For more information about Youmanage please visit www.youmanage.co.uk
A Youmanage White Paper
Introduction:
The job of the line manager is critical within most organisations.
Managers play a vital role in many different ways, ensuring that both management strategies and HR policies are implemented successfully, that employees are motivated and competent, and that the organisation complies with relevant legislation and standards.
However, the diverse and sometimes complex role of the line manager is under increasing pressure.
People managers, sometimes promoted for their functional competence rather than their inherent people skills, are often poorly equipped and lack the tools, information and competencies they need to be effective.
As a result, poor management practise is often commonplace, with potentially damaging results for all - employees, organisations and the managers themselves.
Organisations ought to find better ways of equipping their people managers to be more effective and to add greater value. The good news is that technology-based services like Youmanage offer the opportunity to improve the quality of management in a highly cost-effective way.
We will examine the typical challenges faced by people managers, the impact that these have on their performance and describe how managers can be easily equipped with the tools, the information, and the guidance that they need to be able to 'manage' their teams consistently and effectively.
For more information about Youmanage please visit www.youmanage.co.uk
Line Managers Under Pressure
Organisations of all types are under constant pressure to increase productivity and improve operational efficiency.
The last 10 – 15 years have seen a trend towards streamlined organisational structures, flatter hierarchies and an increase in the functional responsibilities borne by line managers.
The result is that managers are increasingly overstretched and struggling to fulfil their dual operational and people management responsibilities.
At the same time many HR departments, which have traditionally provided day-to-day support to managers, have themselves been under pressure to adopt a more strategic role, while at the same time reducing overall headcount.
This has led to tensions in the relationship between HR and the line. HR wish to be more strategic yet still find themselves weighed down by too much admin, hand-holding and fire-fighting. While at the same time managers, with nowhere else to go, are frustrated by HR’s inability to provide the level of support that they need.
The pressures on both line managers and HR departments are intensified by regular
organisational restructurings, the trend toward more mobile workforces, and the introduction of more flexible working patterns.
An additional factor in recent years has been the increasing regulatory burden faced by UK employers. In just the last few years managers have had to cope with a raft of new legislation covering areas such as working hours, parental rights, disability discrimination and age discrimination. In an Institute of Directors poll, 83% of those surveyed said that employment law was either a 'major' or 'significant' distraction from running a business.
In recent years increasing numbers of organisations have fallen foul of Employment Tribunals. The vast majority of tribunals lost by employers are because the organisation is judged not to have followed correct procedures. This usually comes down to managers being
poorly-equipped to handle situations when they arise.
“managers are increasingly overstretched and struggling to fulfil their dual
operational and people management responsibilities”
For more information about Youmanage please visit www.youmanage.co.uk
Poor Management Impacts the Bottom Line
Ineffective, poorly-equipped line managers have a negative impact on an organisation’s performance in a multitude of ways.
These include:
● Business strategies not effectively executed because individual work activities are not
aligned across the organisation
● Employees de-motivated or dissatisfied because they don’t know what is expected of
them and/ or feel they are not being developed as individuals
● Recruitment costs increased because the wrong people are recruited into roles and staff
turnover is too high
● An inability to achieve business goals because the workforce lacks the skills and
competencies necessary
● Lost output and a negative impact on staff morale because absenteeism or poor
performance issues go unchecked
● Costs incurred and negative publicity as a result of poorly-managed disciplinary or
grievance issues
Youmanage’s own research has shown that heads of HR are very conscious of the impact that line managers have on HR processes. A recent survey showed that more than 80 per cent believe that employee productivity would increase if their organisation's line managers were better equipped and a similar proportion believe that their HR departments would also be more effective.
Are Traditional Support Methods Enough?
The importance of good management is not a revelation of course. Considerable sums of money are spent by organisations each year in an attempt to equip managers with the information, the knowledge and the skills they need to perform effectively. However, many of the traditional methods of supporting managers have significant limitations.
Is Management Training Remembered?
Traditional management training can be great for skills development but tends to be less effective for knowledge transfer (for example, what a policy says, or what process to follow). One of the main issues is the time lag between the information being imparted and it being applied.
