Managers are Key to Employee Engagement

This article originally appeared in the August 2020 edition of Insightism.io, a publication of Roundtable Insights. It was written in partnership with Dr. Marc Prine.

Think about a time you thrived at work. This is a time you felt productive, could take smart risks, and saw your hard work contribute to your team’s success. Close your eyes and take a moment to really connect with how you felt.

Now, think about what helped you feel this way. Think about how you connected with your organization, your manager, and your coworkers. Remember how those feelings and connections allowed you to contribute to your organization, helping your team be more productive, and the organization more profitable. These feelings and your work-related outcomes are the foundations of employee engagement.

The two of us spent years researching employee engagement and applying what we learned to our day-to-day work. We care about employee engagement because both people and organizations benefit. In this win-win scenario, employees are more likely to say good things, giving more time and attention to their work. They are also less likely to quit, take unscheduled time off, or get in an accident at work. When combined with higher productivity and profitability, we know engagement is critical for both organizational and individual well-being!

Unfortunately, organizations have long managed their employees using anecdotal methodologies and archaic philosophies. Unlike finance and marketing, which use analytics and data-driven decision making, most top leaders still manage their workforces based on gut feel instead of science. Despite CEO pontifications about people being their greatest assets, they fail to apply the same rigor to people management that they do to money management and messaging to the market.

One prime example is employee engagement. Despite the clear outcomes, engagement has been relegated to empty slogans and surveys that don’t uncover real issues or drive real action. In fact, asking employees the wrong questions, and taking the wrong steps, actually destroys engagement! This dynamic is unfortunate since employee engagement provides so many positive benefits and is relatively simple to measure with a high degree of rigor and accuracy.

Asking employees the wrong questions, and taking the wrong steps actually destroys engagement!

When an organization engages its workforce, it creates three vital environmental conditions that allow employees to thrive. These conditions include:

1. Psychological Safety, which allows people the opportunity to innovate by trying new things, getting creative, and taking smart risks that advance the organization; 
2. Psychological Availability, which allows employees to focus on their work without being distracted by harmful politics and a toxic environment; and 
3. Meaningfulness, which allows employees to feel like they’re spending time on things that are important to themselves and their organizations.

Notice we didn’t say anything about ping-pong tables, beer kegs, and other frivolous toys! When you started reading this article and thought about a time you were productive at work, you probably didn’t think about those things either. Instead, you thought about how you felt about your organization, your boss, and your coworkers. This is consistent with our research, which revealed two of the most critical drivers of employee engagement are the quality of an employee’s relationship with their immediate manager and the way the person came into the organization.

Two of the most critical drivers of engagement are the employee's relationship with their manager and how they came into the organization.

Our research found that how organizations recruit, select, and onboard employees accounts for over 50% of the variance within employee engagement. That means employees who are socialized correctly are significantly more likely to become engaged and productive. Most notable was the relationship between employee engagement and how well the employee connects with the goals and values of the organization. Employees who share the same goals and values as their organization will go above and beyond for their employer because their career goals align with their personal goals.

Once the employee is fully onboard, focus shifts to how well they connect with their immediate manager. The strength of the direct manager-employee relationship accounts for 48% of an employee’s engagement level, demonstrating how important it is for line managers to spend time building relationships with their employees. Mutual feelings of trust, loyalty, commitment, and support give employees room to innovate, take risks, and help organizations reach their potential.

Our research findings have led us to develop these four tips for creating an engaged workplace, starting with the person who has the most significant impact on the individual -- their direct manager.

1. Help prospective managers understand your culture. Remember, culture is not about ping-pong tables, funky art, or free lunch Fridays. Culture is about how things get done. By providing clear behavioral expectations and a realistic job preview, you will attract future managers who are more likely to act in alignment with your organization’s expectations. Own who you are! There’s no reason to hide, especially since new managers will get to know the real organization once they start working.
2. Select managers who naturally build trust, loyalty, commitment, and support. Give your interviewers the tools to ask the right interview questions, the right assessment data to measure the right personality fit, and the right evaluation criteria for them to know when the right future manager is sitting across the table. When interviewers understand what good looks like -- and how to tell the good from the bad -- they will hire better managers. 
3. Invest in your managers. Leaders do this by giving managers the right training and tools to lead in their culture. Investing in managers also means finding the right employees to grow into future managers. There is nothing worse than watching the best salesperson promoted to manager simply because they exceed their quotas every month. Recognize that sales skills (or office skills or programming skills or…) don’t always translate into leadership skills. When it doesn’t work out, not only will the manager have then destroyed their team’s morale, but you will have lost your best salesperson. 
4. Hold managers accountable. Revisit the criteria you used to select managers in the first place and carry it through your entire performance management process. Help your managers develop by offering candid feedback several times a year, and don’t be afraid to replace managers who make it impossible for employees to thrive at work.

Many organizations have impressive potential. Company leaders owe it to their stakeholders, employees, and communities to move away from failed gut-feel techniques and toward a more scientific basis for driving productivity and profitability. Following these four tips to socialize and lead employees effectively will help you unlock that potential.

About the authors

Klint Kendrick, Ph.D.

Dr. Klint Kendrick has over two decades of HR experience, with expertise in employee engagement, M&A, talent, analytics, workforce planning, and diversity. He has worked as an HR department of one for scrappy startups and led strategic initiatives for marquee companies like SC Johnson, Oracle, and Boeing. 

Dr. Kendrick’s practical approach to solving people-related business problems has made him a requested speaker, and he has been featured speaker and trainer for events sponsored by organizations like Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, McKinsey, and The Conference Board. Klint runs multiple roundtables for HR M&A professionals and has written The HR Practitioner’s Guide to M&A Due Diligence.

Marc I. Prine, Ph.D.

Known for his dynamic professional style and analytical approach, Dr. Prine thrives on using data and analytics to improve human performance. Dr. Prine’s key areas of focus include working with organizations to integrate evidence based methodologies into the management of human capital. His focus is on optimizing the selection, development, engagement, and retention of employees through use of people analytics, assessment, and psychology.

Dr. Prine earned his Ph.D. in Business Psychology from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, M.A. from West Chester University of Pennsylvania and undergraduate degree from Temple University. He is an adjunct professor in statistics and his work has been published in the Huffington Post, Forbes, and Fast Company.