We have all heard it before that people leave managers, not organizations. The top benefit any employee can have is an excellent manager. However, no one is talking about it. Moreover, how you should recruit with that in mind. You can pitch your great managers as a benefit.
About one in two employees have left a job to get away from a manager during his or her career, according to Gallup's State of the American Manager report. Also, the people who made the change, report that they improved their overall life.
Unfortunately, bad managers are plentiful. They leave an impression. Everyone relates to the sense of dread about coming to work when a manager makes an otherwise excellent job feel like a dead end.
However, the effects of bad management reach further than just engagement — they can undermine your organization's efforts to help employees improve their health.
"Having a bad manager is often a one-two punch: Employees feel miserable while at work, and that misery follows them home, compounding their stress and putting their well-being in peril." — Gallup
Organizations make a substantial investment in benefits programs. The goal of these programs is to retain employees, lower healthcare costs, and eliminate things from employees worry about so they can concentrate fully on their job.
"It should go without saying, if the person who works at your company is 100 percent proud of the brand and you give them the tools to do a good job, and they are treated well, they're going to be happy." — Richard Branson
Employers’ Health Strategic Priorities
The average health benefit cost per employee is outpacing workers’ earnings and inflation by about two to one according to Mercer's National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans.
When employers were asked to name the strategies that will be the most important for managing health costs in the next five years, at the top of the list they placed:
- managing high-cost claimants
- creating a culture of health
- implementing behavioural health strategies
When employee health suffers, your organization suffers. Organizations spend hundreds of millions of dollars to keep employees healthy. However, the actions of a poor manager negate the positive effects of your organization's benefits programs.
Unhappy and unhealthy employees become disengaged. They affect:
- absenteeism
- performance
- culture
- customer ratings
- quality
- innovation
- profit
Few organizations would knowingly undermine their efforts to improve employee health and well-being. For example, an organization would not encourage smoking or other harmful practices scientifically linked to health problems. However, these organizations continue to promote and keep people in management roles that create detrimental health conditions.
Stress at Work Is Common
An Australian study determined that workplace stress affects 73 percent of employees. However, only 12 percent of workers believe their organization makes business decisions in the best interest of the well-being of employees. Other highlights of the study include:
- 73 percent of workers are suffering from work-related stress
- 51 percent of workers believe unrealistic workload expectations have the most significant negative impact on well-being in the workplace
- 25 percent of workers would sacrifice company perks for better well-being in their workplace
- 21 percent would forgo a promotion for better well-being
- 19 percent would forfeit a pay raise for better well-being
Your stressed worker is two and a half times more likely to look for a new position in the next year than your unstressed colleague. As well as that, 85 percent of staff reported that they believe that employers are responsible for addressing stress in the workplace proactively.
Bad Managers — A Health Hazard
A bad manager damages their employees' health. Moreover, customer service suffers as does your bottom line. It is time to start thinking that poor management is preventable.
"Managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores." — Gallup
While a bad manager can ruin a decent job, the good news is that a great manager can make an excellent job even better. So, it works both ways. The influence your managers have — good or bad — is enormous.
Consider — if people leave good jobs because of bad managers — would people seek positions that offer great managers?
I guess that most would if they knew where the great managers work. Most organizations do not currently think about great managers as a benefit. They do not publicize that fact to attract talented prospects.
This insight is a tremendous opportunity. Organizations should publicize great managers as part of their employee value proposition to attract the best talent. Moreover, to keep the star performers you have worked so hard to find and hire, you need to deliver on the promise of excellent management continually.
We have hundreds of management roles benchmarked. We know the traits that high-performing leaders possess. Our insights facilitate the creation of a custom onboarding process to enable the new manager to develop strategies to manage their challenge areas. Ensure you offer training and development for managers throughout their careers.
While working for a great manager is a great benefit you can offer, supplying training and growth opportunities tops the list. The prime driver of a person’s decision to leave an organization is as follows:
- 52 percent due to a lack of development opportunities
- 40 percent due to bad leader/manager
- 11 percent due to pay
Management matters, but leadership matters more
Although managers have a role in leadership, people have separate experiences with each of these groups. Leaders have a much stronger effect on employee commitment levels.
Intent to stay: The combined effect of Managers and Leadership
People management is the most challenging aspect of sustaining a thriving enterprise
Organizations need to devote more attention to promoting and developing good managers, and then start letting the world know they have these excellent leaders.
Here is advice for building a healthy and thriving organization. It starts with your managers.
Understand the Attributes of Great Managers and Great Leaders
"Eighteen percent of those currently in management roles demonstrate a high level of talent for managing others, while another 20 percent show a basic talent for it. Combined, they contribute about 48% higher profit to their organizations than average managers do." — Gallup
Only one in ten people possess the natural talent to manage. These managers have a strong ability to:
- genuinely care about the well-being and fulfillment of each person on their team
- put the right people in the proper roles – use best-fit staffing
- build a culture of clear accountability
- inspire employees with a compelling vision
- motivate each of their team members
- coach and develop each person by focusing on his or her unique strengths
- make decisions based on productivity, not politics
- shape and structure the work to best suit the talents of their team
- become more agile each day
- build trust and dialogue with each team member
Our ladder of leadership is a performance competency model for driving the highest level of performance at three corporate leadership levels. The framework supplies insight into where leaders at various levels need to focus on what they must both learn and let go as they move up.
Select Managers Based on Management Traits
Most people get a promotion to management because of tenure or their expertise in their non-managerial role. These criteria have nothing to do with excellent management ability.
When hiring, often the best-qualified candidate is not a high performer — that is why they are available! The differences boil down to:
- Great Candidates — what they have
- Top Performers — what they do
The insights from our performance analytics quickly show the shortcomings, and you hire the candidate that has the highest likelihood of being a top performer.
Grouping of The Traits
