A debate was held at Davos this week about quiet quitting – the trend identified during the pandemic of employees doing the minimum requirements of their job without any emotional engagement. The Bloomberg report of the event stated that it is the responsibility of managers and business leaders to prevent this inner resignation “with bad managers threatening morale, engagement and performance”.
However, this is not a new phenomenon. There is extensive research, including a 2017 Gallup poll of more than 1 million workers, which identified that the primary reason why people leave their jobs is due to a bad manager. Three quarters of workers that left their jobs voluntarily did so because of their managers and not the position itself.
There are a wide variety of reasons for this including:
A disconnect between the corporate culture and the culture of individual teams within an organisation. A sub-culture can easily develop that is consciously or, more often than not, unconsciously created by the team leader. It is at a team level that the work gets done. The personality of the manager coupled with their experience can have a dramatic impact on the morale of the team and the people within it. Evidence shows that employees are more likely to stay with a good team even if the corporate culture is not great, but they will walk away far quicker if it is a bad team in a company which has a strong and positive corporate culture.
Individuals are often promoted internally to managerial roles because of their experience and mastery of a previous non-managerial role. But leading a team requires a whole set of soft skills: building trust, setting clear expectations, helping team members to play to their strengths, supporting them with their career aspirations, knowing when and how and when to challenge them. To some people these attributes may be innate, but many will need interventions to help develop them.
Responding to “the new normal” of hybrid or remote working brings additional pressure on managers and team leaders. Microsoft’s 2022 Work Trend Index showed that managers feel trapped between leadership and employee expectations. With many business leaders pushing for a return to the office, a majority of managers are saying leadership is out of touch with employees and three-quarters say they don’t have the influence or resources to make changes for their teams. They are caught in the middle trying to balance corporate objectives with employee expectations and desires.
So, what can be done? Here are some thoughts.
- Gather data. If you don’t already conduct regular employee surveys, then do so. Look closely at the data at team level – particularly at the response to questions such as: “At work I clearly understand what is expected of me” and “I feel supported by my manager”. The responses relating to managers typically show the most variance of any of the data sets and will help you identify which team leaders need support.
- Ensure you have rigorous recruitment practices in place to identify individuals with latent or existing management abilities.
- Support new managers to develop the soft managerial skills of listening, building trust, delegation, providing the right level of support and challenge etc. Whilst HR budgets might be tight, investing in training and development for managers is time and money well spent. This can include identifying strong existing managers to mentor new ones, internal workshops run by managers with specific skillsets. Using internal or external coaches to support individuals or teams will also reap rewards.
- Develop a forum for managers to get together, share their experiences, feedback the concerns of their teams and ensure that some senior leaders are present to hear and respond to their experiences and suggestions.