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Whatever level of manager you are, it's easy to get lost in your day-to-day responsibilities and forget about the impact you can have the workforce as a whole. If you were to list people who have the most influence on your daily life, we bet a manager or some workplace leader is on that list. A manager has a wide reach when it comes to our happiness at work and how happy we are with our jobs. Here are three areas of the employee experience that managers significantly affect, but we often overlook:
Who is one of the most influential people you’ll meet during your interview process? Answer: your manager/supervisor/direct leader. According to a Gallup study on 50,000 managers, when managers create a positive experience during the hiring process, new hires feel excited and optimistic about working for a manager who appreciates their talents.
The question is, how do you create a positive experience? Typically, it’s during the interview with the manager. What’s interesting is that a 2016 Mcquiag Institute recruitment report revealed that 72 percent of the hiring decision is based on the interview, but only 40 percent of managers were “excellent interviewers.”
To boost the quality of your interviews, here are some questions and prompts that you can use to create personal, meaningful connections with your candidates:
Have you ever started a new position and in your first year became doubtful if it was the right job for you? Or if the company was the right fit
Some people will end up taking action in their first year. According to a Work Institute’s 2018 Retention Report analysis on 234,000 exit interviews, about 40 percent of employees left within 12 months of being hired - that’s the highest first-year turnover rate in almost a decade!
So the answer is to engage your new employees, starting with their onboarding experience. Statistics compiled by Click Boarding, found that 69 percent of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years if they experienced great onboarding.
What’s an easily forgotten component in elevating an onboarding program? The manager!
From the same Gallup survey cited earlier, when managers play an active role in onboarding, employees are 2.5 times more likely to strongly agree that their process was exceptional.
Go from okay to exceptional with a few tips:
According to FlexJobs’ Work-Life-Relationship survey results, an employee’s view on the company’s sense of work-life balance [work/life integration] is reflected on how it is modeled from the top down. So if managers model an “all work and no play” lifestyle, then employees will try to emulate them to fit in more with the company norm. Your attitude towards managing your work and personal life tells your team how future leaders and managers at your company should prioritize work - which could lead to a toxic outcome. If workplace burnout is a norm in your culture, it can result in unhappy, highly stressed, and unhealthy employees.
Related: The Importance of Work-Life Balance
Don’t believe how much of an impression you can make? With Millennials being one of the largest groups in our workforce, a 2015 Deloitte Wellbeing survey showed that they were more likely than other generational groups to prioritize personal commitments over work if they saw their peers, managers, and CEO doing the same.
Managers perform better when they're happy in their roles. How happy are you with your work?