Knowledge can decay very quickly if not used regularly, unless they have exceptional powers of recall. A manager who has been on a Managing Poor Performance course and then doesn’t have an issue to deal with for 9 months is going to struggle to remember the detail of what they have been taught!
So what do organisations typically try in an effort to help line managers succeed but perhaps all too often, has failed?
For more information about Youmanage please visit www.youmanage.co.uk
Publishing information (e.g. on intranets or in manuals)
Simply publishing policy and process information, whether in print or electronically, is rarely effective.
Even if the content is well organised, clearly indexed and regularly updated (which, is often not the case), it still requires a significant level of effort from the manager to find the information they need for any specific situation, read it, digest it, and interpret what it means for them and then decide what action to take based upon it.
Due to the time pressures that most managers are under, even where the right information is available, it is often not used.
More Hands-on HR Support
Throwing more HR people at the problem is not a realistic option for most organisations due to cost but many try it!
However, relying on HR to produce every letter, attend every meeting and tackle every problem is not only prohibitively expensive, it also encourages managers to abdicate responsibility for the performance of their teams.
Most senior HR managers already believe that HR takes too much responsibility for day-to-day management issues.
According to a recent survey, UK HR Directors believed that the split of day-to-day people management tasks between line managers and HR was currently 50:50.
The view of the HRDs was that the optimal level would be 80:20.
Traditional HR Software
It is debatable whether traditional HR systems should even be considered in this section, as many still offer too little value to line managers.
The whole focus of many current generation HR Software systems is still on supporting the activities of HR departments and the administration of employee records, rather than on supporting the people actually doing the managing. Even where managers do have ‘self-serve’ access to an HR System it tends to be for basic viewing/ updating of records via either an unfriendly database or into 'pretty' software with little substance.
HR Systems are typically not designed, or expensively developed, to support managers carry out their day-to-day management responsibilities.
For more information about Youmanage please visit www.youmanage.co.uk
We All Need To Equip Our Managers to Succeed
A better solution is clearly needed for supporting line managers and more effective use of the right level of technology platform is likely to provide at least part of the answer.
It is perhaps surprising that technology has had minimal impact to date on people management, particularly when you consider that old but true cliché that many business owners would highlight people as their organisation’s most important assets.
While many areas of a business have benefited from the application and adoption of technology to support specific functions, the critical role of the line manager has so far been largely
unsupported and somewhat neglected. It is perhaps not surprising that in many organisations there is a significant gap between the intent of HR policies and the reality of what happens on the ground.
However, the situation is now changing and no organisation needs to struggle with disparate systems and processes. Youmanage is at the forefront of a new generation of people
management systems, with a focus on wholly supporting the practise of people management throughout an organisation, rather than just managing employee records.
“it’s not surprising that in many organisations there is a significant gap between
the intent of HR policies and the reality of what happens on the ground”
For more information about Youmanage please visit www.youmanage.co.uk
Problem: Managers don’t know what processes to follow
Solution: Workflow tools to walk managers through common processes
For many people management processes, whether it’s managing an induction, a performance appraisal, handling a disciplinary situation, or addressing a persistent absenteeism issue, the processes that a manager needs to follow are fairly predictable and should always be delivered in a consistent fashion amongst your line management team and therefore across your
organisation.
Yet, individual managers are commonly left to their own devices, or are asked to re-invent the wheel each time they encounter a situation which is new to them, or when they haven’t done it for some time.
Or, to ensure consistency and compliance, HR will often step in to deal with what are essentially line management responsibilities.
Why devolve line management tasks to more senior management or back to an HR professional, whether internal or external?
Why not introduce HR workflow process design software that walks managers through many common HR and Management processes in a structured way?
So for example, a manager faced with a disciplinary situation would be provided with a
structured process to follow, designed to be in line with HR best practice, ensuring that they do the right things, at the right time, and capture the right information at each step in that
process.
This enables organisations to improve consistency and save management time.
