There is an increasingly large burden of duties falling on line managers’ shoulders and, in turn, a growing need for the appropriate tools to address them. Phil Brown examines how HR can help.

Every business believes that its people are critical to its success: as such, line managers play a pivotal role in ensuring that staff are motivated, productive and aligned behind the business strategy. They are also vitally important in making sure that an organisation’s actions are consistent with prevailing laws and regulations.

As organisations change their business models, expand, refocus and diversify to meet the demands of their changing markets, so line managers face the direct impact of these changes. As a result, many experience increasing pressure from flatter organisations, higher ratios of employees to managers, increasing regulatory burden, more functional responsibilities, a more mobile workforce and more flexible working patterns.

As a result, managers are overstretched and often, they effectively abdicate some of their people management responsibilities. The phrase ‘that’s HR’s job’ is one heard too often in many companies – whether describing employee development, managing an individual’s performance or unchecked absenteeism.

A recent survey of 100 UK-based HR managers reported that 77% thought that the employee development in their organisation would improve if their line managers had better systems.

Managers lack the tools to be effective

Given this scenario, it’s easy to be hard on individual managers, but often they lack the tools, training, information and skills to be effective. Investment in ‘people management’ training is often patchy, particularly in smaller organisations, and the much promised ‘support’ for managers often consists (if they’re lucky) of a set of policy documents and training manuals sitting on a server or a shelf somewhere. Faced with a lack of clear guidance and easily accessible information, it’s not surprising that many line managers’ response is to ignore problems and hope they go away – or at least – transfer to someone else’s team.

Often too, managers are not helped because their organisations don’t manage their employees’ information very well. Many businesses keep very limited information about employees (name, address, next of kin, salary etc) and don’t record the data that’s really useful to a manager; information such as performance against objectives, personal development plans, historic absence record etc. If such information does exist, it’s usually inaccessible – stored in the HR department on a spreadsheet or a paper form. Without the information they need, it’s difficult for managers to make effective decisions.

Poor line management hits the bottom line

Organisations need to find better ways of supporting their managers so that their workforce is productive, motivated and aligned. Ineffective people management has a negative impact on an organisation’s performance in a multitude of ways, including lower productivity, increased staff turnover, unchecked absenteeism, excessive administrative costs, damage to a reputation and limited alignment across different departments.

Youmanage’s recent survey revealed that 83% of HR managers in medium-sized organisations believed that better equipped people managers would result in an overall increase in employee productivity. Organisations which take the time to improve the effectiveness of their line managers will see a positive impact on the bottom-line.

New technology can help

Until recently, technology’s impact on people management has been minimal outside large enterprises: surprising, when many MDs highlight people as their organisation’s most important assets. However, this is changing rapidly, with the emergence of solutions which allow organisations to provide far more effective support to managers, without requiring the HR department to double in size.

Technology can be used to support managers in different ways, depending on their organisations’ needs:

• Workflow tools can guide line managers through routine people management processes (such as handling a disciplinary situation), ensuring that managers do the right things and collect the right information at each step of the way




• Web-based systems can provide better access to information about employees in a cost-effective way. With online technology, there’s no need for HR to be the only people with access to useful data




• Collaboration tools make it far easier for HR users and managers to work together and share information throughout any business process, ensuring better management of tasks and improved decision-making




• Online services can also provide useful training and guidance information to managers in friendly, accessible formats at the point that a manager needs.

The role of the line manager is probably more challenging than ever before: the constantly changing business landscape and their organisation’s responses mean that managers need an unprecedented quantity and quality of information and knowledge to do their job effectively. Making this information available, but doing it in a smart, usable, accessible way will be key to many companies maintaining their competitiveness.

Traditional methods of supporting managers are insufficient to meet these challenges. The new kinds of services now becoming available give companies the potential to empower their managers, and by so doing improve the performance of their business.

Phil Brown is managing director of Youmanage.