It’s a tale as old as time. You ask employees where they get most of their information from at work. You could probably say it at the same time as them. All together now: “My manager!” (Jinx)
Line or people managers have the potential to be the unchallenged MVPs of an organisation.
To their employees, they can be leader, organiser, mentor, confidant, advocate, translator and informer. And as we’ve found in our own insight and research work with a variety of client organisations, it’s those communication roles (such as informer, translator) that can be the most difficult for line managers to grasp.
We hear from employees that they don’t feel informed, don’t know how issues or information relates to them, and don’t feel heard – all due to poor line manager communications skills.
In fact, research from The IC Index report shows that nearly 8 in 10 employees are promoted into a management position without any communications training. When you think about the huge impact they have on organisational culture, employee engagement, productivity and performance, this, honestly, is a bit nuts.
With all this evidence for the difference that line managers can make as strong communicators, why aren’t HR and internal communications teams investing in training more? Well, it’s a huge undertaking. What if you don’t have the time, resource or expertise in-house to pull it off? That’s where we can help you to manage the gap.
Our Sequel team supports both internal communication and HR teams to help line managers be better, more confident communicators.
We worked with Dignity, one of the UK’s largest funeral providers, to help their people managers become better communicators. We trained 200 line managers, developing bespoke interactive workshops that made the case for effective communications and engagement. The workshops reflected business objectives and were built on insight from those same objectives. And participants recognised the workshop training’s value, giving it an excellent score of 4.2 out of 5.
Or if your budget-conscious senior stakeholders are dubious, point them to the fact that when an employee’s manager is the most common source of communication on strategy, it results in the second-lowest levels of belief that the strategy is the right one*.
If that doesn’t make the case for their impact… Our tried and tested methodology makes for stronger managers and more productive, informed, engaged employees.
So let us do the heavy lifting. We bring essential communications best practice and create workshops and practical toolkits tailored to your organisation, using a mixture of learning styles and personal reflection for success, helping you make your line managers your IC MVPs.
*The IC Index: https://www.ioic.org.uk/resource/ic-index-report-2023.html