Problem: Managers lack easy access to relevant information and guidance
Solution: Content delivered at the point it’s required
In many situations, managers do not suffer from a lack of available information. Instead, the problem is that there is often too much information and the relevant and up to date stuff is not immediately accessible.
A powerful way to improve managers’ overall effectiveness is by integrating the delivery of useful content (e.g. guidance notes, training materials, standard letters and forms) within their HR workflow processes.
Organisations should see the value and seek to integrate information and guidance content into the workflow processes that users follow, so that relevant information is delivered at the exact point that it is required.
This content should be in a wide variety of formats, including text files, presentations, video, or even e-learning modules.
For more information about Youmanage please visit www.youmanage.co.uk
So for example, a user who is on a screen and wants to create an absence record could be presented with a set of relevant guidance notes (e.g. Managing Persistent Short-term Absence, How to Handle a Return-to-Work Interview), details of the company’s absence policy and a link to access a short e-learning module on managing absence.
Delivering content in this highly-targeted way makes the content itself far more valuable to the user and reduces the time they need to spend searching for information.
Managers then feel empowered and are being self-taught by the materials that you present to them, whilst you can relax, knowing that your management team are delivering HR processes in a consistent and compliant way. They're also working within a known management framework, using the same guidelines and ultimately working as a self-organising team.
Problem: Lack of discipline around people management tasks and milestones
Solution: Automated tracking of tasks and milestones
When managers are overloaded with operational responsibilities it is often their people management duties that take a back seat.
Unfortunately, while this may not have an immediate impact on the manager, in the long-run it can be highly damaging to an organisation.
A culture where missed review meetings, incomplete development plans or unchecked absenteeism problems are the norm, is unlikely to produce a motivated, engaged and productive workforce.
A failure to track key dates can also lead to companies failing to comply with legislative
requirements, (e.g. periodic checks on the right to work) or in employees acquiring employment rights by default (e.g. if probationary review periods are not tracked).
Workflow technology properly embedded within purposeful HR software can make it easier for managers to do the right things by automatically tracking key tasks and milestones and
proactively alerting users when an action, or further action, is required.
Escalation points can also be built in, so for example, a manager could be emailed to alert them to the end of a Probationary Period two weeks before the relevant date, and if no action has been taken after one week, then the HR Manager and/or senior manager could also be alerted.
Problem: Loss of valuable management intelligence
Solution: Automated capturing and storing of information
Many smaller organisations store a limited amount of data about employees.
The information that’s most useful to a manager, for example performance against objectives, outstanding development activities, historical absence records, are often not recorded in any systemised way. Most of this information exists at best on paper, or worse in an individual manager’s head.
For more information about Youmanage please visit www.youmanage.co.uk
Huge quantities of valuable intelligence get lost every time an employee changes team or a manager leaves, which can result in problems going undetected, or uncovered later on, or even potential opportunities being missed.
Using intelligent HR software systems to support people management processes means that an organisation can build up a much richer view of its employees, because information is captured as a natural by-product of users carrying out their normal management tasks. This information is then available to any user whom it is relevant to (subject to permissions) at any point in the future.
This means that managers can make better-informed decisions about the employees who report to them. It also means that at an organisational level, it is easier to define HR strategies and policies (e.g. in areas such as talent management or absenteeism).
“Huge quantities of valuable information get lost every time an employee
changes team or a manager leaves.”
Problem: Managers unable to access basic data for their team
Solution: Permission-controlled, web-based access from anywhere
In many organisations, managers have very limited access to information on the employees they are responsible for.
Information is stored in an employee database that quite often only HR can access, and/or in a collection of spreadsheets, Word documents and paper files. This can lead to decisions being based on incomplete information, or delays while managers wait for the HR department to respond to a request.
It also creates unnecessary additional, unnecessary and expensive work within the HR function. With web-based HR systems there is no need any more to restrict information to a limited group of HR users.
Subject to suitable controls on what types of information different individuals can see,
managers can have instant access to relevant information about their employees with just a few mouse clicks. What is more is that access is possible from wherever that manager happens to be working, and on any device, rather than requiring them to be sitting at a particular
computer, at a certain desk, in a particular office.
