AUTONOMOUS WORK GROUP (AWG)

 The Autonomous Work Group (AWG)

An autonomous team is one of the managements or leaderships itself able to work with minimum supervision and interference It encourage to get own decisions. This Autonomous Work team is still accountable and capable for meeting organizational goals and completing assigned projects, but they govern their own daily work, create meaningful tasks, supervise each other, delegate responsibilities and define their own schedules.

Advantages of Autonomous Team

1.Motivated, engaged employees

Employees who are working with autonomy show greater involvement in and ownership of their work. This encourages their motivation and engagement with their everyday tasks and organization. Engaged employees are more willing to repay their employer’s trust with their best work and best ideas. Employee engagement is directly linked to productivity, performance, employee retention, and revenue growth. Therefore, it is a top priority for an organization. 

2. Human well-being and happy workforce

Employees feel a greater sense of fulfilment and satisfaction of their work allows to work at their own pace and by their own rules. People are confused between the personal and professional lives today. therefore, being happy in career is crucial for emotional and physical wellbeing. Not only that but also, having the freedom to pick employee own schedules and set their own performance goals reduces stress.

3.Skilled teams

In autonomous teams, each member has the opportunity and encourage them to confidently express their ideas and thoughts. This freedom of expression and thought is crucial to fostering creative and innovative ideas. As self-starters, autonomous employees are used to taking critical decisions on their own and coming up with solutions when problems arise. Through trial and error, they improve and develop their decision-making and problem-solving skills and develop resilience. When working with a team, everyone will be skilled with effective communication and being a good team player because they are accountable for their actions and driven to making achievements. autonomous teams illustration a greater leaning towards skill development and self-improvement. At the end of the day the team is a strong, skilled workforce resilient and agile to changes and face challenges.

4. Culture of teamwork

Team autonomy encourage to a culture of teamwork where members share responsibilities and information. A team culture is essential for improving collaboration and cooperation and building trust and support. A tight-knitted team has a better understanding of tasks or situations, experimenting with innovative ideas and improving on them, and learning from each other by being a good team player.

5. Improved retention

Employers of an organization and their top motive for pushing autonomy is perhaps to stop employee turnover, which in the United States is predicted to jump 20% in 2022 (Stamford et al.,2022). Autonomy is the obvious solution to make employees feel appreciated and empowered by rewarding or promoting them and instill in them a sense of belonging as well as loyalty towards their organization. It is natural for people to want to work in a place that respects their choices, supports their freedom, and utilizes their skills in better and effective way.

6. Higher productivity

The more motivated and engaged your employees are, the more achievement- and goal-oriented they are likely to be. Autonomy always offer them the freedom and courage to pursue new ideas and be creative and innovative. Not like the employees who take every little cue from their bosses, autonomous employees and teams aren’t afraid to go after what they want. When employees are always thinking of how they can do better, it naturally leads to a enhance in productivity. When entire teams show such a growth mindset, the explode in productivity extends to the entire organization.

7. Leadership Development

Autonomy allows individuals to be free thinkers and go-getters and prove their strengths and skills. It drives decision-making, problem-solving, conflict management, and resilience, which are all qualities that are inherent in leaders. An autonomous workplace is an incubator for developing future leaders. When employees have autonomy in the way they work, the leaders among them will obviously come into prominence by combining autonomy with regular opportunities to lead, employers will have a clear picture of who their future leadership is.

How to Create Autonomous Team

Creation of Autonomous team is an effort of Transforming an organization full of individuals into efficient.

• Allow mistakes. Instead of blaming and admonishing a team member for mistakes encourage the team to use that experience as an opportunity to learn and improve. Nobody is perfect and mistakes and everyone is a part of the learning curve. As a boss or co-worker, must ensure team members creativity and initiative is not lost to their fear of being blamed.
• Set clear goals. Autonomy does not meant by working completely without guidance. Management must provide clear goals and benchmarks for every project and task, so that the teams know exactly what they need to deliver. While the team is able to set their own goals on how to approach the assigned project with goals, the end objective needs to be communicated clearly and in advance so that there is no confusion. Instead of excessive interfering the work itself, managers can provide support by helping their teams by reviewing and monitoring their progress against those goals.
• Reward good work. This is as important to acknowledge the employees who done the job well and the message goes out that autonomous thinking is not only encouraged but also rewarded. This will encourage team members to work even harder and achieve more success for themselves and for the organization.
• Give support. While the leadership should largely step aside and allow their teams to work at their own pace, they must pitch in with support and advice whenever required. The excessive involvement of leadership is a creativity killer and causes unnecessary stress. On the other hand, blind faith and a hands-off approach are a recipe for disaster. Good leaders can strike the right balance by providing guidance whenever their team shows signs of struggling and returning to the sidelines once the team is back on track.
• Support learning and professional development is Supporting a learning culture is an important approach of skills development  and it promotes autonomy in your organization. The payoff is an improvement not only in employee’s ability to work autonomously but also in overall employee skills database. With their upgraded skills inventory, it can help employees start new and exciting career paths within the organization. In return, Management will be able to get highly skilled, productive, and agile teams bring to the organization
• Get feedback from your employees. Leadership can send out surveys, questionnaires and one on one sessions and asking employees for their honest opinions on how they would like to be managed and how they can improve their team autonomy. Thereby, workplace autonomy is all about encouraging free expression and thought, and regular feedback is an integral part of that process.

 

References

Muchskills.(2023) Why autonomous teams are so important in the workplace today. Muchskills. [Online] Available at: https://www.muchskills.com/blog/why-autonomous-teams-are-so-important-in-the-workpla (Accessed:26 November 2023)

Stamford et al.(2022) Gartner Says U.S. Total Annual Employee Turnover Will Likely Jump by Nearly 20% From the Prepandemic Annual Average. Gartner. [Online]Available at: Gartner Says U.S. Total Annual Employee Turnover Will Likely Jump by Nearly 20% From the Prepandemic Annual Average (Accessed:26 November 2023)