Supporting First-Line Managers For Improved Employee Engagement

For many years already, employee engagement surveys have shown some disturbing numbers on an even more disturbing trend. When trying to look more closely for the reason behind the employee’s disengagement, one particular word springs to mind quite eloquently: disconnect. Found on all levels of the enterprise. And the bigger the company the bigger seems to be the disconnect. 

When a company is still a startup, the founders are working close to each other, sharing the same room or even the same desk, and the barriers to communication are close to none. Once the enterprise is up in the air, the business starts growing and the organization emerges and starts expanding. The close proximity between the founders diminishes and the disconnect emerges. And, like everything else in the growing enterprise, it expands too. 

The structure of the expanding organization is underpinned by managers of all ranks - front-line, middle, and c-level managers. They are there to ensure the organization is healthy and growing, and the processes are running as smoothly as possible, thus leaving no room for disconnect. 

However, the reality is different. Despite the processes and structure the organization establishes (such as the operating system, influenced by the corporate culture and shaped by the company values), the disconnect finds gaps to occupy and exploit. 

In rapidly expanding organizations, most managers are first-timers, appointed to function at positions they haven’t occupied before, in line with the Peter Principle, promoted to the level of their incompetence. To compensate for this, many managers still operate at their former level. Consequently, managers (across all levels) frequently fail to offer enough context and proper support to their team members, opting instead to compete with them. 

The sizable organization has managers of all sizes and shapes, but one group of managers is by far the prevailing majority in the enterprise - the front-line managers. Most of the time just promoted as the most capable contributors from their team, they struggle to internalize their new responsibilities. With the lack of daily adequate support from their managers and the highly pressing demands of their new role, the front-line managers are in a compromised position. 

Frequently, they lack an appropriate environment for experimentation, learning, and development. Their colleagues face similar circumstances and function not as a team, but merely as a group of subordinates to their shared superior, often competing against one another. And this only furthers the organizational disconnect. 

Ultimately, the unsupported first-line managers begin to feel anywhere from neglected to unjustly treated (and justifiably so!). Additionally, they are not actively working on motivating and boosting the morale of their subordinate teams, as they struggle to manage their own increasing dissatisfaction. 

This, along with their limited skills in nurturing, developing, managing, delegating, rewarding, and challenging their teams, rapidly leads to reduced commitment, engagement, job satisfaction, and loyalty among the individual contributors. 

The Big Deal 

So what’s the big deal with all of this?

For the sake of explicitness, let’s just examine a few of the new leadership responsibilities that first-time managers need to bear: 

• Supporting, Developing, and Growing

• Stretching, Goal-setting, and Enabling

• Assessing, Rewarding, and Recognizing

• Motivating, Inspiring, Purpose-giving

It is quite apparent that every single item on this list is directly impacting people's engagement. These are not merely responsibilities of the line managers, but they are aspects of work determining job satisfaction.

Managing over 80% of the global workforce, first-line managers are crucial to company success. Properly preparing and supporting them in their transition to people management will lead to significant business gains. 

One such gain would be minimizing or completely eradicating the organizational disconnect. For example, providing full and proper context to the first-line managers would enable them to ensure employees find their jobs inspiring, motivating, and purposeful. For this the middle management will need to properly propagate the context to the front-line managers, enriching it, and making it most relevant for their subordinate organization, thereby removing a big part of the disconnect. 

By addressing this particular leadership gap at the front line, a remedy would be brought to multiple issues simultaneously and we wouldn’t be seeing anymore today’s high levels of employee disengagement.