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Employee retention – how critical is the role of the direct manager?

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As we traverse this new world of work, one key area that needs attention is the role of the Direct Manager.

There’s been a seismic shift in how people work in the last few years. Indeed, the pandemic has driven millions worldwide to recognise that the traditional office-based work model is no longer the standard norm.

Direct managers have always been necessary for the workplace. Still, their influence is even more critical now as many businesses have moved to a hybrid work model.

In this blog, we’ll explore why a direct manager is essential in this new world of work. And we’ll look at their impact on employee satisfaction, productivity and retention.

What does direct manager mean?

Before we explore the importance of direct managers, let’s define what we mean by this term.

A direct manager is responsible for supervising and managing a group of employees.

Direct managers are often the main point of contact for employees when issues arise and play a crucial role in ensuring employees are working to their full potential.

 

The Critical Importance of the Direct Manager in Employee Retention

Clear communication is vital for effective direct management

One main reason direct managers are so crucial is that they act as a bridge between employees and the organisation. Effective communication is vital in any workplace, even more so when working remotely.

Direct managers ensure employees understand both:

  • the organisation’s goals and objectives and their role and
  • purpose within the company.

They also provide regular feedback and support. Therefore, assisting employees in feeling engaged and connected to their work.

Supporting employee well-being is a crucial aspect of direct management

Direct management is also crucial in ensuring employees’ well-being, even when working from home. With a blur between work and personal life, employers must pay attention to their workplace health and safety responsibilities. Employees should feel valued and supported by their employer. A remote work environment highlights this. Employees may experience feelings of isolation and disconnection from their team and organisation.

Further, being well-positioned, direct line managers more quickly identify when employees struggle with their workload or face increased stress. They offer support and guidance, such as providing access to mental health resources or adjusting an employee’s workload.

Maintaining team morale is the responsibility of the direct manager

Working from home can sometimes be isolating. Ensuring that team morale remains high is paramount. Direct line managers play a vital role in this area. Examples are providing opportunities for team building and socialising, even if done virtually. Regular team meetings, social events, and other initiatives promote a sense of community and belonging among employees. All this boosts morale and productivity.

Encouraging development and growth is another important responsibility of the direct manager

Finally, direct managers are essential in helping employees to develop and grow within their roles. This responsibility needs more emphasis in a hybrid working world where employees may interact less with colleagues and managers.

Direct managers provide:

  • training and development opportunities
  • guidance to employees in identifying their strengths and weaknesses and
  • direction on advancing their careers within the organisation.

The significant impact of Mediocre Managers

Research from SEEK tells us that mediocre management is the number one reason people leave companies. Let’s face it, managing people is complex. Add to it the complexity of hybrid working – and the degree of difficulty goes up a few levels.

How to support Direct Managers?

In summary, direct line managers need all the help they can get.

Dentists need specialist tools to treat patients.

So too, managers need the right tools to lead and support their people in each of their roles.

 

At, Great People Inside we offer a fantastic, cost-effective range of customised online tools for each individual. Our tools include development suggestions and guidance.

Reach out for help to be in the presence of more Magnificent Managers in your organisation.

 

People strategy for now and the future – how to close gaps

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Planning for a best People Strategy is essential. Your business strategy amounts to no more than words on a page if you don’t have “the right people in the rights seats on the bus”.

All elements of your employee life cycle must be linked: 

  • from attraction through to talent management, 
  • leadership development, and 
  • ongoing performance management. 

There is a great reward too in doing this. Studies tell us that organisations that prioritise their employee experience are four times more profitable than those who do not.

People Strategy v HR Strategy – what’s the difference?

HR Strategy tends to focus more on the planning side of people such as structures for hiring, onboarding, developing, and retaining. 

People Strategy is more about helping employees to grow, by creating an environment that nurtures and enables high performance. People Strategy usually focuses on: 

  • values, 
  • fostering diversity, 
  • inclusion and employee wellbeing, and 
  • predicting and reacting to workforce needs. 

In essence, creating a culture where employees share equal billing with shareholders and business goals.

According to the world-renowned Boston Consulting Group, the three pillars for developing a people strategy are leadership and culture, talent and skills, and HR. 

 

“In these challenging times, organisations must elevate the most important asset they have: their people. By focusing on the fundamentals of people strategy—leadership, culture, talent, reskilling, and HR—companies can emerge stronger, more agile, more innovative, and better able to respond to an ever-changing environment.”

 

I’d like to explore two of these pillars.

