Keeping Up With Your Managers

Things are looking up for your company! Customers are happy, and you’re growing to meet the new demands due to your success.

But how do you ensure quality control in that environment? You have more managers and teams than ever. Managers have the biggest impact on employee engagement, so how do we keep tabs on them? How do you know what your managers are really doing when you can no longer see it for yourself?

You need to collect data.

Measure the right things

Chances are you already have piles of data to comb through. A long annual survey has magically revealed all the things you are doing well and all the things you can improve, right?

Wrong.

A once-a-year temperature check does little to track what happens to employee engagement in spring, summer, and winter. Employee engagement is a constantly fluctuating feeling. More frequent and appropriately differentiated surveys will do a much better job of measuring how employees are feeling based on their team, project, time of year, etc.

You can then use this information to make actionable changes. If your data collections are too heavy, it takes too long to wade through it all to make appropriate changes at the moment they are needed. So, take a little time to isolate the things that will have the most significant impact on your business’s success.

Which brings us back to your managers. We suggest measuring and tracking employee engagement scores, the frequency of 1 on 1s, the human feel to each team, and the quality of feedback by manager. You can then use this data to compare across teams to see which management actions are having the best impact on your employees and their performance.

1. Employee Engagement

Managers have a significant impact on how happy, motivated, and productive their employees are. The way they develop their team’s unique culture affects the way your employees feel about their work. Sending out brief pulse surveys with a question that measures your Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) can give you insights into the health of your company.

It’s even more important that this data can be viewed by the team than in aggregate as that information can provide you an action plan for your manager. What teams have low or high eNPS scores? Why? What are their managers doing differently? Contrasting this data with the next two categories can give you a picture of what management actions might be contributing to high eNPS scores.

2. 1 on 1 trackers

Your engagement survey answers may also be related to the quality and frequency of communication between your employees and their managers. Do you know which of your managers is holding 1 on 1s with their team and how often? Do you know what they are discussing?

You could ask when the last time someone received feedback was in a survey, but it would be even better to have a central place to collect this information.

Best of all, providing a place that makes tracking 1 on 1s easier for your managers will help ensure that they take place at the right frequency and that you are up to date on which teams are getting this important time with their bosses or not and retrain or applaud accordingly.

3. The human feel

It’s important that your managers make their team members feel human, not just like another cog in the machine. Are your managers inquiring about their interests? Showing compassion around mental health stressors during this very stressful time? Offering flexibility when necessary? Expressing appreciation consistently?

A pulse survey with questions checking on these behaviors can help you see which managers are providing the needed support and human element to their employees and the impact that’s having on their overall satisfaction with their work environment. Use this information to guide your managers to the actions that will make the most difference for their teams.

4. Feedback

You’ve trained your managers away from old-school micromanagement tactics of yesteryear’s boss. You’ve taught them how to coach their people, not just make sure they get their work done. Employees are looking for growth, and having a manager who’s fighting alongside them for improvement helps them feel like an important part of the company. Managers who focus on the end results (more than micromanaging when and how their employees accomplish their tasks) make employees feel trusted and valued.

So, how do you make sure your managers are actually executing their role as coaches?

Give them the tools. Motivosity’s Lead software platform offers a tab dedicated to feedback where your managers can record where and how their team members are meeting, exceeding, or falling short of expectations. There are places for open-ended feedback along with quick button responses.

You have access to this software, so you can see which managers are giving feedback and how effective that is. You can compare this with which teams have the highest or lowest engagement scores or productivity and adjust the quality of the feedback their team is getting accordingly.

Your managers don’t have to reinvent the wheel. They just need to continually use the platform to keep everyone on the same page to improve the employee experience for everyone.

One product to monitor management effectiveness

A product that integrates all four of these important management areas — employee engagement, 1 on 1s, appreciation, and feedback — will help both you and your managers.

Motivosity’s Lead software platform helps your managers be the best leader they can, without having to track their efforts across multiple platforms. It can even be accessed from the other platforms you use, like Slack, MS Teams, and any HRIS.

Use the right tracking tools to track your managers’ impact. Consolidate that information in a place where you can access and use it to stay on top of your growing company and reap all the benefits of happier employees, happier managers, and happier customers.

Sources:

• https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2019/05/22/how-to-measure-what-matters-in-employee-engagement/
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/shephyken/2016/12/03/how-effective-is-net-promoter-score-nps/?sh=39487ece23e4
• https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/jobs/88-employees-willing-to-stay-longer-if-appreciated-at-work-survey/articleshow/55202176.cms?from=mdr