The Towers Watson findings reinforce the value of effective managers, revealing that supervision is a key driver of the energy and enablement required to reach the highest levels of sustainable engagement. Moreover, 30 percent of employees report a lack of supervisor support (i.e., a lack of recognition and feedback, and managers not living up to their word) as a cause of work-related stress.
From the employee perspective, the principal driver of manager effectiveness is consistency between words and actions — the ability to walk the talk.
While 70 percent of employees report that their immediate manager treats them with respect, there is some room for improvement in the other areas that drive manager effectiveness. Slightly more than half of employees say their immediate supervisor acts in a manner consistent with these key drivers.
Managers play a particularly important role when leadership from the top of the organization is lacking. In fact, the aspects of manager behavior driving overall effectiveness change when senior leaders are viewed as not effective. Specifically, it becomes critical for a manager to encourage new ideas and new ways of working, suggesting that the supervisor becomes responsible for promoting innovation in the absence of effective senior leadership.
To improve manager performance and drive sustainable engagement, organizations can start by defining competencies for their managers based on the drivers of manager effectiveness revealed in the study.
A consumer-like experience
After decades of emphasizing employees’ responsibility to know the customers’ needs and meet them, many employees are starting to expect the same from their employer. Seventy percent of employees agree that their organization should understand employees to the same degree that employees are expected to understand customers.
Fewer than half (43 percent) report having an employer that understands them in this way.
An organization’s employment deal is the foundation of the experience it offers to employees. The employment deal defines the give and the get between the organization and its employees. Employee responses indicate that organizations have made modest progress in several areas related to the employment deal since our last survey, but there is still much room for improvement.
Employees who feel their organization is effective in these areas are significantly more likely to be highly engaged than those who do not.
Source: 2014 Global Workforce Study, towers watson