Leadership Culture and Strategy

There are many levers at a leader’s disposal to drive their organisations success and effectiveness.  Strategy and Culture are the most important. 

Strategy provides clarity of the company’s goals and helps to align people around them. Culture tends to express goals through organisational values and beliefs. Culture also guides tactics, activity, and implementation.

One thing is sure and that is culture and leadership are linked. Poor leadership and resultant toxic culture usually determine the fate of a business. Studies tell us up to 30% of employees say they left because of poor leadership. These findings highlight the need for every organisation to address this factor.

Culture in more detail

Culture is a more puzzling lever to activate. The reason for this is mainly because Culture can be ambiguous and embedded in unspoken behaviours, people’s mindsets, and social expectations.

Many leaders don’t always appreciate the power of culture. 

 

A recent Gartner Survey revealed that 75% of leadership believe that they run a culture of flexibility. Unfortunately, only 57% of employees agreed. 

 

This lack of appreciation can cause many leaders to either let culture go unmanaged or delegate it to HR, where it can slip to a secondary focus for the business. 

Successful leaders embrace the ambiguity of culture. In my experience many leaders I have met avail of the valuable culture diagnostic tools to understand where their orgnaisations culture is right now. These tools help them to answer questions such as: 

  • Is it more of a creative culture or a reactive culture? 
  • How do the culture snapshot of the board and senior leadership vary from the operational managers’ perspectives? 
  • How “real” is the conversation in the business?

Gaining clarity around culture can be as confronting as it is enlightening – but well worth the investment of time and focus. We partner with many specialists in this area, so reach out if you’d like to explore further.

Talent and skills

Sixty-four per cent of the world’s most admired companies say they have a good understanding of workforce needs two or more years into the future compared to 54% of their peers. 

 

That same recent Gartner Survey I referred to earlier also revealed the same 75% of leadership also felt that they did a good job incorporating employee voice in decision making. Unfortunately, in this case only 47% of employees agreed. 

 

The forced extreme disruption, which was the last two years, has meant that most businesses naturally thought more about survival than future talent and skills needs. Now is the time to think about your future talent and skills requirements. Some steps to take include:

  • Ensure Employee Pulse Surveys acknowledge and act on the feedback provided
  • Use customised psychometric assessments to identify traits and skills gaps
  • Incorporate customised 360° surveys as part of your development programs
  • Facilitate regular check-ins between individuals’ teams and managers

Lastly, lockdown work from home is different from long-term working remotely. Most organisation psychologists accept that loneliness, communication, and isolation can trigger depression. 

So, if there is a disconnect in your business between HR policies, the leadership strategies propelling them, and employee sentiment on the ground, greater emphasis must be placed on the needs this new work approach demands. 

For example, consider what capabilities and skills (soft and hard) are essential to be future-ready? Do all employees possess the discipline, conscientiousness, and results orientation to deliver in a hybrid environment? What might this mean for remote work and the flexibility we can offer? 

Through our business offering, we have many people analytics resources and tools to assist with both these pillars. Reach out if you’d like to discuss how we can help with the future of your people.

Diversity and culture fit – how to hire for your business

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When recruiting a new team member, I have never met any business owner or manager who set out to deliberately hire a substandard performer. Then, why is it that studies tell us that we get it “right” (i.e., hire a top performer) only 25% of the time? The answer is that traditional recruitment processes, (resumes, interviews, and reference checks) are just not meeting the modern business needs.

In Australia today, we are lucky that we have a highly educated and well-trained workforce, which logically means that most employees in Australia have the skills and competencies to perform their jobs well. But if this is the case, why is the hiring success rate so inconsistent?

Most new employees fail – not because they are incompetent or don’t have the required skills – but because they don’t “fit” with the practice owner, the manager, or their colleagues or due to other factors.

What is fit?

Culture fit (the alignment of values, beliefs, and behaviours between the employee and employer) has become another one of those also overused cliches in business-speak. While it is essential, the issue when hiring is that it means different things to different people. As a result, hiring for culture fit alone can be difficult to measure and is not a reliable predictor of high performance. When we speak of ‘fit” we are talking about much more than culture fit alone. Our definition of “fit” is as follows:

  • Can the person handle the mental demands of this job?
  • Will they enjoy the environment and the people they must work with?
  • Are they highly motivated by this type of work?

Hardwiring

Psychologists tell us that our core traits and beliefs about ourselves and the world are hardwired into our brains by the time we are 10 or 12 years of age. Of course, as people we evolve and develop, however our deep-set inner identity and core beliefs about ourselves, others, and how the world works are intensely cast in our DNA and are hard to change.

