Research shows what we all already knew - good line management matters

Recent research from the Institute for Employment Studies has reinforced the importance of the employee-line manager relationship. 2009 reserach into the impact of line managers on employee engagement came up with 'identical conclusions' to a 2004 study into line managers as developers of people, which is that the employee-line manager relationship is crucial. Various other research down the years (e.g. Gallup, CIPD etc) has consistently said the same thing.

I don’t think these results will be a big surprise to anyone, although it's always useful to see empirical back-up for what most people instinctively know to be true, which is that good line management has a massive impact both on short-term employee performance and the longer-term realising of an employee’s potential.

The IES auditors have created a practical framework for managers to follow based on their research and again little of this will be surprising to anyone involved with people management at some level. However the real issue for most organisations is not about knowing what managers should be doing, it’s creating the conditions in which they actually do those things. This requires a number of factors to come together.

Organisations themselves need to create the right climate in which good people management is valued and positively promoted (as opposed to just paid lip service to) – and a lot of this has to come from senior management – both acting as positive role models and also creating the necessary headroom for managers to manage their people, alongside delivery of their functional tasks.

Managers also need to be better equipped to do the job required of them – this means giving them the right training but also the right on-the-job tools to be genuinely effective. Too often organisations talk about greater line management accountability and empowerment but fail to equip them to do the job well.

For some white papers on the subject of enabling and empowering line managers check out www.youmanage.co.uk/pages/resources.asp.

Phil Brown
Youmanage - the online HR toolkit for managers
http://www.youmanage.co.uk/