Summary
In summary, the role of the line manager is probably more challenging than ever before and managers need to stay on top of an unprecedented quantity of information and knowledge in order to do their job successfully. Traditional methods of supporting managers are insufficient to meet these current challenges but emerging technologies offer the potential to significantly enhance the performance of managers. Organisations that take advantage of these
opportunities are likely to gain a competitive advantage over competitors and significantly improve their business performance.
For more information about Youmanage please visit www.youmanage.co.uk
Youmanage in Practice - An illustration of how a service like Youmanage can be used to
improve the effectiveness of line managers, we now consider the following two different light-hearted scenarios:
Scenario A
Our manager, Harry Helpless, is preparing for a performance review meeting with a team member, Dave Disruptive.
Harry has only been with the company 4 months and is a relatively inexperienced manager. He received no handover from his predecessor who had already left. Harry has no access to the central employee database or Dave’s personnel file which is stored at head office.
There have been a number of performance issues with Dave recently that Harry wants to discuss. Harry is unsure whether it is a question of capability or attitude. Is it a 'can't do' or a 'won't do'?!
Harry is also struggling to understand exactly what Dave’s role is as it’s never been entirely clear to him.
There have also been a few absence episodes over the last couple of months that Harry is very concerned about. Harry thinks that disciplinary action may be necessary if problems continue. Dave can be a fairly belligerent individual so Harry wants to handle the meeting carefully. Now let's consider the information or knowledge that Harry ideally needs to have available to him in order to be able to prepare properly for the meeting:
● Dave’s performance record over the last couple of years, including details of past
reviews and any objectives that Dave had been set by the previous manager
● Details of any previous disciplinary or grievance actions involving Dave ● Dave’s absenteeism record over the past few years
● The Job Description and a Competency profile for Dave’s job role ● Information on the company’s performance management process ● Information on the company’s disciplinary process
● Detailed notes on the performance issues that Harry has observed so that he can give
specific feedback
● Some guidance on how to conduct a review, how to give feedback and how to handle
difficult conversations would be useful
● A basic understanding of employment legislation relating to disciplinary issues
This information (if it exists at all) is dispersed across a variety of sources, many of which are not easily accessible by Harry.
What should Harry do? He could be super-diligent and spend time tracking down all of the information he requires. However, this would take him several hours work and probably lead to lengthy delays while he waited for responses from the HR team. Given that he has pressing operational issues to address and that he has another 7 of these review meetings scheduled over the next 2 weeks, the likelihood is that he will go into the meeting prepared and ill-equipped.
For more information about Youmanage please visit www.youmanage.co.uk
Scenario B
Our manager here, Pamela Prepared, is facing exactly the same situation with her own Damien Disgruntled.
However, Pamela’s organisation invested in the Youmanage system a couple of years ago. The day before the meeting, Pamela logs on to the Youmanage system and quickly navigates to the Managing Performance section. In under 30 seconds, with a few mouse-clicks, she is able to produce a pre-formatted Word document containing:
● Details of Damien’s current and past objectives ● His last Performance Review summary
● His absenteeism history
● The Job Description and Competency Profile for Damien’s role
● Details of a disciplinary process 10 months ago that resulted in a written warning for
persistent absence
● The file notes that Pamela has made in relation to Damien’s performance over the last
few months
From the same screen within Youmanage, Pamela is able to access some concise guidance notes on how to handle a review meeting and how to give feedback.
She can also print off a one-page document summarising the company’s performance review process and view training notes from a Performance Management course that was run just before she joined.
Another couple of clicks and Pamela is able to access some guidance information on what constitutes Disciplinary action and the company’s disciplinary process.
Now you must decide - which manager is better equipped to handle the Performance Review meeting with Damien more effectively?
Who is more likely to tackle the issues correctly, concisely and professionally, and take the correct action?
Which of them is most likely to say or do something that results in the company losing an Employment Tribunal at some point down the line?
Which scenario best describes your own organisation?
For more information about Youmanage please visit www.youmanage.co.uk