#TurksandCaicos, November 14, 2022 – Research has clearly shown when employees feel empowered at work, it is associated with stronger job performance, job satisfaction, and commitment to the organization or institution.
Despite our stellar rating as one of the world’s top tourism destinations, many would agree in some cases what we have seen over the years in Turks and Caicos Islands, is not a reflection of workplace empowerment. Be it in government or the private sector, the lack of ownership and empowerment is prevalent in some offices.
Management in some cases has failed to empower their employees by delegating authority, decision-making, and sharing of pertinent information.
Working in top management positions for a large portion of my career, I have found that if you ask the right questions, in most cases you will find the answer is right in the room amongst your employees.
It behoves management to take the time to solicit employees input. Employees are the face of your business or institutions and through their interaction, they know what’s needed to satisfy the customer.
Furthermore, it’s pointless to solicit employees input if the information only remains in a file and nothing is implemented.
Follow up with the employee or committee on reasons why their input may or may not work at this particular time.
What I have found over the years is, if given the autonomy, in most cases employees are not seeking attention but simply know what they are doing and do it with pride.
Often times, what the customer perceives to be an attitude from the employee, could be a result of pent up frustration due to the lack of support or relevant information from their direct reports.
We need leaders in the workplaces who are not afraid to delegate authority to their employees, ask for their input, and encourage autonomous decision-making.
In my opinion, I believe it’s not being done due to the fear of being replaced, which is small minded thinking. To the contrast, it makes your own job easier and the office becomes more productive and customer centric. 
Granted, employees will fail from time to time, but it’s all a part of learning. What’s important, is to have biannual performance based reviews with your employees so they are aware of the expectations, shortcomings and their progress.
On every job, you will find highly creative individuals just waiting to be discovered or given the opportunity.
Challenge them to generate novel ideas and to think of new ways of doing things rather then the status quo, just because the office has always done it that way.
Apart from delegating additional work, empowering leadership is also about mentoring and supporting employee development; not exploiting them, which we know is all to common in some cases.
What we need are leaders who can lead, not just checking off the boxes or just because they are your most reliable employee.
By empowering employees it allows them the opportunity to take more ownership of their role, and this is where a number of government departments, office settings and stores in our country are lacking.
It’s my belief that empowering employees in public service businesses such as the hospitality sector, healthcare or licensing departments is crucial. Most of these employees are key to organizational effectiveness and could prove to be more beneficial to your business and the country as a whole.
It’s important for businesses and institutions to build that framework for more efficiency. In essence, improving workplace efficiency is about helping employees work smarter, not harder or just doing busy work.
There are two key points to be cognizant off.
#1 Management often times fail to realize the employees are their most important customers and should be treated as such.
#2 In a tourism driven economy, employees often times fail to realize there shouldn’t be any distinction between the quality of service provided to locals vs tourists.
There are also other areas that could negatively impact the customer experience.
For example, important documents such as police records, birth certificates etc. all require a postal stamp. Why not make it convenient for customers and provide the stamps and include it as part of the fees?
Recently, our tourism department was outsourced to a destination management company. Perhaps, failure to empower employees in the workplace forced this decision. Albeit, this move may broaden our horizon, but let’s be clear, its our story our experiences and our passion that brought us to this point of being one of the most desirable destinations.
With that being said, in order for TCI to continually compete for world class service in the marketplace, we need to capitalize on the experience and expertise of our people. This will put us in a better position to deliver consistent results where good customer service and experience become the norm not the exception.
Ed Forbes
Concerned citizen of Grand Turk