Good Managers Matters – Make It Magical!

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We’ve all heard the saying “People don’t leave companies—they leave managers” over and over and over again. It’s a cliche because it’s mostly true and provides an easy way for me to share with you about how important your managers are to your business’s culture and your employee0 experience. But what I have found is that the phrase also understates the importance of how good managers affect your business’s bottom line because of their impact on employee retention and engagement.

A good manager will deliver real returns for your business. Your managers are a vital piece in your business and the ability to hold onto your good ones will improve your business. But I believe your managers have an even greater role in employee turnover, engagement, and performance than most people realize.

1. Managers boost retention rates – Having a supportive manager will double employee retention. Having a manager who is just going through the motions, on the other hand, drops the retention rate of employees by more than half. Even if you have a manager who tries but is just too busy and not effective to fully support your staff will actually hurt your retention rates by more than 25%.

Just imagine if you could cut your turnover rate in half—how much time and money would that save you and your business? How much better would your employee morale be as well? Since many of you are currently struggling with employee retention as more than half of employees say they intend to leave their current jobs, improving your managers could help drive a lot of improvement in your business.

2. Managers drive employee engagement. Managers also have a big impact on team and employee engagement. Recent research from Gallup found that a stunning 70% of your team engagement is determined solely by your team’s manager. That’s right: nothing else has as significant of an impact on your employee engagement levels as their manager. Just one manager’s impact can make a huge difference in your business’s productivity and profits. If you want to increase employee engagement you must focus on supporting manager engagement to get the best results.

3. Managers create and carry out your culture. – With out a doubt, your managers are the secret ingredient in carrying out and enforcing high-performing cultures. By enabling your team’s performance (not just managing it) and providing coaching, motivation, and feedback, you will drive high levels of performance in your business.

Why Are Your Managers Struggling?

Lack of Training

Let’s look at how do people become managers in the first place. In many businesses, they’re individual contributors who are promoted because they’re great at that role, and they’re expected to jump into people management with little or no training. Almost half of managers state that they were never trained in the skills needed to be exceptional at their job.

You need to train every new manager in how to hold effective 1:1s, how to give frequent and specific feedback, how to enable performance instead of just managing it, and how to hold difficult conversations with employees, among other vital tasks. Expecting them to know instinctively how to do these complex, challenging things right off the bat is a recipe for failure.

When was the last time you invested in a training workshop for your managers or provided them with free books or resources to help them learn these impactful skills. Those investments will help your managers feel your support and by investing in them you will have higher levels of employee engagement.  When I work with businesses, I often spend a lot of time talking and listening to their management team. The most  common response I get from them is that they were thrown into their role and job without much training. Teaching and supporting your managers will mean helping them do what they need to do best: coaching, enabling, and supporting their people.