The empowerment of employees and their ability to make decisions are essential to a company´s success. This is the opinion of Teresa Abecasis, the person in charge of Galp's commercial business
“We have to prepare people for the future” declared Teresa Abecasis, Commercial COO at Galp, at the Empowering Organizations Conference held at the QSP Summit Facing The Unknown, on 10 September, in Porto.
The empowerment of people and their ability to make decisions are essential to a company's success. A process that involves a company's commitment to empowering their employees, backing their decisions and ensuring they are skilled, well prepared and know what the company expects of them.
Teresa Abecasis argues that the Empowering process is composed of three phases. The first consists of “training people and providing them with information to enable them to make decisions”; the second phase entails the specific action of “making the decision” and the third involves “backing” the decision made. “The person making the decision needs to know that they are not alone and that the other members of the company are backing the decision made”, she stressed.
Anguish in relation to the outcome of decisions made should also be avoided. “We need to help people to assume their responsibilities, to have no fear and to be happy about making decisions without suffering from anguish, because we know that people are well trained and that the best decision was made at the time with the information available”, with no stress and the backing of colleagues.
“We at Galp place great importance on formal training while addressing issues such as agility, different thinking and soft skills”, which enables us to see things from different perspectives. Speed in decision making is another essential factor. Teresa Abecasis says that we have to change what needs to be changed quickly, because the world isn´t going to wait. And, by way of example she mentions the Covid-19 pandemic, in which people and companies had to have mental agility, decision-making power and the ability to decide in a new and different scenario.
Inês Veloso, Marketing and Communications Director at Randstad Portugal, was the chairperson at the Empowering Organizations conference
Inês Veloso, Marketing and Communications Director at Randstad Portugal and the chairperson of the conference, believes that people make organisations. “People empower companies, not the other way round”, she said. “Organisations are increasingly geared to people and the acknowledgement of their individual added value”, guaranteeing that everyone has a good relationship with their work.