when we understand the boundaries and are free to do our best work, we are more creative, innovative, passionate and ultimately more productive.
In my experience, when you talk about autonomy to senior executives in companies, they often perceive it as "anarchy". Autonomy certainly does not mean anarchy. We can give employees the freedom to do their best without removing responsibilities, rules and processes. Autonomy can and should go hand in hand with these. Autonomy is more about encouraging the individual to do his or her best at work.
Trust is essential for employee engagement, especially in terms of autonomy, and if we don't trust people, we find ourselves in a state of mind that we need to constantly follow the job or the person. As a result, we treat them as parts of a machine, instead of seeing them as a whole person who can undertake their work with all their talents and skills. If there is no trust in employees in a company, their contribution and commitment is limited. However, trust has stages and autonomy is something that is earned. It is related to employees' integrity, intention, competencies and previous results. For example, an employee whose integrity and intentions are not in question, who is competent, has many years of work experience, and has achieved successful results in the past will have a wider autonomy framework. However, giving autonomy to a newcomer or a recent graduate who has not yet produced tangible business results and whose integrity and intentions are not in question, but whose competence you are not sure about, will not be beneficial not only for you but also for that person.
By linking autonomy to people's intrinsic motivation, i.e. their intrinsic needs, you can create a cycle that works forevery employee .
For an independence-motivated person, freedom means that he or she can do his or her own work without any help from anybody else and can make his or her own decisions freely. He has a very high need for it and when you give autonomy to such an intrinsically motivated person, he says, "I have autonomy in my work and that motivates me".
For a highly engaged motivated person, it is vital that they are trusted. When you give autonomy to such a person, they think : "My company says to me, "We trust you to make the right decisions, to do your job well and to influence us with your contributions." This motivates me to grow and develop in my business and create more value for customers.
One of my examples above was a high independence motivated person and the other was a high commitment motivated person. These two people have opposite intrinsic needs, but if given autonomy, one will be more motivated because he feels free and independent and the other will be more motivated because he feels trusted and will do his best.
Let's give another example, if a person with a high risk appetite is unable to take decisions and take action on even the smallest issue at work, this situation will also reduce the employee's loyalty as it prevents the employee from self-realization. That's why people with high risk appetite don't stay long in companies where the rules are rigid and the structure is cumbersome, where everything is predictable and where it is almost impossible to take personal initiative. However, when this person is allowed to take reasonable initiatives, he will take action and when he starts to contribute, the company will want to give this person more autonomy in line with the good results. And this person will be more motivated when they are freer and can take risks. It will want to do more and develop more.
If autonomy is limited, the employee's contribution is also limited. If we limit the freedom we give employees to do their best work in a way that does not allow them to fulfill their potential, their contribution to the company, to customers and to themselves is limited and their productivity is reduced. This is unsatisfactory for both the company and the employee.
How do we balance responsibility and autonomy? Getting this balance right is critical for all managers. The best approach is openness and transparency. Companies should clearly define their success criteria and where there are red lines.
For example: the accounting department has a set of rules and procedures that it has to follow. When we say autonomy, we can say "Let's be clear about what the constraints and boundaries are" rather than "Let's go and break all the rules". Where do we need rules? Where do we encounter factors beyond our control that constrain us? And what can I as a manager and you as an employee do to give you the freedom to do your best work in the environment that we are in. The critical point here is that autonomy is built on employees' ability to do their jobs better and more efficiently.
For example, in recent days there has been a significant increase in the demand for employees to work from home and there is considerable pressure on companies to do so. Most of the people who request to work from home ask for flexibility from their companies with the argument that the time lost on the road reduces their productivity, causes them not to spend enough time with their family and children, and that their productivity will increase if they work from home. My personal experience shows that people who have not worked from home before and are not competent in working from home have a hard time adapting to this situation when they start working from home. Many of them want to come to the office after a certain time, they have difficulties adjusting themselves in terms of starting times and working hours, but more importantly, when they work from home, it does not return to companies in terms of productivity or greater customer satisfaction.
