Guidelines for On-boarding Line Manager
According to CEB, 60% of managers faily in their first two years.And while not everyone is meant to be a manager, the stats certainly don't have to be so grim.
There is a famous cliche "Employees don't leave companies, they leave their managers". However, majority of companies have no training or on-boarding programs for newly hired or promoted managers to help them learn how to manage their people. The skill gap is more apparent for newly promoted line managers who are making a switch from non-supervisory roles and that's where most of the challenges come from. It almost feels like as if this is some sort of blind spot for HR even though HR has all the information, tools and resources to fix it.
After recently going through the same experience of getting a promotion myself and having to deal with new set of challenges with people management, the reality struck me so I decided to come up with some sort of solution to overcome this trust deficit. Hence, here are guidelines I would like to share to improve the situation:
- High potential employees, who are poised to take up a line management role in the near future either through succession planning or regular promotion exercise, should be enrolled in training programs to develop their people management skills.
- The assessment for any newly promoted or externally hired manager individual should be designed to include people management capabilities assessment. In case of successful hiring of an individual with a clear need for development, they should be enrolled in a development program and they must be put on probation to develop their competencies and provide a proof that they can be successful as line managers.
- HR should conduct periodic training and orientation programs for line managers to train them on HR policies, procedures and tools.
- Publishing HR Policies is nice but having a guidebook similar to how Acas has prepared for the line managers will go a long way in preparing competent managers https://archive.acas.org.uk/media/4639/Managingpeople/pdf/Managing_people_Nov.pdf
- Line managers' performance shouldn't be solely based on their delivery of business objectives only. They should be assessed on how well they have been able to manage their people. KPIs such as Employee Engagement Scores, Improvement in Avg. PA Scores, Adherence to L&D program, Absenteeism Rate, Attrition Rate, Timely submission of PA Scores should be part of assessment.