As we go about our daily work in the business, many of us will have observed our top-performing employees going about their jobs quite differently. Still, despite different approaches, they consistently deliver top outcomes and results.

Achieving these top outcomes and results is the DNA we refer to, the four or five key qualities most important to your business and that are possessed in abundance by your top performers. These qualities are the heartbeat of your company. We call this success DNA and when it comes to hiring new team members, they are non-negotiable.

The importance of fit

The low hiring success rate clearly demonstrates that if the right potential employees who share these critical success qualities are not found and employed, and you select a person who doesn’t fit, it’s unlikely this person will deliver top performance for your business. In fact, it’s estimated that 46% of newly hired employees won’t survive for a year because they aren’t a good fit for the job. Poor DNA matches are the number one reason why people become disengaged, dislike their managers or colleagues, and eventually fail or leave their jobs.

 

Modify your process by benchmarking your top performers

Unless you understand your top performers’ DNA success attributes, then the traditional selection process will continue to deliver less than 25% of top performers. The science-based Great People Inside customisable profiling tools we recommend will enable you to identify and quantify the success attributes they share greatly contributing to your business. When recruiting, you can measure your potential new recruits against these attributes to ensure they also have the required success DNA fit for your business.

Our easy-to-read plain language reports will also help you take your interviewing approach to new heights. Our Management Coaching and Onboarding reports will make sure your new team member contributes as quickly as possible.

Great People Inside assessments are customisable – so what?

Compared to assessments you may have used or taken yourself previously, Great People Inside assessments are the next generation – think original Nokia phone and iPhone 12!

You may be familiar with assessments that have been around for many years where you measure the dimensions the assessment provider has configured; you have no choice and no control. As a result, you may be measuring (and paying for) what you don’t need. Our customisation feature allows you to design an assessment that measures what you want to measure best suited to your business, which means you are in control, and most importantly, you decide what you want to pay. Even with its unique customisation features, GPI will usually be at the cost of comparable assessments (where they exist).

Don’t just take our word for it

For the second year in a row, the Great People Inside platform has been in the top 10 best rating tools in the world.

It is a huge honour for us to find ourselves among the best yet again this year.  In July 2020 Great People Inside was also ranked #16 assessment tool in the world by AHRI.

If you’d like to find out more please click here to contact us or email [email protected]

 

Morph your leadership

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Thanks https://unsplash.com/@davidclode for this amazing image

Practical ways to adapt your approach

By David Leahy, Director, Great People Inside Australia

Many of us can easily recall precisely when key events occurred around the world and in our own lives. It is fair to say that the current pandemic is one of those events and is well and truly etched in our memories for as long as we shall live.

In March 2020 you can probably recall the moment you first heard the word “lockdown”. It likely stopped you in your tracks as you were confronted with the thought, what does this mean for me and my family? Then came the closure of businesses, JobKeeper, Jobseeker and a mountain of eye watering debt, the likes of which we have never seen before in this country.

Except for Victoria, most states have since relaxed the restrictions imposed, however the constant media reminders and escalated infection control procedures practised daily in businesses across the country are a constant reminder of what running a business looks like in the year 2020.

This period marks the greatest challenge to leaders. Many of your peers and employees are likely worried about their future. Now more than ever, your people need the steady hand and re assurance of your leadership.

The problem though, is that leaders are human too and are not immune to the anxiety, stress and sleepless nights caused by the uncertainty we have lived through for the best part of this year.

Right now, as a business owner or leader you have a lot on your plate and sometimes it may even seem too much. This can impact your ability to think clearly or may cause you to lash out (metaphorically) at team members or even become short tempered with your customers.

But how can you morph and adapt your leadership to cope with the current demands? To help, we have outlined five practical approaches you can adopt.

1. Lead self

It was Charles Manz who first used the term ‘Self-leadership’ in 1983; and from this we know that to be a successful leader we must lead ourselves first, before we can lead others. The current situation calls for in-depth personal reflection to truly understand who we are, how we got to where we are today and what our natural tendencies and behaviours are when we are in a crisis and under pressure.

Self-awareness is one of the key elements of emotional intelligence (EI), which Daniel Goleman, a renowned psychologist, refers to as a person’s ability “to identify and manage their emotions and identify and influence others’ emotions”

Self-awareness provides a leader with key personal insights and enables them to self-manage those circumstances when triggered by a situation, an event, or a personal interaction. At the end of the day, we cannot control the occurrence of “stuff” that triggers us, but we do get to choose our reaction. As leaders we are constantly on display, and our people and our clients are making decisions about us and our leadership based on what they observe.

