Are your teammates disengaged or not taking ownership of their work?
Is this the case even though you’re not micromanaging them and have even taken a hands-off approach to give them more freedom?
It could be that they just don’t have the necessary conditions for this kind of independent work.
Not to worry, though. We’ve got just the tips from seasoned experts that will help you boost their autonomy — not to mention the perfect suite of tools to facilitate this kind of work!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Autonomy at the workplace increases productivity, loyalty, engagement, and customer satisfaction.
- Managers struggle to encourage autonomy either because they tend to micromanage or because they don’t establish clear boundaries.
- You can encourage employee autonomy by increasing their confidence through training, establishing clear guardrails, tracking results, and delegating authority and decision-making.
- Software is essential for enabling autonomous work, especially in remote and hybrid teams.
What exactly do we mean when we say workplace autonomy?
Autonomy in the workplace means having the freedom to make decisions and take ownership of your work.
It includes deciding when, where, what, how, and with whom you work.
Mind you, not all positions allow for the freedom to decide all of the above, simply due to their nature. That’s alright.
Autonomy at work is about telling people what to do and not how to do it.
As long as you enable your employees to reach their goals the way they think is best, you’re enabling them to work autonomously — even if they’re tied to a strict 9-to-5 from the office.
Fostering autonomy is the opposite of micromanagement
The problem with micromanagement isn’t just that people don’t like it.
No, the key problem is that micromanagement isn’t even effective at what it’s supposed to do!
It doesn’t improve employee engagement, productivity, or any other positive metric.
On the contrary, 71% of employees say that micromanagement interferes with job performance, while 85% claim it lowers morale. People hate this lack of autonomy so much that 69% of micromanaged employees actively consider changing their job — and 36% of them actually do it. Micromanagement also makes employees burn out and disengage.
This is a serious issue for employers since replacing an employee costs between 40% and 200% of their annual salary, depending on their position. And considering the fact that 79% of employees experience micromanagement, the need for higher workplace autonomy is real.
So far, I’ve only covered the detriments of micromanagement — which are relevant to consider since autonomy will get rid of them — but autonomy also brings its own benefits.
According to a Gartner survey, autonomous employees are 2.3 times more likely to achieve higher performance. Work autonomy also seems to reduce fatigue 1.9 times, which not only enables higher productivity but also prevents burnout and increases loyalty.
And it’s not just your employees who’ll benefit from this, as research also shows that autonomy increases customer satisfaction. That’s why it’s in the company’s best interest to promote autonomous work.
Fostering autonomy is not the same as hands-off management
The explanation provided above may give off the impression that encouraging autonomous work equals hands-off management.
But that’s just not the case!
If you want to enjoy the many benefits of employee autonomy, you’ll have to temper it with training, support, and guidance. As Dr. Diane Rosen, business management expert and president of dr-squared Consultants, explains it:
“Fostering autonomy does not mean disappearing as a team leader. On the contrary, the most effective way to foster autonomy is to consider it as having two parts — autonomy and support. The support portion of the equation means that the supervisor doesn’t just back off but rather checks in, makes sure the person has clear instructions and parameters, and access to necessary resources.”
Actual hands-off management — also known as laissez-faire management — suffers from a lack of direction and unclear expectations. Employees don’t get mentoring, feedback, or clear goals, which can make them feel neglected and unsupported.
For autonomy to work, employees need to know what they’re supposed to do and feel comfortable asking questions.
Why do managers have difficulty promoting autonomy?
The way I see it, there are 2 broad types of managers who struggle with encouraging autonomous work.
The first type are micromanagers who don’t know they’re micromanaging. To them, what they’re doing is striving for perfection, which — of course — only they are capable of. Or they believe that they bear the sole responsibility for the outcome, which makes them reluctant to delegate.
I’m painting these managers in a negative light, but micromanagement can also happen with the best of intentions. Managers may just struggle to balance delegation with ensuring quality control or tracking project progress without constant check-ins.
The second type are managers who maintain employee autonomy at the expense of their own well-being. This is even more pronounced in remote teams where managers don’t know how to balance employee expectations and work patterns that the flexibility of this work model implies.
A survey from Future Forum shows that these managers have the worst work-life balance and suffer from the highest levels of stress and anxiety. And it’s even worse if managers are leading hybrid teams, where they can feel like they’re managing two separate teams doing the same work.
Expert tips on encouraging autonomy at work
Balancing autonomy in leadership and employee autonomy is a tricky matter.
