Employee development is one common challenge for HR leaders. It is becoming commonplace for employees to seek a career with opportunities for advancement rather than a job that just pays the bills. Not to mention the ever-changing business climate today. HR leaders need to remain vigilant about providing development opportunities to employees, and leaders and managers are often overlooked. The expectations put on the company leaders have outgrown the capacity of the position since the pandemic.
According to Gartner, 75% of HR leaders report that managers are overwhelmed by the growth in their work-related responsibilities. Along with 73% reporting that their organization’s leaders and managers aren’t equipped to lead change. How can organizations bridge the development gap?
When Training Won’t Help
Organizations are quick to provide their workforce with better skill development programs, better health programs, the latest tools and technology to improve productivity and time management, and more. Skills development can help build expertise and the skills needed to perform the position’s daily tasks. However, leaders and managers today face problems for which additional training and skills are not the answer. As per Gartner, the average manager today has 51% more responsibilities than they can handle effectively. Managers are also suffering from a lack of motivation for the job, with 1 in 5 preferring not to be people managers if given the choice.
Bridging the Gap
Many organizations are realizing that traditional manager development tools and programs are falling short. The top organizations have begun to examine the job itself and are evolving it by applying the following four critical actions.
- Reset Role Expectations: In the current post-pandemic climate, the manager role has become more focused on flexibility across hybrid, global, and remote teams, empathy, and prioritizing individual team members’ well-being. These new responsibilities of the manager’s role compete directly with the daily operational tasks that they must also manage. One way to reset role expectations is to empower organizational leaders to connect employees with peers or others for coaching and development.
- Peer Mentoring: a supportive relationship between colleagues with similar experience and status. These peer mentoring relationships focus on mutual growth, sharing insights, problem-solving, and providing emotional and professional support. Peer monitoring will help build a collaborative workforce and foster a culture of continuous learning within the organization.
- Rebuild Manager Pipeline: Succession planning is becoming increasingly essential to the organization’s health. Organizations can ensure a pipeline of future managers by encouraging aspiring managers to engage in self-discovery and exposing them to the hardest parts of being a manager early on. By offering rotational assignments, the organization will be able to expose potential managers to a variety of managerial functions and challenges faced across the organization.
- Rewire the Habits of Managers: By reshaping how managers interact with their teams, managers can rewire their habits and make their workflows more efficient. Habits can be rewired, but there needs to be intention focused on the changes being made. One way to rewire managers’ habits is to set up intentional cues, such as reminders and triggers built into their daily routines. These triggers can include reminders to provide feedback, scheduled time for team collaboration, and team check-ins. By scheduling these moments, the manager will become accustomed to completing these new tasks and will build trust with their subordinates and in the organization.
- Remove Process Hurdles: Managers are often pulled in many different directions simultaneously. Tasks are pushed to the back burner, and some are forgotten. This creates bad habits, leaving important tasks undone and pushed from day to day. Automating as much as possible, like PTO requests, expense reports, and even the scheduling of common meetings or performance reviews, will remove some mundane tasks that are important but can be streamlined.
- Reducing Policy Complexities: Another way to remove process hurdles. Managers spend considerable time navigating company policies and may experience decision fatigue when trying to ensure they are applied appropriately. By offering a user-friendly HRIS, managers can gain instant access to resources and even to the HR department for more complex issues.
How Can an HRIS Help?
Many HRIS platforms can help streamline and automate a manager’s tasks. Let’s explore how:
- Resetting Role Expectations: HRIS platforms typically allow setting roles and expectations within the system. By leveraging the technology and automation offered by an HRIS, the management role can be clarified, and both HR and the management team can have access to review and align expectations.
- Improving Manager Accountability: An HRIS can track managers’ tasks and goals while providing regular updates to managers, HR, and organizational leadership. In collaboration with HR, the manager can generate actionable insights to ensure alignment and strong performance in essential areas.
- Setting Up Peer Mentor Programs: HR platforms often include employee engagement features and the ability to set team goals. Managers can use the HR platform to launch a Peer Mentor program and track their workforce’s progress toward meeting goals set with their peer mentors.
Conclusion
Since the pandemic, managers have had a considerable amount of responsibilities added to their already full plates. Many managers are finding themselves unable to focus on supporting the organization and moving the company forward strategically. Managers are faced with an entirely new work environment, and the changing landscape is spreading them thin. Unfortunately, the challenges that managers face today cannot be addressed with skills training alone. It needs to be addressed by restructuring the manager’s role.
A Human Resources Information System (HRIS) can provide the tools, transparency, and structure needed to reset management’s responsibilities. It can equip managers with the resources they need for success. A manager can leverage an HR platform by simplifying communication, ensuring accountability, and automating tasks that are necessary but can be completed seamlessly by the platform.
Frequently Asked Questions
Organizations can reduce overload by clarifying roles, automating administrative tasks, improving delegation, and providing the right HR technology.
Common signs include increased stress, decision fatigue, declining productivity, missed deadlines, and reduced employee engagement.
HR software automates routine tasks, centralizes employee data, streamlines approvals, and provides insights that help managers focus on leadership.
Succession planning develops future leaders, distributes responsibilities, and ensures leadership continuity without overburdening existing managers.
Organizations can support managers by setting realistic expectations, encouraging collaboration, providing coaching, and simplifying workflows through automation.
