Though increased autonomy is thought to be the solution to employee dissatisfaction, the truth is that hierarchical organizations have been successful for centuries. A senior employee managing and leading a team helps encourage engagement because everyone works toward a shared goal. While micro-management will most likely destroy employee engagement, going the opposite extreme and giving employees full autonomy can have a similar effect.
Autonomy won’t necessarily improve engagement on your team because it makes it difficult for companies to centralize information, and some employees might feel like they’re being exploited. It can also lead to a lack of direction, complacency, communication difficulties, and an inability to take directions.
Though workplace autonomy has advantages to a certain degree, there are better solutions to poor employee engagement. Below, I’ll take you through six important reasons why giving your employees excessive autonomy damages both your company and the employees themselves.
1. Difficulty To Centralize Information
Autonomy makes it difficult for a team to centralize information. If no one knows who to report to or has no supervision, their findings won’t be effective in the grander scheme of things.
In a traditional hierarchical organization, every team member reports their work to an appointed supervisor. The supervisor can then collect all their findings and assign tasks to specific team members to ensure the job gets done. Ultimately, having someone in a leading position overseeing all project areas will help a business stay organized and functioning.
Ultimately, having someone in a leading position overseeing all project areas will help a business stay organized and functioning.
If you diminish a leadership role on a team, centralizing information and getting the job done becomes much more difficult. The task will become chaotic, as no one will know what the organization expects of them or what to do.
2. Complacency
Excessive autonomy can also lead to team members becoming complacent and taking far bigger risks than they should. Becoming too lax in a project puts their team in a vulnerable position.
Employees with too much autonomy and too little accountability won’t feel encouraged to learn and grow, a process essential for any organization’s growth.
Additionally, studies conducted in Israel have noted that autonomous employees are more likely to engage in unethical behavior during work hours. The researchers concluded that job autonomy often led to complacency because employees found the freedom to do whatever they wanted.
In this case, the participants’ unethical behaviors include misrepresenting actual working hours and taking private calls when they should be working.
Complacency works against trying to increase employee engagement. As complacency grows, team members become increasingly careless until they feel they don’t have to try. After all, there’s no one managing their performance.
Complacency works against trying to increase employee engagement.
3. Employee Exploitation
While increased autonomy allows for more freedom in an employee’s work, it also comes with increased responsibilities. One important thing to note is that not all employees respond well to excessive autonomy and may feel exploited. Some might find that their manager expects them to carry out both their positional role and the role of a supposed supervisor — all for the same pay.
When you increase your team members’ autonomy, you also increase their mental load. They’ll now need to make every decision regarding their workload by themselves, which isn’t always appreciated.
This may lead to some employees feeling exploited and unsatisfied, which works directly against engagement.
On the other hand, excessive autonomy can be just as damaging for the organization as a whole as it can be for individual employees. Since humans are known to be selfish creatures, they’ll always prioritize their own agenda over a collective goal. When employees exploit the autonomy given to them, there will undoubtedly be a dip in the entire team’s productivity.
When employees exploit the autonomy given to them, there will undoubtedly be a dip in the entire team’s productivity.
4. Lack of Direction
For team members to feel engaged, they need to know what they’re doing and their end goal. That’s very difficult to achieve if you don’t give your people proper direction — they’ll feel lost, confused, and unprepared, leading to a sub-par performance.
Excessive autonomy also means that each employee is working at their own pace, rarely checking whether their work complements the work of another co-worker.
For example, imagine you have the finance and marketing departments working independently from each other without a common direction. A marketing campaign will likely be a colossal failure as the campaign won’t have a proper budget outlined, and the process would waste time and resources.
Clear direction is essential for a company’s success. If employees are autonomous, they aren’t under the direction of a leader who manages and leads them toward a single, achievable target.
Clear direction is essential for a company’s success.
5. Communication Difficulties
When team members have too much autonomy, they may face difficulties communicating with other teammates since everyone does what they deem the best. If you give all team members full autonomy, the resulting performance would likely be abysmal, even if they have the same goal from the start.
Good team performance is a result of effective communication. Effective communication between team members allows everyone to do what’s needed rather than what they feel or think would be required. When team members are unsupervised and discouraged from coordinating with one another, it’s impossible to achieve the desired collective goal.
Good team performance is a result of effective communication.
6. Inability To Take Directions
This last drawback goes hand in hand with team members becoming complacent. When someone is used to getting full autonomy, they become resistant to external input and directions. An employee’s inability to follow instructions will put any organization at risk.
All team members should be able to respond to simple directions to do a job that benefits the group. If someone cannot follow directions and decreases productivity, the level of engagement you’re working so hard to increase will plummet.
While autonomy is sometimes the key to success, it can lead to complaints and resistance toward authority if left unchecked and balanced.
While autonomy is sometimes the key to success, it can lead to complaints and resistance toward authority if left unchecked and balanced.
Here is a video discussing proper and responsible autonomy in a team or organization.
| Drawbacks of Excessive Autonomy | Explanation |
| Difficulty in centralizing information | Autonomy makes it challenging for team members to know who to report to or have no supervision. This results in a task becoming chaotic, as no one knows what the organization expects of them or what to do. |
| Complacency | Excessive autonomy may lead to team members becoming complacent, which puts their team in a vulnerable position. It may also lead to unethical behavior during work hours. |
| Employee exploitation | Excessive autonomy may lead to employees feeling exploited and unsatisfied, which works directly against engagement. This may lead to a dip in the entire team’s productivity when employees exploit the autonomy given to them. |
| Lack of direction | Excessive autonomy means that each employee is working at their own pace, rarely checking whether their work complements the work of another co-worker. This leads to confusion, lost performance, and subpar performance. |
| Communication difficulties | When team members have too much autonomy, they may face difficulties communicating with other teammates since everyone does what they deem the best. This leads to ineffective communication, which is essential for good team performance. |
| Inability to take directions | When someone is used to getting full autonomy, they become resistant to external input and directions. This leads to decreased productivity, which may result in the level of engagement plummeting. All team members should be able to respond to simple directions. |
Does Autonomy Increase Engagement?
Autonomy doesn’t always increase employee engagement because companies will have difficulty managing a team’s direction. Too much autonomy may lead to employees not working together, leading to a disorganized team. To increase engagement, be a leader that balances autonomy with coaching.