So when we want to have autonomy, it is critical to be able to demonstrate how this will contribute to the mission of the company and then prove it. I have worked remotely all my life and wrote my MBA thesis on remote working. It is very clear that working remotely requires serious competence and self-discipline!
Properly constructed autonomy provides transparency in our work, in terms of the parameters we need to adhere to in order to be successful and what we need to deliver to customers. Transparency requires you to communicate clearly and realistically about the work being done and what they can do better and how they can do it better.
One of my clients is a software company that has done well without focusing too much on procedures. They are good at operational efficiency, they have the resources, and if they want, they can add proven best practices to their processes to improve operational efficiency. But that's not their focus. Their focus is always on their customers first. They question themselves "How are we serving our customers, what are we doing for them?" in short, customer, customer, customer. The common goal here is clearly understood by everyone and they give their employees the autonomy they need to achieve this goal. If you were a software developer in this company, your scope of action in providing a service specific to the customer's needs would not be limited to the boundaries of the programming language itself. Since the main focus of the company is the customer and all employees are working towards this common goal, your boundaries would be much broader in terms of ensuring customer satisfaction.
This company has done a great job of defining what success looks like and saying, "Go out and do your thing, and we'll support you as best we can, and we won't interfere with you in serving the customer."
We have worked with this company for a number of years and have witnessed their improvement in many areas (including employee engagement). They have created a cycle where they encourage their employees to do the best they can and their employees can evaluate this. Every year their confidence grows and their results improve.
There are ways to measure how successful or not your company is in providing autonomy to its employees. Obviously, this is where we recommend surveys. You can ask your employees about trust and autonomy through annual surveys or pulse surveys. Among others, we have a number of very effective methods for developing and measuring autonomy.
For example, you can conduct an informal audit by walking around the company and looking at how and when people work.
You can conduct motivation analysis for recruitment and exit surveys for turnover. We often do turnover surveys on behalf of our clients and we can get insights that say , "I'm leaving because I'm not satisfied enough in this job, not because of this or that, but because I can't do what's necessary here for me or for my clients."
Especially in our country, trust between employers and employees has become a chronic problem. We start our business relationships at a level where no one trusts anyone. If you are educated in this area, you can easily observe trends of mistrust in companies. Do you use surveillance cameras to monitor people during their long breaks? If so, ask yourself why you do it and see what you can do differently. You want to run a company, not a prison. In addition to cameras, there are companies that install GPS in company cars to make sure that employees are taking the shortest route to and from work. I know that companies do this for a variety of reasons, companies lose trust in all employees and become biased because they have been in trust-breaking situations before, and of course the opposite happens - employees lose trust in companies and this limits autonomy and the contribution that employees can make to the company. Most importantly, customers lose out because of this. In fact, it becomes a vicious circle, as employees take revenge on their companies in different ways as companies increase supervision and control.
Recently, one of our production customers made a comment like this, when the friends in production are angry with the company, the production efficiency per machine decreases, it seems that they are doing everything right, but somehow the production decreases!
The 5 main factors ofEngagement MAGIC(Meaning,Autonomy, Growth, Impact and Connection) are interrelated.
Going back to the example I gave about the software company, they said, "For us, the meaning is our customer." That's great. That's the meaning. So how do we support that? We need to give people autonomy to do that. If we make a clear meaning, reinforce it, support it and make sure that they find motivation for it, they will understand the purpose of the work and the mission of the company more properly.
This also helps employees to recognize their individual impact. "If I have the freedom to do my job
After all, it's an ecosystem, a balance. Autonomy is the most important. We know that people want to grow, that there needs to be a clear vision and a purpose and connection to the work, and all of that is important. But sometimes autonomy is not enough. We don't realize that people need authority and trust to do the work that suits them. They need feedback, encouragement and accountability, but what they really need is to be given the opportunity to do their best.
MAGIC "5 Keys to Employee Engagement"
Meaning:"Finding Meaning in Work: The Purpose of the Work is Superior to the Work Itself"
Our article to help you determine how much autonomy you need: "Who You Are - What Motivates You"
How Much Autonomy Do You Have at Work: "Free MAGIC Survey"
Podcast:"Why Employees are Unhappy"