Self-management: why companies should invest in employees’ autonomy?

Self-management | Gamefic

The way that companies sees the role of their employees changed. Square professionals who only follow orders to perform tasks is in the past. Nowadays, organizations are looking for professionals with initiative and autonomy to create new ideas and face challenges.

What is self-management?

Self-management is an organizational model with the objective of decentralize some functions that traditionally were exclusive from leaders. This way the responsibility is shared with the entire team so it is possible to promote autonomy and equality within the business.

This flexible model does not necessarily mean the absence of hierarchies in the company. On the other hand it means that the decision-making process can happen collectively and in different hierarchical levels, reducing bureaucracy between team members.

Why invest in employee autonomy?

It is necessary to understand that self-management is a different way of looking to the company as well as to leaders’ management  and the organizational strategy.

Self-management shows to the employees that the company trusts their ideas. To encourage autonomy of each one of the team means to increase performance, stimulate creativity, and improve commitment. 

What are the advantages of self-management?

  • It promotes leadership; 
  • Everyone on the team works together to achieve the company’s goals;
  • The processes becomes democratic;
  • Everyone has access to the necessery company’s information and activities;
  • The team members work and make decisions focused on the development of the company;
  • It encourages and humanizes interpersonal relationships;
  • It increases the responsibilities and motivation of each employee;
  • It generates autonomy regarding to the development of the company’s activities;
  • It improves individual and collective performance;
  • It increases better engagement of the whole team.

What are the main challenges of this business model?

Despite of the advantages mentioned above, adopting this new management model implies in changes, and in some cases that change is a challenge. It is possible that some of the employees has not developed previous skills that make this autonomy model viable, so they might feel lost in situations, such as:

  • Who should be contacted if there is a problem?
  • What should be done next?
  • How far does the authority goes to make a decision?

These are some of the challenges that may arise along the way. Although it is worth saying again that the presence of the leader does not disappear in this type of management model. Despite of the autonomy of each employee, managers will continue to be important to help to organize processes, help with healthy shortcuts, developing other team members skills and further stimulate team engagement.

Migrating from a traditional business model to a self-management model takes time. The culture of the company needs to go through a change process that requires effort from the whole team so that the new model is incorporated and established in the daily work routine.

By encouraging self-management, leaders gain in productivity, team satisfaction and consequently increase their profits. That is why Gamefic supports the self-management model with the use of a creative gamification platform. This way, each employee can follow their own results, be clear on their goals and how to reach it. They also can have daily training, get specific feedback from other players, get evaluated by the developments of their skills and know better and quickly receive the points that needs improvement.

Want to know more? Visit Gamefic.

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