At Sapient Corporation, a technology marketing and consulting company, co-founders Jerry Greenberg and J. Stuart Moore recognized that employee motivation was vitally important to their company’s success.36 They designed their organization so individual employees are part of an industry-specific team that works on an entire project rather than on one small piece of it. Their rationale was that people often feel frustrated when they’re doing a small part of a job and never get to see the whole job from start to finish. They figured employees would be more motivated—and productive—if they got the opportunity to participate in all phases of a project.

When you’re motivated to do something, don’t you find yourself energized and willing to work hard at doing whatever it is you’re excited about? Wouldn’t it be great if all of a venture’s employees were energized, excited, and willing to work hard at their jobs? Having motivated employees is an important goal for any entrepreneur, and employee empowerment is an important motivational tool entrepreneurs can use.

Although it’s not easy for entrepreneurs to do, employee empowerment—giving employees the power to make decisions and take actions on their own—is an important motivational approach. Why? Because successful entrepreneurial ventures must be quick and nimble, ready to pursue opportunities and go off in new directions. Empowered employees can provide that flexibility and speed. When employees are empowered, they often display stronger work motivation, better work quality, higher job satisfaction, and lower turnover.

Empowerment is a philosophical concept that entrepreneurs have to “buy into.” It doesn’t come easily. In fact, it’s hard for many entrepreneurs to do. Their life is tied up in the business. They’ve built it from the ground up. But continuing to grow the entrepreneurial venture is eventually going to require handing over more responsibilities to employees. How can entrepreneurs empower employees? For many entrepreneurs, it’s a gradual process.

Entrepreneurs can begin by 1 using participative decision making, in which employees provide input into decisions. Although getting employees to participate in decisions isn’t quite taking the full plunge into employee empowerment, at least it’s a way to begin tapping into the collective array of employees’ talents, skills, knowledge, and abilities.

Another way to empower employees is through 2 delegation—the process of assigning certain decisions or specific job duties to employees. By delegating decisions and duties, the entrepreneur is turning over the responsibility for carrying them out.

When an entrepreneur is finally comfortable with the idea of employee empowerment, fully empowering employees means 3 redesigning their jobs so they have discretion over the way they do their work. It’s allowing employees to do their work effectively and efficiently by using their creativity, imagination, knowledge, and skills.

If an entrepreneur implements employee empowerment properly—that is, with complete and total commitment to the program and with appropriate employee training—results can be impressive for the entrepreneurial venture and for the empowered employees. The business can enjoy significant productivity gains, quality improvements, more satisfied customers, increased employee motivation, and improved morale. Employees can enjoy the opportunities to do a greater variety of work that is more interesting and challenging.