Do employees join a company, but leave a manager?

Have you ever heard the expression that “employees join a company, but they leave a manager”? It was mentioned to me earlier this week and I actually think it's a little tough on managers, who often just need some additional insights, support and time to work on their relationship with their team.

However, the point still stands that this in an absolutely vital area for organisations to get right and we need to help our managers and employees whenever we can.

But how?

Employees have a way to flag concerns

Teamgage allows employees to make regular, constructive 20-second submissions on metrics important to their team and organisation. Importantly these submissions are completely anonymous and feed into reports available to managers and senior leaders. This makes employees feel that they have a voice in the organisation and any concerns they have will be heard.

Managers can be supported

Teamgage provides senior leaders with a real-time benchmarking report of every level, department and team in the organisation. If managers have team results showing any areas of concern, this will be highlighted in the report so further support can be offered. It also provides an opportunity for best practice to be shared from teams and managers that do have positive results in these areas.

Time is allocated for open and honest communication

Everyone is busy and it’s easy for months to go by without employees and managers finding a reason to sit down together as a team and having an open discussion on what is going right and what might be going wrong. Teamgage provides the prompt and structure for that to happen. With real-time reports produced for every team, managers are encouraged to check over their report in private and then to share how things are going with their team. This is great for employees, as they hate their feedback simply going into a black hole and great for managers to get further detail on the ideas and feedback submitted into the team report.

Support for managers in meetings

Within the team meeting, the organisation can provide custom prompts and suggestions to help the manager know how to handle the ideas and feedback they might receive. This can be to explain the rationale for the metric, to remind everyone to be constructive or ideas on how results could be improved. A popular prompt is to remind everyone in the team that these are team results and everyone has to share ownership and responsibility for iteratively improving them over time.

Taking action together to improve

If employees hate their feedback going into a blackhole, they hate it if nothing changes based on it too. Actions are built into each team report so any agreed initiatives to improve results can be logged and tracked by the whole team. The good news for managers is that employees are required to also take responsibility for the results and to do all they can to help improve things.

Reminders for managers

We know managers have lots of competing priorities, which is why Teamgage has built in email or SMS reminders to let managers know exactly when to check their team results. These can be customised for the organisation so managers feel supported within this process. The regular cycle of reminder prompts are vital to keep the cycle of continuous improvement going at all levels of the organisation and to ensure any pressing manager/employee issues are highlighted and addressed.

Conclusion

Within busy organisations, it’s easy for the employee manager relationship to be under strain without it ever being given an opportunity to be highlighted and improved. Teamgage provides the oversight, structure, prompts and action to help that relationship improve and prosper over time.

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