How Senior Leaders Can Give Frontline Managers the Tools to Succeed
Strong managers make strong teams and, ultimately, strong organizations. Your frontline managers are integral to your company, making sure that daily tasks are done, deadlines are met, and projects are completed. In short, they keep the engine running. But they can’t do that without the right support.
That support is in short supply. According to McKinsey research, almost half of the surveyed organizations are unintentionally holding their managers back from doing what they need to do - tying them up with non-managerial tasks.
The report also highlighted a serious mismatch between manager expectations and those of the C-suite with managers wanting to devote more time to talent management and coaching, and senior executives believing their energy is better spent on strategic planning.
Bridging this gap, and giving managers what they need, is crucial to a company’s long-term success. Empower your managers and you’ll quickly see the benefits throughout your organization.
Effective managers make decisions that, in turn, guide C-suite decisions so senior leaders can maximize their resources, plan for growth, and foster innovation. At the other end, robust management drives teams and individual employees to perform better, while improving retention and boosting morale.
Must-Haves for Managers
Communication
You can’t give your managers what they need unless you know what those needs are. And for that, you have to communicate. Regular one-on-ones with middle managers helps clarify exactly what they’re looking for, and gives them an opportunity to raise concerns before productivity suffers.
All too often, the needs of frontline managers fall by the wayside because their asks are considered too costly or too time-intensive. This mindset needs to change, and management at every level should collaborate to find ways to empower their frontline staff, in line with an organizational-wide strategy.
Strategic Staffing
As the McKinsey report shows, staffing is a major concern for middle managers. These leaders want the opportunity to coach their employees and place a high value on nurturing talent, but 35% say they don’t have the resources to do so.
Provide those resources, building a people-centric strategy that focuses on training, retention, and employee development. Give your managers time and flexibility to implement these initiatives, and they’ll be able to build a high-performing team that drives growth.
They also need to be able to fill desks - high turnover and a continuing labor shortage are a huge headache for frontline managers trying to keep their departments fully staffed. Build strong lines of communication with the HR department to provide managers with what they need to quickly fill positions if they lose a staff member.
Enable Data-Driven Decision Making
Don’t leave your managers to operate in the dark. They need timely, accurate, and relevant data around how their team works to determine how best to lead them.
Data makes managers more responsive and agile, giving them the visibility to quickly address issues before they derail performance. With a clear line of sight into their team’s activities and workflows, managers can:
- Identify and address training gaps
- Spot potential burnout
- Catch unwanted behaviors such as time theft
- Build a picture of their team’s needs over time
Employee productivity tracker Prodoscore enables this kind of data-driven decisioning, monitoring how employees use cloud-based business applications to compile a productivity score for individuals and teams.
Data is captured in real-time and presented on an easy-to-use dashboard, so managers have key metrics right at their fingertips. Prodoscore doesn’t capture keystrokes or monitor web use, it zeroes in on core business applications to unobtrusively collect the data that matters and nothing else.
With these kinds of relevant, actionable insights, managers can make better decisions around what their team needs and support overall business goals by improving retention and performance. With Prodoscore’s data-driven Employee Productivity Monitoring (EPM) solution, your managers are empowered to get the best from their teams and deliver the best for their organization.
