Welcome to this week’s Discuss HR.
We are delighted to welcome Janice Caplan today as our latest guest writer. Janice is an expert on all things talent management and is the author of “The Value of Talent: Promoting talent across the organization” (Ed Scrivener)
Do we expect too much from our line managers?
The thing about clichés is that there is often an underlying truth to them; so people really are a company’s greatest asset and people management really is a critical part of the line manager’s role. These two observations are now clichés because they are self-evident and don’t say enough to be interesting; after all, a manager is employed to direct the work of a group of people.
However, it is interesting to find how important the relationship is that lies behind just managing people. CIPD commissioned research from Bath University[1] to assess the changing role of the line manager. Initial findings showed employees who feel positive about their relationship with their line manager are more likely to have higher levels of job satisfaction, commitment and loyalty – which are in turn associated with higher levels of discretionary behaviour and with higher performance. Discretionary behaviour is defined as that which goes beyond the requirements of the job to give the extra performance that can boost ‘the bottom line’.
In spite of this, only 22% of the 760 respondents to the ACE International HR Barometer 2011 are confident that their line managers own their people management responsibilities.[2]
But what do line managers have to do to raise levels of performance? To answer this, let us turn the question around to look at it from the employee’s perspective.
We all have two main needs that are fundamental to our relationship with our employer; these are meaningful conversations, and meaningful opportunity.
Meaningful conversations address the four questions that everyone needs answering: how am I doing? What happens next? How will I get there? How will I be rewarded?
Meaningful opportunity relates to the experience necessary to develop your capabilities.
For some people, meaningful opportunity means ambition, promotion and development opportunities that will move them towards their long-term aspirations. These people may include future leaders or those who can take on critical roles. But most organisations will also have people who carry out essential tasks but who do not want to be promoted: they are happy where they are. They too need and deserve development and are important to the business. Their line managers must encourage them, coach them and provide them with opportunities to remain up-to-date, to perform tasks better and to adapt to change: no job stays the same for long.
This idea of meaningful opportunity takes us on to two great organisational myths that line managers hold to, and that need to be dispelled. One is that learning and development is all about training while the other, addressed above, is that a career is only about promotion.
There is still a tendency to view learning and development as being about going on a training course; and managers also tend to view development as training that helps the person improve their current performance. Both of these ideas are wrong or, at best, severely limited. In fact, 70% of learning and development comes from work experience and only 10% from training. But, for someone to gain new skills and behaviours from their work experience, they need to be given appropriate work to challenge and stretch them, accompanied by support and guidance to perform the new tasks successfully, and the space and support to be able to reflect on what they’ve learned.
In order to have these conversations the line manager has a responsibility to set standards of performance and assess if these have been met. If you are to achieve high performance throughout your organisation, it is vital that line managers can differentiate between high and satisfactory performance. High performers want recognition; satisfactory performers need feedback to help them raise performance. When managers clearly and consistently recognise standards of performance, this raises performance generally, and makes poor performance more easily recognisable and dealt with.
This all places a significant workload and responsibility on the line manager. But whereas in hierarchical organisations employing command and control management, line managers had clear responsibilities for their direct reports and closely supervised their work, now their role is more complex, with wider spans of control. They often understand less of the detail of what their people do. Moreover, those people increasingly work in virtual, global teams, matrix structures, flat hierarchies, or in different project teams. In this new world of lighter touch, direct contact is less frequent.
So there is a conflict between employees need for meaningful conversations and meaningful opportunity, on the one hand, and line managers being overloaded with chores, inadequately supported and often displaced from close contact on the other. Can we reconcile this conflict? There is no one answer to fit every situation, but there are three basic rules of thumb.
The first is that everyone must have a clearly designated line manager who has ownership and accountability for their performance, reward and career. Failure to do this leads to poor motivation, and eventually to the person leaving because they have not been given sufficient opportunity.
The second is that management of people must be a shared process. The line manager retains ownership and accountability but may manage the input of several people into reviewing performance, or deciding on the next move. This may be achieved through regular meetings to share information about people, roles, performance, and aspirations. In global businesses, conference calls and online meetings may have to substitute. However achieved, such coordination is essential if the organisation is to achieve the rapid talent mobility that is needed in our fast-moving world.
The third is that HR must support the line manager. This is through providing backup to deal with poor performers, assistance with development of interpersonal and coaching skills, and backup to deal with high performers, and those with high aspirations. On this latter point, HR with its wider view of the organisation is best placed to ensure appropriate, organisation-wide opportunities are opened to those who want them, and merit them. Line manager assessment and development should be focused on meaningful conversations, meaningful opportunity, and the differentiation between high and satisfactory performance.
Overlaying these issues is the problem of messages communicated through the reality of the pay system conflicting with those contained in talent management and in learning and development programmes. In other words, the organisation is paying for one thing, but hoping for another and, through the confusion and lack of clarity, probably getting something else again. Consider this example[3]: a professional services firm found that the behaviours their pay and promotion system encouraged, focused line managers’ efforts on revenue and client relationships, at the expense of good people management. This was creating dissatisfaction amongst their staff, which led to higher than desired staff turnover, and was impacting adversely on client service. Training and communications programmes aimed at driving better people management were failing because the messages of the reward programmes won through. An effort to align the reward system with the talent management messages turned this situation around and resulted in better bottom line business performance. Perhaps I should rephrase and repeat that sentence – HR created higher profits for the business.
I find that few organisations have really changed their infrastructure to meet the changing role of the line manager in our new world organisation. We need to put in place structures, processes and training that recognise that line management is not the one-on-one, linear relationship it used to be, and as a result demands a much higher level of relationship management, between managers and their people, and between managers about their people. At the same time we must focus on what matters. Time and again, I come across line managers groaning under the weight of appraisal forms, procedures manuals, recruitment requisitions, absence records, etcetera. I find them having to deal with someone’s disappointment, or anger about a pay award over which they had no input. Recently, in one organisation, several directors showed me filing cabinets full of 360-degree reviews about which they had never had feedback or support. I could go on. These are processes for HR, not for line managers. Scrap them, or redesign them all around just one criterion:
…will this help line managers have meaningful conversations and open meaningful opportunity?
This will focus line managers on what matters, so that we can then expect more from them.
About the author
Janice Caplan: Founding Partner The Scala Group, author of “The Value of Talent: Promoting Talent Management Across the Organization, Kogan Page 2011. Scala works in a strategic alliance with Salans LLP Employment Law Group, and Higher Talent Executive Search to provide a full, ‘joined-up’ HR advisory service.
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Discuss HR is the blog for Human Resources UK, the leading LinkedIn group for those involved with HR in the UK. Next week’s Discuss HR will be published on Thursday 18th August and will be written by Leadership Coach Dorothy Nesbitt.
[1] HUTCHINSON, S. and PURCELL, J. (2003) Bringing policies to life: the vital role of front line managers in people management. Executive briefing. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
[2] ACE International HR Barometer run in UK by The Scala Group, and supported by Salans LLP Employment Law Group, and Higher Talent. Executive Summary available from www.thescalagroup.co.uk
[3] The Value of Talent: Promoting Talent Management Across the Organization, Caplan, J, Kogan Page 2011.