2. Get ‘real’

Many leaders tend to think that showing vulnerability is a weakness- in fact, it is a strength of leadership. When leaders stop wasting energy trying to conceal what they think other people should not see, it allows them to start showing their “real” self. By accepting vulnerability as a strength, leaders can stop worrying about having every answer and realise it is okay to not know. True wisdom comes from stepping away from the fear of not knowing.

The idea of being “real” was popularised by American management guru Warren Bennis in his 1989 book On Becoming a Leader, and gained further attention through the 2003 publication Authentic Leadership by Bill George, a professor at the Harvard Business School. Such leaders know and accept themselves and present a genuine and empathetic face to their teams.

They communicate truthfully and directly, and lead with the heart, not just the mind. But they are no softies. Truly ‘real” leaders always keep their goal in mind – the good of the organisation they are responsible for and lead. Mission-driven, they can separate out personal feelings from work imperatives.

3. Model the behaviour

Peter Drucker a renowned management consultant once said that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”.  He did not mean that a great strategy is not important but rather that an empowering culture was a more certain route to organisational success.

Culture can be described “as the way we do things around here”. It includes leadership, communication, people, policies, vision, values, onboarding, and hiring and firing processes. Especially during the current situation, people like to work for and with leaders and managers who make them feel good, and these positive feelings result in improved performance. When leaders and managers do not promote these positive feelings throughout the business, performance decreases and mediocrity increases.

Most of us are familiar with the proverb that “a fish rots from the head”, which means that leadership is the root cause of an organisation’s failure and demise. This is true whether that organisation is a country, a company, or a business unit – toxic leadership can poison the emotional climate of a business quicker than you can say profit and loss! Modelling the type of leadership behaviour that you expect in your business is critical as it sets the tone, creates the environment, and builds your unique culture.

4. Communicate

George Bernard Shaw once said, “the greatest issue in communication is the illusion it has taken place”. As we know, great communication is much more than just getting your message across. It has to do with understanding the emotion and the intentions behind the information contained in the message. Leaders need highly advanced communication skills, not only to clearly convey a message, but to also listen in a way that gains the full meaning of what is being said and makes the other person feel heard and understood.

This is where favouring your right ear is important. While this may seem quite unusual, experts tell us that the left side of the brain is where the primary processing centres for both speech comprehension and emotions happens, and as the left side of the brain is connected to the right side of the body, favouring your right ear can help you better detect the emotional nuances of what someone is saying.

Many of us despite our best efforts to get the message across, on occasions find that the listener has heard differently to what was intended, the message somehow was blown off course and landed on a different landing strip than we intended! Adopting a non-judgemental approach and crafting powerful questions can help a leader explore deeply and increase their success of more effective communication.

5. Get data, get results

Leading others is difficult. Its fair to say you would not purchase a piece of capital equipment for your business without the benefit of objective data, so why would you attempt to lead your highly valued (and costly) team without the edge that scientific objective insights can give you? As a good friend of mine in Dublin used to say, “Are you stupid or what?”

Your team members are made up of vastly different personalities, all with their own unique passions, backgrounds, views, and work styles. With the best will in the world, misunderstandings and differences of opinion can create friction within the group.

Left unchecked, this can put a damper on performance and enthusiasm, leading to conflicts which may be hard to resolve.

This is the last thing you need right now. So, how can you harvest the best each team member has to give, using their attributes to maximum benefit, while managing those behavioural traits with the potential to upset team dynamics?

The answer is behavioural assessments, which give you detailed information about you and each of your employee’s skills, behaviour, and personality traits. These next generation of unique customisable smart tools from Great People Inside that we recommend, provide leaders with heightened self-awareness and valuable pointers about the way their employees can function to optimum capacity at work – both as individuals and within the team.

Your choice

We appreciate that every business is unique, and that in the 21st century, businesses invest in defining, developing and implementing that very specific culture, that state-of-the-art customer service, those distinguished values and dynamics that deliver their business advantage and success. In other words, we understand that a business’s uniqueness and greatness cannot, and should not, rely on a “one size fits all” approach.

The assessments we recommend are unique as they offer a menu of more than 60 validated dimensions from which you choose to measure precisely what is important to your business.

If you’d like to learn more, or if you would like a FREE trial, please click on this LINK and we will get back to you promptly.

 

David Leahy

Great People Inside