Managers are like a box of chocolates...

You never know what you are going to get. When you are interviewing for a job - you are also interviewing your manager. Trying to figure out if you can work well with the person, and if they are going to create the right environment where you can succeed. But how much can you really tell from a few conversations? Everything might seem great on the surface, but we all know it takes time for a relationship to form. How can you know if it’s going to work?

Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of anecdotes about "what makes a great manager." And while many of those anecdotes are logical, it wasn't until recently that the HR Business Insights team at Microsoft has been able to use data to quantify some of these hypotheses.

A few years ago Microsoft acquired a company called VoloMetrix, known today as Workplace Analytics. This acquisition was exciting for many reasons. As a company, we were doubling down on investment in Office 365 – a workplace suite with a data graph housing tons of untapped insights about employee productivity. By partnering with Workplace Analytics, we could match calendar and email metadata (header data only, no content) together with engagement and other outcome related data (in an aggregated/anonymized way without exposing individual details) to start to understand the behaviors that impact outcomes.

Sometimes it’s the little things that have the biggest impact. And this is definitely true of managers. In correlating Workplace Analytics data with our engagement survey questions, we were able to identify and validate hypotheses and anecdotes that we long suspected would have an impact on manager effectiveness. And we found some hidden gems as well.

• Meeting 1:1 with employees: The more one-on-one meetings an employee has with their manager, the more the employee feels their contributions are appreciated. In addition, having more 1:1 meetings positively correlate with employees receiving feedback that they believe helps improve performance, and that their managers are taking actions to help meet employee career goals.
• Holding "office hours": Consistent access fosters confidence in manager effectiveness. Employees whose managers had fewer non-recurring meetings and fewer double-booked reported more confidence in their manager’s overall effectiveness. Collaboration tools like Skype also foster this open-door approach for employees who work remotely or in a different location than their immediate manager.
• Growing your network: A manager's network is directly correlated with employee perception of their manager’s effectiveness. Direct reports of managers with larger networks within job functions responded more favorably around confidence in their manager’s effectiveness. Employees and managers can both benefit from internal network growth. Employees intend to stay at Microsoft longer and report a stronger sense of belonging on their team while maintaining their authentic self.

• Minding your mails: A manager's email cadence can actually influence their employees’ perception of work-life balance -- even if the manager is not directly asking employees to do something! Employees who reported more flexibility around balancing their work and personal life, had managers who spent less time working after hours, sent fewer emails after hours, and had fewer non-recurring meetings.

At Microsoft, we’re at the beginning of a journey using data to better understand successful manager behavior and impact. The data and insights will help us quantify successful manager traits and behaviors, so we can develop guiding principles, and train our managers on proven successful management techniques. For a company that geeks out on data, we’re super excited about the potential to change the way we train and support our manager community – and we think our managers are going to embrace it as well. Because who can argue with data? ??

At the end of the day, we all want to work for a manager who can help us learn and grow and create an environment where we feel engaged and supported. And while there will always be a sense of uncertainty when you begin working with a new manager (much like selecting a chocolate out of a box!), future managers will be armed with data that helps them understand behaviors that lead to both employee and team success.