 What does freedom mean to employees? Freedom in the workplace is both simple and difficult for employers to provide – simple, perhaps even brilliant, in concept and, at the same time, hard to implement. What your employees want often includes challenging work, freedom to make some decisions about the work, the opportunity to learn and grow, and a great company culture. Let’s look at each of these individually:
1. Freedom to make decisions Freedom to exercise their best judgment is something employees crave. They want to know the overall objective of their tasks, they need the skills to do them, and then they need the autonomy to decide how and when it is best to do their work. Trust is a big factor when putting such freedoms into practice – do you trust your employees enough to give them latitude in how to do their job? If the answer is no, perhaps you have the wrong people in the wrong jobs. Or perhaps you need to examine your management style – no one appreciates being micro-managed. Of course, you need metrics to monitor the end product of your workers’ efforts and to hold them accountable to job expectations. President Reagan said it best with his statement, “Trust and verify,” which, in the context of a business, means you trust your people to do a good job and you monitor the results of that work.
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