If not properly managed, it can increase the well-being and work-life balance of employees at the managers’ expense. For example, this happens when managers work long hours just to be available as support to all their team members who work at completely different times due to remote flexibility.
I’ve asked experts with experience leading autonomous teams for tips on how to encourage autonomy without compromising your wellbeing as a manager.
Here’s what they had to say!
Tip #1: Boost confidence through training
According to Marketing Consultant and Co-Founder of 4Dbiz Evelyn Roberts McDougall, your team members won’t be able to work autonomously if they’re not confident in their ability to do the job, especially in a remote setting. To overcome this issue, McDougall suggests building your team’s confidence through training:
“When onboarding a new remote employee, plan to spend about 30% of your working day on close, hands-on management, feedback, coaching, and iteration. This will not only build the employees’ confidence and autonomy, it will build YOUR trust and confidence IN your employee.”
While you will be more involved at the start of this process, it’ll pay off in the long run. For remote employees, she also recommends shadowing sessions where you watch them work in real-time while offering advice and explanations.
Tip #2: Establish clear guardrails
Too much flexibility can quickly lead to burnout, especially when managers take a completely hands-off approach.
This is why CEO and Founder @Compt Amy Spurling highlights the difference between autonomous work and hands off management. According to her, the best way to foster autonomy is through establishing clear guardrails:
“People thrive when they know what success looks like, have the tools to achieve it, and trust that their managers won’t micromanage them along the way. For managers, this protects well-being. Because without guidelines, every decision flows back to you, which is exhausting and unsustainable.”
Spurling argues that you can create a system where autonomy and accountability reinforce each other by being clear on priorities, decision-making authority, and how progress gets shared:
“I’ve found that pairing autonomy and intentional communication rituals (like weekly check-ins that focus on outcomes, not hours) reduces employee stress and manager overload. You hired adults, so let them be adults.”
Tip #3: Track results and delegate authority
According to Kyle Sobco, CEO of Sondercare, another mistake that remote and hybrid managers make which hinders autonomy is their focus on just tracking hours without also considering the results:
“I made that mistake early on. We had weekly meetings yet gave little real results. I switched to outcome-based scorecards with three to five measurable outputs. That reduced our meeting time by six hours a week and gave employees more control over their work.”
Sobco also emphasizes the importance of delegating not just tasks, but also authority:
“I stopped requiring approval on every marketing campaign. I told our Marketing Director that if the budget was under $10,000, she could launch without me. Our completion time went from 12 days to 3. My email load was reduced by 30 percent.”
As Sobco puts it, people who have clear goals and authority tend to work with more independence.
Tip #4: Delegate decision-making
It’s not uncommon for employees to turn to their manager when faced with a choice. And the manager’s knee-jerk reaction is to make that choice for them, especially when they believe they know what’s best.
But, as Bernard Meyer, senior director of comms & creative at Omnisend, puts it, that isn’t really the role of a manager:
“You have to delegate decision-making to your teams and guide them to make better, clearer decisions over time that benefit the entire organization. One way to do this is to not make a decision (which isn’t urgent). Don’t step in. Don’t answer the question. Simply ask what they would do in this situation, what their opinion is, why, and what that means for the rest of the team or organization.”
Meyer argues that, over time, this will build their muscle for resolving their own issues and becoming more autonomous.
Another way to elevate autonomy at your company is through software
Work autonomy should not come at the expense of company rules and regulations. Rather, it is the freedom of how you work within those constraints. The manager still very much needs to stay up to date on how projects are coming along and who’s doing what.
Meyer reminds us that you can achieve this without pestering employees with the right software:
“We require that everything is added to a project management tool and tasks are up-to-date. That way, I can independently go into the details and check the status of anything, without bothering the person or seeming to micromanage.”
What we can add to this tip, to bring this post to a close — CAKE.com just so happens to have the best tools for facilitating autonomous work.
A project management tool like Plaky lets you manage tasks and check progress in a completely non-intrustive way, but that’s just the start.
You’ll also want a team communication tool like Pumble so that you can hold regular meetings and offer the kind of support that’s necessary for autonomous work to flourish. Otherwise, the gaps in communication are going to lead to missed deadlines.
And if senior leadership is not completely on board with the idea of employee autonomy, use Clockify to persuade them. Have employees track their time and generate reports that’ll show the impact this has on team performance.
It’ll work because autonomy doesn’t just benefit the employees — it benefits the company just as much!
You can get the premium subscriptions for all 3 tools at a hefty discount if you buy the CAKE.com Productivity Bundle.
Use the best software to foster autonomy and increase productivity and efficiency. Use CAKE.com.
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