Line managers can make or break your employee experience. They are a key enabler of employee engagement. We all know this is a fundamental truth – but just in case you need more convincing, research from the likes of Gallup, Garnet and IBM back this up…
For example:
- Millennials say that “quality of manager” is a top factor they consider when looking for a new job.
- When managers play an active role in onboarding, employees are 2.5 times more likely to strongly agree their onboarding was exceptional.
- Managers account for an astounding 70% of the variance in their team’s engagement.
- Only 2 in 10 employees strongly agree that their performance is managed in a way that motivates them to do outstanding work.
- Fifty-two percent of exiting employees say that their manager could have done something to prevent them from leaving their job. Nevertheless, only 51% of employees who left their job had a conversation about their engagement, development or future during the three months leading up to their departure.
But the experience of many leaders is currently not in a good place. Research from OC Tanner (2023) found that leaders are 43% more likely to say work is interfering with their ability to be happy in other areas of their lives. And research from Gartner (2022) found that 35% of managers say they have more direct reports and 49% report that the complexity of their responsibilities have increased since before the pandemic.
It was interesting to see that building line manager capability was cited as a key priority in our recent EX Report research (you can catch up on the webinar here). Line manager capability was also cited as the single biggest challenge to EX, so clearly there’s work to be done.
When delving deeper in what is going on with line managers the research found that from the perspective of practitioners:
So where do we go from here?
First and foremost we need to set managers up for success. We need to help them understand their role, motivate and inspire them to want to improve EX, help them develop their capability and then make it easy for them to do the right thing.
Over the coming weeks and months we are going to focus on helping practitioners to set their managers up for success.
Specifically we will:
- Explore the role of the manager in EX – what is we need them to do and why?
- Understand the skills and strengths required by line managers to develop their capability without further adding to their workload and stress
- Share tools to help you as practitioners set your line managers up for success
This is going to involve webinars, as well as sharing ideas and tools – plus stories from companies who are getting this right. So, watch this space…
In the meantime we’d love to know your views on the role of line managers and EX What resources are you looking for? What you like to learn more about? And if you’re already doing great work in this space let us know so we can share your story and celebrate your progress.
And if you’d like to talk to us about how we’ve helped other organisations work with their line managers – get in touch
